Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Thomas Freedman has jumped the shark...

He's basically concluded that the Bush team has let politics consume everything, destroying our position, starting with the question "Do we have a chance of succeeding at regime change abroad without regime change here at home?" and coming to the conclusion that, with the Bush administration, it is not possible to succeed in Iraq.

Now of course this has been fairly obvious since before the shooting started that the Bush administraton was problematic, but Friedman for the longest time has still had hope for the current administration.

That he actually has ADMITTED his gross mistake is somewhat unexpected.

But the final sentence undercuts the whole thing: "our president, who has a strong moral vision . . .". Friedman simply can't let it go.

Friedman's writing... no, his *thinking* is so episodic and incoherent that by this time next week he may well be back to his old ways. Would be nice to think he's come around to sensibility, but only time will tell.

See:

http://cogito.blogs.com/meditations/2004/05/next_week_i_lea.html

and

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003905.php

Friedman hasn't seen reality, and neither have any of the other conservative and liberal warhawks who are now apologizing. They haven't apologized for backing Bush and the neocons in invading Iraq. They're just sorry those guys handled it so badly.

Bush and the right wing radicals have accelerated a political crisis and Friedman, et al, are beginning to see that. But they themselves are part of a deeper moral crisis. There was no good reason to invade Iraq, only bad ones -- bad for our sense of ourselves as a society and as a world citizen. When the warhawks start apologizing for their goals instead of for the means used to attain them, then I'll start to think the country is turning around.

As I wrote before, I was read to stop reading when I saw this several lines into the editorial:

"My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed [that Iraq was too important to let politics interfere], too."

Thomas Friedman is either writing coy parody pieces, or maybe he is finally recovering from a case of Stockholm Syndrome that resulted from the 2000 election mess. Is there anyone who takes him seriously at this point?

They are all paying the price for their lazy and superficial world view. The problem is that a lot of us will have to pay the price with them, because we couldn't stop them even though we knew better.

For a sane evaluation of what went wrong (even if you do not agree with every point) I have been passing Wesley Clark's essay around. I encountered here in this absolutely most excellent blog.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.clark.html

Shorter Tom Friedman:

"Sure, I was one of the Iraq war's head cheerleaders, but don't blame. I misunderestimated the incompetetence and political hackery of the Bush administration."

I'll admit that Friedman is a little slow as well.

Concluding that Bush does everything based on partisan politics? Tom - what took you so long? Admitting he was wrong about invading Iraq. Tom - you would make a much better President than our current one!

Normally your children catch on to things pretty quickly, Brad. What took your 11-year-old so long with this one?

Either he's losing friends on both sides, or he's been riding both sides of the story for some time, that the tear is showing (the chickens are coming home to roost, or whatever other idiom you prefer).

"Tom Friedman Assaults Zionist Lawyer
11-Dec-03
Tom Friedman

Harvey Schwartz, "a Manhattan lawyer says Mr. Friedman shoved him into a small crowd of people and cursed at him, apparently angry over comments the lawyer had made to the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Mr. Friedman - a columnist for the Times since 1995, best-selling author, and more recently a documentary filmmaker for the Discovery Channel - did not respond to calls yesterday asking for comment... The conversation began politely, as the two men shook hands. Mr. Schwartz said he told Mr. Friedman that he concluded from his speech that the columnist was willing to 'sacrifice Israel on the altar of Iraq.' Mr. Friedman has argued that a failed peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians could complicate Iraq's transition to democracy. According to Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Friedman stopped smiling. 'We're still shaking hands. He sort of hesitated for a few seconds,' Mr. Schwartz said. 'That's when he withdrew his hand and physically assaulted me..."

Full story in link below

http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/12/10&ID=Ar00104

Well said, BobM!

See Josh Marshall's blog this morning on the empty space in the Oval Office.

Call your brokers. I'm shorting Kool-Aid futures. The wet winter/spring must have resulted in a poor crop.
Brad dropped the ball here. He should have seen this coming weeks ago.

Queue music: There's got to be a Morning After.....

I loved the way that Chalmers Johnson took down Friedman over globalization in his latest book, "Sorrows of Empire". But I'm neither an economist nor knowledgeable in the pros and cons of globalization; so, I had to rely completely on Dr. Johnson's analysis.

I did recognize what Friedman obviously could not see with regard to the US invasion of Iraq - that it was a monumental mistake which would rebound on the US with severe and possibly lasting consequences. In my view, it served no other purpose than to extend and strengthen US military imperialism in the Middle East.

