Even a stopped clock

Thomas Friedman is still full of shit but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He proves it in today's column:
Remember Iraq
Now he gets it wrong up front:

To the extent that the surge has worked militarily, it is largely because of what Iraqis have done by themselves for themselves — Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders rising up against pro-Qaeda Sunni elements, taking back control of their villages and towns, and aligning themselves with U.S. forces to do so. Some Shiites are now doing the same.

Well he's right that it's about what the Iraqis have done but he's wrong about what they have done. In reality the surge looks like a success because the Shia have completed the ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Friedman then shows an amazing grasp of the obvious:

If you see that — if you see Iraqi politicians surprising you by doing things they’ve never done before, like forging a self-sustaining political compromise and building the fabric of a unified country, then you can allow yourself some optimism.

So far, though, too many of Iraq’s leaders continue to act their part — looking out for themselves, their clans, their hometowns, their militias and their sects, and using the Iraqi treasury and ministries as looting grounds for personal or sectarian gains.

As a result, what you have today is more of a spotty truce, with U.S. soldiers still caught in the middle. That is a quiet strategy, not an exit strategy.

Study the travel itineraries of Iraq’s principal factional leaders after the Petraeus hearings. Did they all rush to Baghdad to try to work out their differences? No. Many of them took off for abroad.

As one U.S. official in Baghdad pointed out to me last week, “at no point” since the testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker “have you had the four key Iraqi leaders in the same country at the same time.” They saw the hearings as buying them more time, and so they took it.

Well even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And this is so Friedman:

It still feels to me as if we’ve made Iraq just safe enough for its politicians to be obstinate, corrupt or reckless on our dime. Even the moderate Kurds must have developed some kind of death wish, allowing their radicals to simultaneously provoke both Turkey and Iran and risking the island of real decency the Kurds have built in the north.

General Petraeus’s strategy is to keep trying to knit the different militias and tribal fragments in Iraq together into a national army and government so we can shrink our presence. I truly wish him well. But I don’t see it happening without two things: some shock therapy — like a firm U.S. withdrawal signal — to spur Iraqi leaders, and a regional settlement. That is, without resolving the cold war in the Middle East that now pits America on one side and Iran and Syria on the other, I’m not sure you can stabilize Iraq, Lebanon or Israel-Palestine.

Letting everyone know that we’re not staying there forever would be the best way to catalyze both local and regional negotiations and give us something we don’t now have: leverage. Just letting Iraq recede into the back pages does not serve our interests.

If we’re going to just forget about Iraq, let’s do it when we’re gone — not when we’re still there.

What a pompous asshole. Sorry Tom, you are still full of shit - just like when you supported Bush's cluster fuck in Mesopotamia.

Quickest way to end the war......

......make them pay for it.
I have thought for some time that the quickest way to end the war would be to add a surtax to the incomes of the top ten percent, the bloated oil company profits and the profits of the largest corporations. These groups would be ready to pull out in no time.
That is the subject of Tom Friedman's commentary this morning,
Charge It to My Kids

Every so often a quote comes out of the Bush administration that leaves you asking: Am I crazy or are they? I had one of those moments last week when Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, was asked about a proposal by some Congressional Democrats to levy a surtax to pay for the Iraq war, and she responded, “We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.”

Yes, those silly Democrats. They’ll raise taxes for anything, even — get this — to pay for a war!

Of course if Tom had been paying attention for the last six years he would realize that this kind of "crazy talk" is all we ever get from the Bush administration. Tom continues:

Of course, we can pay for the Iraq war without a tax increase. The question is, can we pay for it and be making the investments in infrastructure, science and education needed to propel our country into the 21st century? Visit Singapore, Japan, Korea, China or parts of Europe today and you’ll discover that the infrastructure in our country is not keeping pace with our peers’.

We can pay for anything today if we want to stop investing in tomorrow. The president has already slashed the National Institutes of Health research funding the past two years. His 2008 budget wants us to cut money for vocational training, infrastructure and many student aid programs.

Does the Bush team really believe that if we had a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax — which could reduce our dependence on Middle East oil dictators, and reduce payroll taxes for low-income workers, pay down the deficit and fund the development of renewable energy — we would be worse off as a country?

Excuse me, Ms. Perino, but I wish Republicans would revert to type. I thought they were, well, conservatives — the kind of people who saved for rainy days, who invested in tomorrow for their kids, folks who didn’t believe in free lunches or free wars.

Of course the Bush administration is anything but conservative and really doesn't give a rats ass about anything other than letting their friends steal from the pockets of the US treasury and from the pockets of the American people.

