I had never seen this video that Atrios had posted up of Thomas Friedman. I love these guys who earn the Combat Infantry Badges from behind a pundit's desk. Friedman sounds like a lunatic.
It reminded me of the email forwarded to me yesterday from a wingnut I used to serve with:
Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?
Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ?
Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?
And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was 'desecrated' when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?...Well, I don't. I don't care at all.
I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.
I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia
I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for chopping off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.
I'll care when the cowardly so-called 'insurgents' in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.
I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide .
I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.
It goes on and on and on like this, (why are these people so long winded?)
It seems to me that both Friedman and whatever dullard wrote the above jingoistic tripe, shat their pants on 9/11. That single event so defines them that it drives all their other emotions. Blinding them from seeing some very simple truths. Firstly, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Killing the entire Muslim world isn't going to solve the Global Terrorism problem, beside the fact that there are like 9 billion muslims and we aren't 12 year olds. You fight terrorism in a certain way. The strategies that allowed us to break up the Regional Terrorism in the 70's and 80's still work today.
You certainly don't do it by invading England when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. If we were serious about fighting Global Sunni Terrorism, and I mean really serious, we would have not replaced Saddam with chaos central, the worlds terrorist training ground. We would have bought his help. He was no friend to Al Qaeda.
Not to mention instead of fantasizing about attacking Iran, which is no more than a pipe dream, unless we want to lose a entire army and a bunch of really big boats. Don't forget they fielded 3,000,000 in the Iraq-Iran war and, of course, we have no reason to attack Iran. It's clear the Iraqi's are more than capable of making, all on their own, what amounts to a copper hubcab, regardless of whatever pops into Dick Cheney's fevered mind at any point in time. They are no more involved in the fighting in Iraq than the Saudi's, perhaps less so.
No, if the Bush administration gave a damn about Global Terrorism we would go into Pakistan not Iran. We would find Bin Laden. Remember him? How come they care less about the sovereignty of Iraq or Iran than they do about Pakistan?
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