I'm gratified Friedman has now gotten a glimmer of the truth but disturbed that he still hasn't the wisdom to see how mistaken the entire misadventure was from the beginning. He and other warhawks see only that Bush fumbled this magnificant "opportunity" and not that the war was always based on a false premise.

The tragedy of this imperial failure is compounded if we take away the wrong learning from it. That will only ensure that we'll repeat the mistake later and possibly in circumstances which put our republic in even greater peril.

I am glad that Friedman has finally admitted that he is a fool.

"Mr. Schwartz said he told Mr. Friedman that he concluded from his speech that the columnist was willing to 'sacrifice Israel on the altar of Iraq.'"

Well good for Mr Friedman. Mr. Schwartz was asking for it. If you read Friedman's frist book, From Beruit to Jerusalem, you will discover that Freidman thinks Likudniks and their supporters in America are a mortal danger to the future of Isreal. He completely loathes them and their manipulative politics.

Mr Schwartz approches as a fan and then pokes a big stick in Friendman's eye. In his position I would hit back too.

"Well good for Mr Friedman. Mr. Schwartz was asking for it. If you read Friedman's frist book, From Beruit to Jerusalem, you will discover that Freidman thinks Likudniks and their supporters in America are a mortal danger to the future of Isreal. "
Mr. Friedman has come a long way - 180 degress probably from his Beirut to Jerusalem days.
AFter Bush came into power, Friedman made a gradual shift along with the neo-cons to force America to fight the Jewish fight; the megalomania set in permanently when he got first dibs on Prince Bandar's Peace Plan offer to recognize Israel in exchange for withdrawal of all occupied territories - ever since then he's been hopping around the world trying to be the news rather than report/analyze the news;
and the last line of that reported article gives the lie to his real reason for anger

"A column he wrote in November may shed some light on his purported outburst. 'There is nothing more enraging than someone exposing your faults — and being right,' he wrote. "

The 'being right' part was that Friedmand was sacrificing 'Israel to Iraq' - more likely it was anger at having to reconcile reality with the delusion going on in their heads.

BobM says

"When the warhawks start apologizing for their goals instead of for the means used to attain them, ..."

Well, around the time the Afghanistan invasion was winding down, I thought we probably should invade Iraq. My major goals included:

1. End the sanctions (and the suffering they caused)
2. Do the above in a manner that would preclude the risk that Saddam's Iraq could build up threatening WMDs.
3. Put the US in a position where it would be more able to effectively pressure Saudi Arabia from supporting Al-Quaeda-type Islamicists.
4. Improve the US geostrategic position in case things turn really nasty.
5. Establish a true Arab constitutional democracy (with individual freedom and economic dynamism), in hopes of diverting the Arab world into some successful path that we can live with in peace.

I do not apologize for any of those goals.

My sense (mistaken or not) was that the Bush admininistration shared all these goals, but that such goals obviously could not be proclaimed openly before the invasion without vastly reducing their chance of being attained.

Getting rid of Saddam's evil regime I expected as a wonderful bonus, but the nature of that regime meant to me that it would be moral to remove it, not that it would be a moral imperative to remove it.

I'm sure BobM would consider me a "warhawk." OTOH, I feel that most people (on essentially every side of this issue) underestimate the probability that we were already on our way to a World (i.e., over 100 million casualty) War before the push to invade Iraq.

OTTH, I agree with many apologitic former supporters of the war that I underappreciated the argument that, irregardless of the merits of an Iraqi war in abstract, in this particular case it was a mistake because the Bush Adminstration was incompetent and would screw it up. It was always hard to separate this argument from a partisanship that would condemn Bush even if he were correct and competent. I wish I had better advice for how this argument could have been better presented. My only all-too-pathetic suggestion is that the argument would have worked better if cast in a context that repudiated most of the more puerile arguments against the war (i.e., "an Iraq war as Bush would prosecute it would be worse than no war at all" argument has to rhetorically conceed for sake of argument that the war in abstract could be a good idea, and then dive into particulars of why not in Bush's case.)

Of course, while I disagree with the majority of comments at BdL's site regarding the war, I keep coming back and reading them, so maybe the slow drip of correct arguments will eventually persuade me.

Well, yeah, fine, whatever, he was just too darn noble and trusting.

Who the hell ever told this man that he could use some of the most valuable page real estate in journalism to give anybody who had demonstrably shoddy plans to get into one of those war things where people die the benefit of the damn doubt?

The Lexus crowd may go for that, but the people of the olive tree knew better. Maybe he should get out more.

When the Asian economic crisis erupted, it took Friedman a year from his first scolding and hectoring of Asian countries before he realized -- or opened his mind to -- the complexities and the culpability of outsiders. And the IMF's questionable cookie-cutter.