Of course, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the Democrat David Obey, in proposing an Iraq war tax to help balance the budget was expressing his displeasure with the war. But he was also making a very important point when he said, “If this war is important enough to fight, then it ought to be important enough to pay for.”

The struggle against radical Islam is the fight of our generation. We all need to pitch in — not charge it on our children’s Visa cards. Previous American generations connected with our troops by making sacrifices at home — we’ve never passed on the entire cost of a war to the next generation, said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who has written a history — “The Price of Liberty” — about how America has paid for its wars since 1776.

“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mr. Hormats, “Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.”

In his celebrated Farewell Address, Mr. Hormats noted, George Washington warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear.”

Of course for Cheney and Bush the war in Iraq was never about "the struggle against radical Islam", it was always about oil and profits for the richest of the rich.

Related
Angry Bear on Ms Perino

With Tony Blow as press secretary, we could count on a daily dosage of stupidity and mendacity. But Tony was neither as dumb nor as dishonest as Dana Perino. Is the White House taking great joy in the fact that every time she opens her mouth, I think “what nuttiness is going to from out of this blonde bimbo’s mouth now”?

So why is the embarrassment than is Dana Perino there? What person with even half a brain would take the job at this point?

A common purpose, not a common enemy

Now I don't know if Thomas Friedman has suddenly become enlightened or if he just sees which way the wind is blowing, but he is for once on the right track and even admits that he not always was. In essence what he is saying in 9/11 Is Over is that thanks to the fear mongering of the Bush administration, the neocons and the Republican Party al-Qaeda was successful on 9/11 - they made us forget who we are.

Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:

“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”

Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

While this was a direct hit at Rudy Giuliani the sad truth is it could apply to Hillary Clinton and nearly everyone else seeking the presidential nomination. The two possible exceptions are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Of course Tom Friedman's 9/12 is not my 9/12 - his concern is largely about the impact on his absurd "flat earth". But his basic observations are correct, we have lost sight of who and what America represents.

Update
As one would expect the wingers are outraged and even more outraged.

Many on the left are not as willing to forgive as Libby and I.

No meritocracy in the MSM

MEJ's Bill in DC sent me this piece from Radar Online,
The Iraq Gamble
At the pundits' table, the losing bet still takes the pot
It begins with a rehash of a David Brooks column on the joys of meritocracy in America. The column then gives us examples of how it doesn't apply in the MSM at least when it comes to Iraq. They give examples of four pundits who were right about Iraq and careers have floundered.

• Robert Scheer
• William S. Lind
• Jonathan Schell
• Scott Ritter

And four pundits who were dead wrong and who's careers are flourishing.

• Peter Beinart
• Fareed Zakaria
• Jeffery Goldberg

and my favorite

• Thomas Friedman

Yes, Tom Friedman is special.

Pre-war position: Re-reading Friedman's columns from the six months or so prior to the invasion of Iraq can induce vertigo. Unlike many of his hawkish colleagues, he grokked all the vital details of the situation. He understood that there were alternatives to war ("Bottom line: Iraq is a war of choice"). He understood that the WMD casus belli was for the most part a convenient line (cautioning that it was merely the "stated reason" for the war, and early on calling out Bush and Blair for "hyping" the evidence). He took a shine to the idea of regime change, but seemed clear-sighted about its low chances for success ("Setting up the first progressive Arab state ... would be a huge undertaking, though, and maybe impossible, given Iraq's fractious history"). He grasped that the consequences of failure would be dizzying ("if done wrong, the world will never be the same") and that to succeed, at the very least, would require exceedingly deft execution on the diplomatic front as well as the military one. Yet he also noted that the Bush Administration was incompetent in at least the former respect, and recognized them as essentially a bunch of pathologically insensitive and hyperaggressive bumblers ("we are talking about nation-building ... [and] the Bushies seem much more adept at breaking things than building things").
So even a Webelo-grade logician knows where to go from here, right? You connect the dots and conclude that while it would be very nice to get rid of Saddam, it would also be stupid and dangerous.

But somehow he still managed to come out in favor of the war. And if the whole thing weren't so tragically misguided, his reasoning would be worth a chuckle. Says Friedman: "something in Mr. Bush's audacious shake of the dice appeals to me." A nice ballsy gamble of a war. Sure, it could throw the region into chaos, bankrupt this country, and dye the fertile crescent red with the blood of civilians; yet an audacious war is like a red lollipop—who isn't powerless to resist it?

Perhaps Friedman is the most pathetic. He didn't buy any of the spin, he knew all the risks and seemed to realize it would probably fail and he realized that the Bush administration was not up to the task. Even so he supported the war for over three years and told us almost weekly to just give it another six months.