Why Does Tom Friedman Still Have a Job?

New York Times foreign policy analyst Thomas L. Friedman finally has come to the conclusion that George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq -- which Friedman enthusiastically supported with the clever slogan "Give war a chance" -- wasn't such a good idea after all.

"It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war," Friedman wrote. "That means 'staying the course' is pointless, and it's time to start thinking about Plan B -- how we might disengage with the least damage possible." (NYT, Aug. 4, 2006)

Yet, despite this implicit admission that the war has unnecessarily killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 2,600 U.S. soldiers, Friedman continues to slight Americans who resisted the rush to war in the first place.

Twelve days after his shift in position, Friedman demeaned Americans who opposed the Iraq war as "anti-war activists who haven't thought a whit about the larger struggle we're in," presumably a reference to the threat from Islamic extremism. (NYT, Aug. 16, 2006)

In other words, according to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq are still airheads when it comes to the bigger picture, while the pundits and politicians who were dead wrong on Iraq deserve pats on the back for their wise analyses of the larger problem.

The rabbit hole

At times, it's as if Official Washington has become a sinister version of Alice in Wonderland. Under the bizarre rules of Washington's pundit society, the foreign policy "experts," who acted like Cheshire Cats pointing the United States in wrong directions, get rewarded for their judgment and Americans who opposed going down the rabbit hole in the first place earn only derision.

As for Friedman, despite botching the biggest foreign-policy story in the post-Cold War era, he retains his prized space on the New York Times op-ed page, which, in turn, guarantees that his books, even ones with obvious and pedantic themes, such as "The World Is Flat," jump to the top of the bestseller lists.

Friedman, who once liked to call himself a "Tony Blair Democrat" (before the British prime minister was unmasked as one of Bush's chief enablers), now positions himself closer to formerly pro-war Democrats who have triangulated their way to positions critical of Bush's execution of the Iraq war but not the invasion itself.

In other words, Friedman has rebranded himself as what might be called a "Hillary Clinton Democrat." He also has begun promoting as a favorite new theme something that was obvious to many Bush critics years ago: that one pillar of a sane Middle East policy would be to aggressively confront America's addiction to oil.

Some readers might praise Friedman for his belated second thoughts on Iraq and for his new enthusiasm for energy independence. But is it fair for Friedman to keep disparaging Americans who were prescient about the Iraq fiasco -- and who have urged a less violent approach to the Islamic world?

Many Iraq war critics, from former Vice President Al Gore to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who took to the streets in early 2003, proved they had a more reasonable strategy on Iraq -- letting U.N. inspectors finish their search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- than did Bush's war council and his cheerleaders in the U.S. news media.

As for the larger concern about reducing Islamic extremism, many Bush critics point to the traditional advice of counterinsurgency experts who warn against an over-reliance on force to quell unrest, because excessive violence tends to alienate a country's population and drive them toward rebellion rather than toward peace.

To win hearts and minds, more subtle strategies are required, targeting the root causes of popular resentments, offering realistic options for a better life, and then systematically isolating die-hard extremist elements.