Now he asks that we understand his year (actually 2 or 3) of seeing the light over Bush. Should we greet him into the fold? Naahhh, he should be forced to take a year of unpaid leave and study, for each massive mea culpa. Including listening to his wife three hours a day.

Friedman could avoid this kind of problem, though, if he quit trying to show himself so earnest and just wrote eely opinions like David Brooks.

But then we'd have two of them.

"Of course, while I disagree with the majority of comments at BdL's site regarding the war, I keep coming back and reading them, so maybe the slow drip of correct arguments will eventually persuade me." --Tom--

How about the many thousands of people who have lost their lives, the thousands more who have suffered permanent injuries such as a facial disfigurement or loss of limb. Which number on your list would comfort you if you had to strap on a prosthetic device in the middle of the night, for the rest of your life, just to make it to the bathroom without having to crawl? How about all the children who will grow up having never known their fathers. Small price to pay for a "geostrategic position" you say? These are the details that make war the last option, not the first.

concluded that the Bush team has let politics consume everything

What was his first clue?

i worry deeply about anyone who would allow or encourage an eleven-year-old to regularly read friedman...

perhaps someone should call child protective services?

"They are all paying the price for their lazy and superficial world view. The problem is that a lot of us will have to pay the price with them, because we couldn't stop them even though we knew better."

One of the most succinct visions of the universe I've ever read.

Darn them! I hate them! They are the source of all evil! We all should hate them for one minute a day!

They are what's wrong with the world! The solar system! The galaxy! The universe! The multi-verse!

They are responsible for quantum-level evil, and on up.

They are simply bad. And bad is the worst evil.

Darn them.

(Um, who are "they"? Shush, don't ask, it's obvious. It's those Others. They.)

A different Tom wrote:

'I'm sure BobM would consider me a "warhawk." OTOH, I feel that most people (on essentially every side of this issue) underestimate the probability that we were already on our way to a World (i.e., over 100 million casualty) War before the push to invade Iraq.'

Who the *fuck* with?

We spend more on our military than the next twelve countries *put together*. If Al Qaeda somehow got control of e.g. Pakistan and declared war on the US, it'd be over in about one hour (using nukes) or two months (using conventional forces).

This is not like the Cold War. Al Qaeda is the dying gasps of fundamentalist Islam.

Dubblblind fairly asks

"How about the many thousands of people who have lost their lives, the thousands more who have suffered permanent injuries .. Which number on your list would comfort you if you had to strap on a prosthetic device ...."

Let me pull some numbers out of the air, not because I think they are precise or correct, but because I can't convince myself they are wrong; I find them representative of something that seems plausible.

Consider 2 (4. Improve the US geostrategic position...). If the a priori chance of a general war was 20%, and, in the event of such a war, achieving 2 shortens the war, saving 100,000 US military lives and 1,000,000 Arab (mostly civilian) lives, that seems worth it.

Consider 5 (Establish a true ... live with in peace). If this has a 10% chance of being achieved, and if achieved has a 20% chance of preventing a war in which there are 250 million casualties (plus vast social and economic damage, and possibly breaching the nuclear threshold), then 5 seems worth it.

Now, another fair question is does the actual Iraq war increase or reduce the probability of such a catastrophic war? My reading to date is that it has so far reduced the chance, but increased the likelihood that if any such war occurs, it will occur sooner.

"How about all the children who will grow up having never known their fathers."

There may not have been any good alternatives. If tens of thousands of children grow up having never known their fathers, so that tens to hundreds of millions are not killed....

>These are the details that make war the last option, not the first.

Again, I think you underestimate our ability to choose "not war," as opposed to "not this action, at this time."

But to be fair, I totally conceed that even in the best of evaluations the Iraqi war was a gamble, and it is still not certain a priori or a posteri that it was the right choice.

"Of course, while I disagree with the majority of comments at BdL's site regarding the war, I keep coming back and reading them, so maybe the slow drip of correct arguments will eventually persuade me."

Tom, instead of having us lay out a buffet table of anti-war arguments you can look over and decide if any are worth your attention, maybe you should instead present your reasons why an invasion of Iraq was the right choice, regardless of whether Bush was competent to prosecute a war. I'd be interested in hearing why you think this war was advisable and worth both the short-term and long-range costs to the US.

Friedman is just too lightweight.

Friedman is always out of his depth, no matter what side he takes. Friedman lacks the ability to see anything that is not obvious from the perspective of a journalist. Everything is a story. There are no hard and fast goals, few hard and fast values, all truth is relative, there are always two or more sides to every story. Something is "True enough" if two people say it is true.

