June 15, 2005

TOM FRIEDMAN'S FLAT WORLD

        Horsefeathers argues that the once great body of ideas called 'Liberalism' has become little more than a shared faith, a pose, a stance designed to flatter the narcissism of the true believer. It is rooted in a utopian fantasy that Liberalism would be the happily shared multicultural faith of all, were it not for the malevolent Bush administration, the Christian 'right', and the evil neo-Con propagandists. After all, aren't liberals 'good', 'kind' people who believe in Peace and the United Nations? It is Tom Friedman's brave new flat world, in which all mankind will revel in a shared technological utopia--provided only that they listen to the wisdom of Tom Friedman about how to prepare for that beautiful future.
        When not breathlessly telling us of the need for more technological education in order to share in the wonders of the 'flat world'(Has there ever been a more inapt metaphor to describe the 21st century world?)of high speed internet access, Friedman assumes the pose of a military strategist. Don't bother to ask how he came by his knowledge of war fighting. He has none. It's just a pose, allowing Friedman to fulfill his primary function as an emotional healer whose higher task is to reassure the Liberal wordsmith classes of their own superior intelligence and goodness. There's no need for critical thinking with Tom Friedman around to offer Liberal cant in answer to real world problems, whether concerning Economics or War. The Muslim world hates us? Enemies actually want to slaughter us infidels? Close Gitmo and show what caring people we truly are. In the fantasy world of Liberal utopians we have no enemies, only potential friends who don't realize how nice we are. Have our war casualties been historically minimal? Well let's fight a war with no casualties at all. Then we'll feel so much better about ourselves.
        The function of the contemporary liberal Op-Ed pundit is that of a group therapist, whose main task is to comfort, support and reassure the faithful of their own superior intelligence, and to relieve them of the hard task of critical thinking or self-scrutiny. In the trinity of anti-Liberal evil doers (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld), Rumsfeld is particularly hated as the architect of our wars of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such wars require choice: “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” in the famous words of the simple minded President. And it turns out to be so; the more the MSM try to discredit our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more they are clearly helping our enemies. The New York Times is full of such Liberal preachers. Tom Friedman is a purveyor par excellence of Liberal cant for the wordsmith classes. It's an easy formula: when criticizing policies of the Bush administration, always suggest either openly or covertly that you, as a liberal, are so much smarter and better than the stupid and conspiratorial neo-Cons. Tom Friedman is an exemplar of this approach. After his newspaper devoted daily front page stories to the imaginary horrors inflicted on terrorists in Abu Graibh and Guantanomo, he then blamed the Bush administration for causing an image problem in the Arab world! See, they hate us. We do such awful things to their holy Korans. Implied, if not openly stated, is the multicultural faith requiring great respect for Muslim religious symbols, no matter how barbarous or savage their message, while apologizing for the dreadful deeds done in the name of our symbols, like the American flag or the Bible. Where was this chorus of appeasers when the Taliban destroyed the priceless Buddhas of Bamiyan? Today Tom-Flat World-Friedman reminds us how much smarter a military strategist he is than our own military. He does so, without providing any evidence that he has actually considered the nature of the military task and the reasoning behind the strategy. For example, he never takes up the question of whether some of our problems are caused, not by insufficient troops, but by restraint in the application of overwhelming force. Did our P.C. sensitive reluctance to attack mosques provide sanctuary to our enemy at the cost of American lives? If so, thank you NY Times and Tom Friedman for ceaselessly promoting the idea that Islam is a religion of peace. Of course to discuss and even critique such matters means taking seriously alternative strategic arguments and provides little opportunity for posturing as smarter and more caring than Rumsfeld. Friedman completely ignores the nature of the ongoing offensive to cut the supply lines of the enemy. (For a true critical appraisal see Mackubin Owens, a real student of warfare, describing our ongoing strategy here.)Instead, Friedman assumes that the fight is essentially being lost while Rumsfeld continues to withold sufficient manpower. This old idea is trotted out regularly by those who want to turn every American war death into a new Vietnam. However, unlike our liberal journalists, military commanders did learn something from Vietnam: sheer numbers of troops do not answer the problems of guerilla or terrorist style warfare, conducted by a savage enemy that doesn't play by Geneva convention rules. Friedman trots out his worn arguments as if he never heard them answered, as they were repeatedly by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Meyers, in order to score debating points vs. the Bush administration. Get over it Tom, John Kerry lost, and so did Wesley Clark. The title of his column is "Let's Talk About Iraq" and that's what it is, empty talk. It's the mindless blather of an Oprah-fied pundit who sees every problem as an opportunity to just sit down and talk--and score debating points against the administration.

        In the following paragraphs by George Orwell from Pacifism and the War try substituting ‘liberalism’ for ‘pacifism’ and you’ll get the correct measure of contemporary Liberalism.

“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. ..pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries..Germany and Japan...(in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force. But though not much interested in the ‘theory’ of pacifism, I am interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists who have started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism…”