The Enemy Defined

Tom Friedman is not only ubiquitous but extremely self righteous and condescending.  In a recent interview, he talks about terrorist "excuse makers" and what we should do to them:

AMY GOODMAN: Last July you wrote a controversial column calling on the state department to monitor and publicly identify excuse makers and hate mongers. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Yes. AMY GOODMAN: You wrote, "After every major terrorist incident the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. Every quarter the State Department should identify the top 10 hate mongers, excuse makers and truth tellers in the world." That's your quote. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. I believe that. AMY GOODMAN: To make an enemy's list, the state department -- THOMAS FRIEDMAN: People who make excuses for terrorism should be exposed and identified. I also use my own pen to expose and identify people in Israel who explore hate mongering as well toward Palestinians, among the settlers. I’ve been probably one of their biggest critics and enemies in The New York Times referring to them as fanatics and lunatics. AMY GOODMAN: For people who say we have to understand why others in the world are angry, do you think they belong on the State Department list? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Understanding why people are angry and understanding why people tell you that 9/11 happened, and no Jews were in the twin towers at that time because they were all warned ahead of time. So, let's be clear about what I was saying. I was very focused on people who want to justify the murder of innocent women and children, innocent civilians, and I very much believed then and I very much believe now that they should be exposed. I think Jewish hate mongers should be exposed as well as I believe I made clear in that column, too. AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned today in this country about people who are fiercely critical of the war in Iraq, the occupation, being called unpatriotic, being called hate mongers, being put on government lists? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Amy, if you read my column, one of the biggest critics of the war is the woman I live with, and I’ve probably mentioned -- I don't know how many times, in my column -- my wife's criticism of the war. I believe it's honorable. I believe it's a perfectly moral position. I would be disgusted by anyone calling them traitors. AMY GOODMAN: And why do you trust the State Department to make the determination on who they would call terrorists for being critical of the invasion? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: We clearly know what hate speech is and we know what legitimate opposition is. I know the difference. AMY GOODMAN: And do you think the State Department knows the difference? The Bush administration, President Bush? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I think they could. I know the difference between hate speech and people who oppose a policy on legitimate grounds, and opposing the Iraq war is not hate speech, I'm sorry. Basically justifying the bombing of the World Trade Center is hate speech. I know the difference. If you don't, that's your problem. AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the State Department does? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I'm not going to get into this silliness.

Comments

[Adam Kotsko]

With the bombing of the World Trade Center, presumably he's talking about that incident during the 90s, right? Because there was this other thing with the World Trade Center -- probably a better-known event -- that involved people flying planes into it, rather than bombing it.

[Alain]

I actually think he is mispeaking there - from the context it seems to me he is talking about 9/11. Either way, this guy is a pompous windbag that people in the media take seriously for some reason. I really don't get it.

[Gabriel Sanchez]

This is so timely to the discussion that I'm almost beside myself (almost...).

So, who says the political is obsolete?

[Adam Kotsko]

Some have theorized that his moustache is the key to his success.

[Matt]

Oh yeah, I trust Friedman, absolutely. And anyone with a mustache, generally.

Excuse makers, contextualizers, historians - they should all be shot.

The line between terrorist and notorious skeptics - they "who insist the people just don't want to be free," as Bush reminds us, may not exist for free-market sycophants with bloated sense of mission, but give 'em a break, Milton had to suffer being ignored by Presidents a long time (just barely long enough for Clinton to help all the Anglos - and a handful of former slaves and non-Anglo immigrants not in prison - get the Internets).

In other circumstances it might be cute, how Friedman's slanders are always "epiphanies" of unintending self-reference. It's, like, almost natural, the way they shatter the mind...fair trade protestors were at first "flat earth" deniers; your average Joe Sterilized Starbucks' hymns, apologies and excuses for neoliberalism are non other than "flat earth" epiphanies, albeit seven years later, and after brief stint underground during the dark Bush ages, which Friedman spent in luxurious hiding, patching cocktail party conversations together for a book with plagiarized cover...but now that Bush is on the way out, like a bird to spring worms...he's always baaack, and shrill etc.

How money and the masses' ears makes Hack immune to intellectual embarrassment. But for how long do we pay the illiterate sychophants and excuse-makers to play at contrarian intellectual, moral zeitgeist-meterstick, I wonder.

Nobody's listening, Tom.

Naturally though, there should be a whole new category of venom reserved for those moral-metersticks who actually are - or once were - literate. Here's looking at you, Norman Geras.

[Matt]

(oh good, see Adam got there first. With classier speling too.)

[Alain]

Lenin's Tomb has a great post on the US plans to create and then destroy Al-Zarqawi.

[squibb]

I draw attention to the headline at nytimes.com presently: "U.S. Nominates..." er sorry, "U.S. Identifies Successor to Zarqawi"

Oh and in other news, Drugs and Poverty have formed a Strategic Alliance to take back their rightful amount of air time in the U.S. led 'war on nouns.' The corpses of Regan and LBJ released a statement of general approval.