Most importantly, as a journalist, Friedman is responsible for nothing.

"Let me pull some numbers out of the air, not because I think they are precise or correct, but because I can't convince myself they are wrong; I find them representative of something that seems plausible."

This is representative of your whole thinking, Friedman - an ivory tower estimation of a problem that has resulted in the disappearance of any kind of stability in that region - I often do that kind of estimation of probabilities of hitting a big powerball, going down to the detail of calculating monthly budgets and retiring existing mortgages and feel immensely pleased with myself; I am not foolish enough to draft and mail a resignation letter based on those calculations - a caution you dispensed with because it was not your life or your son or daughter's life at stake; what reality were your numbers based on? what understanding of the social psychology of Iraqis, and neighboring nationals did you consider? what historical considerations of British and European attempts to manage the region did you think about - and finally how did you think al-quaeda, Iraq's arch-enemy, would respond to your favor? You pull out your Beirut to Jerusalem tome as proof of conversations with various tea-shop owners in the Middle East.
At the risk of hurting your psyche let me tell you, your only understanding is the Jewish understanding of the Middle East, and that is only half if not quarter of the perspective needed to address any Middle Eastern or world issue. Dont get me wrong, I have been raised on a bundle of WWII movies, books, holocaust stories; my children have visited the Holocaust musuem at least once with every change of school, we have close friends who are Jewish, and share their love of family and tradition; but even so the Jewish wailing alert with every Palestinian stone-throwing, of impending doom and a second holocaust begins to ring very hollow when before the eyes of the world in broad daylight, by explicit or implicit actions, at a minimum they deny Palestinians their dignity, and a livelihood, or worse squeeze (or allow Sharon in their name to squeeze) the life-blood of Palestinians, raze their homes, kill their teenagers and young men like one would put out insect infestations. That a people that supposedly fought ethnic cleansing has been allowing this to happen in their backyard for over 20 crazy years, amazes me for its sheer brazenness, especially when I think of the extent to which organizations such as the ADL work towards sensitizing us to the Nazi horrors. It reminds me of Mark Twain's descriptions of the preacher whose preaching moved Twain to pull out a dollar, which changed to 2 dollars and on to progressively higher amounts with every increase in the passionate pitch of the preaching, until at some point the passion slipped into maudlin overdrive, and Twain just put his money back into his pocket. And so I tell you Tom Friedman, you as most of Jewish descent are extremely sensitive to Jewish feelings, but your paranoia and hypersensitivity have made you quite insensitive to anybody else's pain, and in fact quite delusional about world events, and others' reactions to events, and the world should be very wary about depending on any more advice from the likes of you. You had your chance, you blew it - So what is the out for you?

I have wondered how you must spend your time? I thought one option for atonement would be for you to publish a series of mea culpas, and warn the overloaded electorate of the futility of rehiring Bush and his folly-prone administration, but then as a common reader, my reaction to such a warning from you would be - Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!! No way am I listening to you, and that would prop Bush up 20 points!

So I suggest an alternative!
Because of the opinions expressed by you and your ilk, there's an entire generation of young Jewish as well as American men and women that are growing up with an abysmally 2-dimensional world view, that makes believe the rest of the world is as play-doh to be fashioned by the Maker's representative on earth - namely: the Conservative Party of the U.S. of A. (I would give you links to some of the blogs of 15-yr old kids my children go to school with, which spit so much communal hatred towards Moslems, and so much chauvinism with blinders on, towards their own Jewish faith - from kids in progressive, wealthy suburban communities but I would rather keep the focus on generalities) - I think you need to do 10 years of community service amongst these youngsters correcting their views whether at your local synagogue, or church. In general, religion, I have come to the conclusion is truly a greater evil in the wrong hands - only a very small minority of individuals are blessed with the grace and wisdom to practice their faith when it truly is such, in a non-confrontational, purely celebratory, non-exclusive manner. The rest of the world needs to spend every religious holdiay in a place of worship other than their own, learning and praying in the words of another faith.
SORRY all, for the long post.

Zinni has some good ideas on where to go from here.

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=2208&from_page=../index.cfm

He doesn't sound like a Bush backer though.

Iraq: callejón sin salida

Friedman, it doesn't matter anymore.

The Wesley Clarke article was interesting. But:

1. There is more raw material for democracy in the Middle East than he gives credit for. Iran is a country where people actually care what the constitution says, even if it's not always enforced (not the only people with that problem!). Iran's constitutional history in the 20th century is not all that different from Russia's or Japan's, with the bonus that Iran has neither declared war on anyone or slaughtered millions of its own in death camps.

