Atrios caught Tom Friedman making one of his unannounced intellectual 180’s (pundits without a comments section are allowed to do that), but this bit from Friedman’s latest caught my eye:
One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.
That is just flat wrong. Iraq had a fairly robust labor union movement which eagerly tried to embrace the American occupation authority. They presented an organizing force that could have augmented the CPA’s ability to influence postwar Iraq. The bushies rejected them because they were a labor union.
Tom Friedman would be a vastly better pundit if he acknowledged his intellectual reversals and/or his gross departures from factual reality. But he won’t, and he really hates bloggers for suggesting that he should.
Incertus (Brian)
Another example of what happens when you govern from ideology instead of from pragmatism. Ideology says unions are bad, so unions have to go, even when they’re a stabilizing influence in an area you’ve just massively destabilized. Then they wonder why it all went to hell.
OxyCon
“…no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press”.
——————
Isn’t it kind of amusing that right wingers, who loathe America’s “Libruls”, desire to spread Liberal Democracies around the globe?
Ted
Tom Friedman is an enormous ignoramus. It was just so nice a few years ago on a long flight I was on that one of the in-flight movies presented to us was Friedman’s documentary on how truly wonderful it was that tens of thousands of Americans were losing their white collar jobs to people in Bangalore.
Friedman’s probably never heard of a labor union he approved of.
Dave_Violence
Friedman’s a right winger?
Now THAT is news.
Ted
I’m not even sure they do that, beyond “It was God’s will.”
Andrew
… he wasn’t a warmongering idiot with a psychopathic ‘kill the brown people’ agenda. That fuckhead needs to be dropped off in downtown Baghdad with a palette of ‘The World Is Flat’ and no bodyguards. Let him taxicab wisdom his way out of that.
Tim F.
Since you appear to be arguing with nobody other than yourself, why not whack your own forehead and leave us out of it.
Dave_Violence
Tom Friedman is not a right-winger. Never has been, unless the New York Times is somehow part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Eural
It is.
That’s how vast it is.
capelza
Did I read that Judith Miller was going to work for the Manhattan Institue?
Yeah, the NYT is so liberal. That’s the sad thing. Anyone that disagrees on occasion with this admin or it’s party are liberal. I wish you knew how sad that really was.
Incertus (Brian)
Never has been, unless the New York Times is somehow part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
The Times as a whole? Probably not. Are there powerful elements inside it who allow their insipid right-wing ideology to infect their writing? Absolutely, both now and in the past.
Tim F.
I still don’t understand who you are arguing with. Tell you what Dave, since this appears to be the remedial class I will spell it out for you. Who claimed that Tom Freidman is a right winger? Please name that person and cite where he said that so that we can all laugh at him. Thanks in advance.
TenguPhule
Improved.
srv
OBL tape is
fake
Good thing we can count on our gov’t to tell us the opposite.
TenguPhule
What FU are we on with Tom anyway?
I’ve lost count.
Elvis Elvisberg
Dave_Violence is very much like the theorists who pushed for an invasion of Iraq, and now are pushing for a bombing or invasion of Iran.
There’s only two groups in the world, for people like this: Us and Them. So when Tim F. criticizes Friedman, Dave thinks, “well, that must mean that Tim thinks Friedman is one of Us.” So he writes that Tim said Friedman is a right-winger.
Pretty simple.
It’s a pretty tight, totalitarian view of the world, and for many people, it beats taking time to think through any actual facts or arguments.
An extra bonus is that because they need not trouble themselves to acknowledge facts, it can’t be disproven.
ThymeZone
OMFG, if that doesn’t sum up the fecklessness of the Bush administration, I don’t know what would.
And if this latest Friedmanism doesn’t sum up what a numbskull he is ….. I don’t know what would.
capelza
Don’t forget these ae the same bright bulbs that thought a 24 y/o would be just a brilliant idea to rebuild the shattered iraqi stock exchange.
My God, when the real history of that carpetbagging nation building, army disbanding lunacy comes out…
DougL
I thought I was being snarky. Who knew I wasn’t that far off the mark?
jake
FUxed.
Skippy-san
I would submit to all of you decrying Friedman to go to the Middle East-to the Gulf states in particular- and you will see exactly the situation Friedman decries. They rely on 3rd world labor to do all of their grunt work and nations like Indonesia and the Philippines feed that dysfunction .
If Iraq ever settles down, they will become just as dysfunctional economically because they will do the same thing. Hell, we do the same thing with our contract workers in Iraq now. Ask yourself how many Third Country Nationals work in our KBR’s et al. It is a lot more than we have Iraqis working.
Oil has screwed up Arab perceptions of what a “normal” society is supposed to be and as a result what has not been destroyed by that has been ruined by Islam.
So yea, Friedman is right. I spent a year and a half working on projects in the Gulf and it was the hardest place to get anything done that I have ever seen.
Evinfuilt
Are you sure its the Iraqi’s that are using third world labour for all the construction. From what I can tell/read, its been all the large corps that the US has handed rather large contracts to. Those companies are bringing in the cheap labour for construction, instead of using local based.
Barry
” Hell, we do the same thing with our contract workers in Iraq now. Ask yourself how many Third Country Nationals work in our KBR’s et al. It is a lot more than we have Iraqis working.”
Um, that’s because we didn’t trust the Iraqis not to kill us.
Barry
A friend of mine has his ‘first rule of reality TV: It’s not real’; something that he reminds me of.
Similarly, there’s a constant rule which always applies to foreign affairs: the guys who lied us into this war, and who’ve lied us through this war, will continue to lie to us.
skyler
Actually Friedman’s got a point here, but to anyone who’s spend any time in Arab societies it’s pretty fucking obvious. One of the largest problems in Arab countries is the lack of independent civil society organizations. Even the labor unions are often controlled by the government. In recent years many countries, particularly egypt, have been working on this as it is a huge problem in arab countries and a major factor in the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups appeal. For Friedman to have just learned this–i cant think of a comparison, maybe a physicist just discovering gravity. jesus.
dadanarchist
Thanks for pointing this out, John.
After I read Friedman’s nonsense Sunday, I was going to compose a letter to the Times in the exact same spirit, and note that the Oil Workers’ Union is currently under direct attack because they oppose the oil bill on *nationalist* grounds, as a sellout of Iraq’s future.
But then I assumed Sweeney, who has been out on front on this, would pen a better letter.