Let's Laugh At Tom Friedman (and Shrub too)

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
Until I am simultaneously sipping a broon ale, watching Newcastle win the league and cup double, and am receiving a tag team blow job from Natalie Portman and Alicia Silverstone I will remain displeased. Hmph!

So what you are saying is that for the rest of your life you will be as happy as Jerry Falwell at a Gay Pride Parade?

[MrFun]

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

So what you are saying is that for the rest of your life you will be as happy as Jerry Falwell at a Gay Pride Parade?

I have high expectations. Not all of us have the consolation of five personal bathrooms.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Agathon
He's a fatuous oaf. He shouldn't be writing for The New York Times. He should be somewhere more suited to fatuous oafs, like the ACS Off Topic Forum.

[MrFun]

Keep the jokes coming, please.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap

I think his nome the guerre is LoTM

Oh god, I have to go to bed, but that was

That fits.

Remind me at the next election that I promised you my next HOF vote on account of this gem.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
I have high expectations. Not all of us have the consolation of five personal bathrooms.

Yeah, but you said you want to watch NUFC win the league and cup double. Who do you think you are, Roman Abromovich?

Jeez, we sign one good player (Parker) and you are already thinking double .

[Agathon]

The TTBJ is the hard bit. Here's hoping.

OT: Didn't Friedman write some ridiculous piece about how the world was now flat?

And there is a thread I started a few months back that has a fantastic piece mocking the crap out of him.

Anyway, time for sleep and dreams of double doubles.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The TTBJ is the hard bit. Here's hoping.

You asked for a Newcastle double. I'd give you better odds on the blowjob.

Didn't Friedman write some ridiculous piece about how the world was now flat?

His latest book. #5 in the Amazon non-fiction charts, IIRC.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Agathon
He's a fatuous oaf. He shouldn't be writing for The New York Times. He should be somewhere more suited to fatuous oafs, like the ACS Off Topic Forum.

God, so true, and not even the half of it. He also has a unique talent -- and I said this before in the other Friedman thread -- for having "insights" that everybody already knows. Consider:

Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.

Gee, Tom, thanks! Until your column, absolutely nobody had even considered asking the Bush Administration what our post-election stategy was! Somehow, the question had escaped all of us, unless you count every f*cking person in the country who's given even a passing thought to Iraq since January! And Iraq's inching toward danger? Well, what would we do without you, except maybe, just maybe, watch the news and come to the same, completely f*cking obvious conclusion.

Moron.

Time to link again to the NY Press's review of his latest drivel, which has become my favorite book review ever:

http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

[Drake Tungsten]

Tom Friedman is a lefty, AFAIK.

Not very. Center-left.

[Dinner]

The administration still hasn't gotten serious about Vietnamisation... er, Iraqisation. The Iraqi Army is still around 50k last I heard where as five years ago it was around 1 million. Sure, those 1 million weren't worth much but it supplied a lot of jobs and it kept people loyal to the government. Hiring a 500k Army would soak up a lot of pissed off unemployed people and it would ally an aweful lot of tribes with the central government.

That would cost money and would be intelligent though so I'm sure Bush won't do it.

[Ramo]

The problem with an article like this is that it isn't constructive. This same article has been written a million times over. How exactly are we going to bring the Sunni Arabs into the process? How exactly are we going to double the number of American troops? Magic? This is all totally vapid.

There are substantive answers to some of these questions (except for doubling the number of American troops ), but they're not coming from Friedman.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap


I think his nome the guerre is LoTM

while i agree with Friedman often, i dont agree with him all the time by any means - i havent really been reading him to closely lately. And surely you would notice my very different tone?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The administration still hasn't gotten serious about Vietnamisation... er, Iraqisation. The Iraqi Army is still around 50k last I heard where as five years ago it was around 1 million. Sure, those 1 million weren't worth much but it supplied a lot of jobs and it kept people loyal to the government. Hiring a 500k Army would soak up a lot of pissed off unemployed people and it would ally an aweful lot of tribes with the central government.

That would cost money and would be intelligent though so I'm sure Bush won't do it.

1. According to Joe Biden (D) Delaware, the Iraqi forces (I think thats the army plus national guard, excluding the police) is up to about 160,000 now, of whom about 70,000 are actually trained, equipped, and operationally useful. We should hit 160,000 fully trained, equipped, and operationally ready within the next year or two, per Biden.
2. The Iraqi army is currently engaged in major counter insurgency operations around metro Baghdad - while US troops are there to provide fire power backup, and US advisors are along, the actual house searches, etc were done by Iraqis.
3. The insurgency continues to target the new Iraqi forces. I must assume that they do so for good reasons. Nonetheless the forces continue to grow.
4. I dont think using the army to sweep up unemployment is a good idea, as one of the keys is to prevent the army from being infiltrated by insurgent sympathizers. If make work is needed, there are plenty of things in Iraq that need doing, IIUC.
5. I dont think we can afford fewer US troops now, and I think not having more earlier was a mistake. Im not sure a surge in American troops would be a good idea though. For many reasons.
6. There was an interesting article last week, I think WaPo, of a reporter embedded with an Iraqi unit. They seemed pretty unmotivated and incompetent. OTOH it was a unit predominantly of Sunni Arabs, so it was important that they were even in uniform and fighting. The US advisors, while moaning about the poor quality of the troops, also mentioned progress.
6. Despite the evidence on "inputs" (iraqi forces trained, insurgents killed or detained, arms caches destroyed, etc) the "outputs" (Iraqi deaths at the hands of insurgents, in particular) have remained high since early April, after the drop in February and March. Clearly the insurgency is NOT in its death throes, and it was stupid of Cheney to say it was. I dont think its at a tipping point in the other direction either, though. I think the political talks with the Sunnis are very important. By the nature of these things all we see is the public haggling. Until the deal is finally reached. Certainly its striking that now the AMS and IIP are haggling over whether they get 15 or 25 seats at the constitutional convention, while 6 months ago they were asking for the end of debaathification, the withdrawl of all American troops, etc.