Another country with potential for a vibrant civil society is Egypt.

2. I think the time for flooding Iraq with US troops to establish security is long gone. If there ever was such a moment. Back in November I called the Iraq situation "Vietnam on fast forward," and nothing -- except for a few brief minutes the capture of Saddam Hussein -- has made me feel different since.

Mushinronsha suggests "maybe you should instead present your reasons why an invasion of Iraq was the right choice... I'd be interested in hearing why you think this war was advisable and worth both the ...costs to the US."

I apologize that I don't have the time to respond to Mushinronsha in the detail he deserves. Let me start by emphasizing that I don't claim the war advisable, only that despite having looked at it a lot, from many different angles, I still can't say that it was inadvisable. That is considering two types of failures. It could have been a mistake because odds are it would do more harm than good. It could also be a mistake because, through whatever series of contingent random events, it ends up doing more harm than good (even if the odds were well it its favor).

Among the many costs was the cost of lost foreign support. I am one of those who ascribe much of the French intransigence to the Iraqi war to a French Government desire to thwart US success in the Middle East. Thus, I see a lot of the "lost foreign support" as players who were saying before "I support the US" and lying, and are now saying "I do not support the US" and telling the truth. This is not much of a real cost. (Note, others have been truly persuaded against the US, and their change of mind is a true cost.)

Tom 'deblah' asks about a my suggestion of a risk of a future World War "Who the *fuck* with?" This is the most insightful question. If the probability of any such war was zero, then it was a lot easier to justify relying on more porous and slower solutions. OTOH, if the probability was just very small, then it still deserved a lot of weight. The short answer is "with the bulk of the Arab world, or even worse with the bulk of the Muslim world, from escalating polarization driven by the lack of a mutually tolerable modus vivendi."

Consider Tom's hypothetical "If Al Qaeda somehow got control of e.g. Pakistan and declared war on the US, it'd be over in about one hour (using nukes) or two months (using conventional forces)." That could be pretty far in the process of polarization [e.g., another big terrorist strike in the US, the US tries to get Pakistan to reign in the Madrasses, a Pakistani coup ensues...] And if the response in the Muslim world is 10% of the population swearing to themselves 'America shall be effaced, or I shall die trying,' a majority of the remaining thinking 'I'm not pious enough to do it myself, but I pray to Allah that the Jihadis succeed,' and the remainder to indifferent, cowed or powerless to get in the way...

I'm not sure a fully follow LibertyGuard's argument. Let me assure you I am *not* Thomas Friedman, and in passing (if this makes any difference to you) I am not Jewish. I agree with one of the claims that I think you are making, that much of my data and world-view is informed by Jewish perspectives, but that is not my only perspective. A lot of your impassioned argument seems built on the assumption that the war was wrong, and I do not accept that logical step yet. If we're going to psycho-analyze each other, I would want to be cautious and only offer a hypothesis for consideration; is your passion and commitment to seeing Bush defeated blinding you to ways in which the war could be successful, should be successful, and we can help it be successful?

bakho, thanks for the Zinni URL.

"Let me start by emphasizing that I don't claim the war advisable, only that despite having looked at it a lot, from many different angles, I still can't say that it was inadvisable. That is considering two types of failures. It could have been a mistake because odds are it would do more harm than good. It could also be a mistake because, through whatever series of contingent random events, it ends up doing more harm than good (even if the odds were well it its favor)."

Tom, thank you for your response to my suggestion. I must say that I was a bit taken aback by your answer - I was expecting a much stronger reason for supporting the war than (if I may be allowed to paraphrase) "I saw no reason to oppose the invasion." The Bush administration has put forth several reasons for its decision - the threat of WMD, removal of a despot and bringing democracy to Iraq - and I thought your support might have been based on one or more of those.

I presume then that you were at best a luke-warm supporter of the war. If I may continue to be presumptious, I suspect you must have weighed the tangible benefits described by the Bush administration against the less-well-understood risks of either success or failure. Clearly you considered the loss of other nations' goodwill as a potential casualty of the endeavor. But I wonder what other possible risks, if any, you considered.

It appears to me that most pro-war advocates had fairly strong convictions about the invasion of Iraq but you seemed to have been ambivalent in your support. Am I reading you correctly on this, Tom? There's no need to answer that question since you don't have enough time to get any deeper into this discussion. But if anyone else in interested, I'd be pleased to outline the reasons I thought this war was a mistake before the Bush administration undertook it.

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But the final sentence undercuts the whole thing: "our president, who has a strong moral vision . . .". Friedman simply can't let it go.