Thomas Friedman urges Donald Trump to be “utterly cynical”—not unlike a Thomas Friedman column.
For the second time in as many years, Thomas Friedman has explicitly advocated that the United States use the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as a proxy force against Syria, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. The New York Times foreign affairs columnist made this suggestion in his Wednesday column, “Why Is Trump Fighting ISIS in Syria?” (4/12/17):
Why should our goal right now be to defeat the Islamic State in Syria? Of course, ISIS is detestable and needs to be eradicated. But is it really in our interest to be focusing solely on defeating ISIS in Syria right now?…
We could simply back off fighting territorial ISIS in Syria and make it entirely a problem for Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Assad. After all, they’re the ones overextended in Syria, not us. Make them fight a two-front war—the moderate rebels on one side and ISIS on the other. If we defeat territorial ISIS in Syria now, we will only reduce the pressure on Assad, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah and enable them to devote all their resources to crushing the last moderate rebels in Idlib, not sharing power with them.
Friedman is not advocating the US stop bombing ISIS on anti-war grounds or because US bombing has led to thousands of civilian deaths—all perfectly correct and sensible reasons to oppose the US “War on Terror” in Syria—but because giving ISIS space to breathe will kill more Syrians, Iranians and Russians.
He doesn’t advocate finding peaceful ways of lessening the power and appeal of groups like ISIS (like, say, sanctioning governments that support them or export their vulgar brand of Wahhabism), but rather using them, and in effect empowering them, to do the United States’ dirty work in Syria.
As an example of how this approach can work, Friedman cites Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan—a group that later spawned Al Qaeda and killed over 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001:
Trump should want to defeat ISIS in Iraq. But in Syria? Not for free, not now. In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbollah’s and Russia’s headache — the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan.
The word “encouraged” is doing a lot of work here. The CIA, along with Saudi Arabia, assisted and funded the mujahideen and other foreign fighters to fight the Soviets and Soviet-aligned Afghans throughout the 1980s, resulting in a prolonged, brutal war, and spawning thousands of radical jihadists for years to come. That Friedman would use this as an example of how the US should wage war in Syria—and presumably drag the war on and spawn similar extremism—would be considered absurd on its face if it weren’t coming from a Very Serious Person at the New York Times.
The piece climaxed with Friedman’s patented mix of racism and fatuous generality, painting all Syrians as brute savages:
Syria is not a knitting circle. Everyone there plays dirty, deviously and without mercy. Where’s that Trump when we need him?
“Everyone”? Everyone is bad, Friedman’s pseudo–tough guy argument goes, so let’s be just as bad by explicitly using ISIS in a weapon against Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.
ISIS massacring captured Syrian soldiers in a 2014 video. For Friedman, ISIS’s bloodthirstiness is a feature, not a bug.
This comes after a 2015 column in which Friedman (3/18/15) floated the idea that the United States should directly arm ISIS:
Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?
In a political climate where Americans are being arrested for merely sending out pro-ISIS tweets, and dozens are swept up in dubious FBI entrapment plots, it’s notable that one of the most influential columnists in the United States can call for arming the designated terrorist organization so long as he frames it as “just asking questions” and does so to the end of killing Evil Iranians. (Friedman is not the only establishment figure to suggest that the US goal in Syria should be to prolong the bloodbath indefinitely—but usually this ghoulish argument isn’t offered so blatantly.)
According to one 2015 poll by Virginia-based research firm ORB International, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe ISIS to be a creation of the United States. Indeed, the New York Times has spent considerable inches hand-wringing about why these type of “conspiracy theories” are so widespread in the Muslim world.
Perhaps, one can imagine, they would be less so if Western columnists weren’t casually cheerleading for using the extremist group as a bludgeon against America’s enemies.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can find him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
I’d guess that many people from the Middle East can’t believe that the US was actually stupid enough to have placed Paul Bremer in a position to rule over Iraq by decree, including his first two sweeping edicts, outlawing the Ba’ath Party (thereby removing the only secular political force in the country) and dismantling the entire Iraqi Army (putting hundreds of thousands of experienced–and humiliated– soldiers out of work and out of benefits). Having thousands of armed, unpaid and angry soldiers–from privates to generals–with no recourse for basic human survival otherwise available, and a plethora of weaponry available, is a perfect recipe for something like…ISIS.
The idea that the most powerful country in the world would do such a foolish thing probably led the credulous of that region to assume a hidden agenda, and the rumors about Barack and Hillary et. alia., intentionally creating ISIS seem more plausible than the truth, i.e., we ARE that stupid. If you doubt that conclusion, consider the face that when Bremer moved on, his replacement was John Negroponte.
Mr. Friedman is a supporter of state terrorism, as has been discussed and well documented, over the years, in FAIR. In 2005, he suggested that the US should arm and support the Shias and Kurds against the Sunni population, in a civil war, in Iraq. He and the New York Times deserve one another.
Friedman’s perverse love affair is also with power and empire. His credentials as a house liberal are notoriously thin.
Cite U.S. orchestration in Afghanistan that led to Al-Qaeda as a success? Even for Friedman, this stretches the imagination.
What one should always keep in mind when reading one of Friedman’s rants is that he is for any action that keeps conflicts, however convoluted, brewing in any of Israel’s old enemies, e.g., Iran, Iran, Syria, and Egypt.
Friedman’s a hack. He has undisciplined gall and hubris even making pretensions to journalism. Leave alone using the inclusive pronoun. Are there photos of Tommy shouldering an AK-47 with a standard issue army metal helmet? I can just imagine it as crooked on the concave where Tom’s grey matter ought to be, as if the Black fashion Friedman laments of Black kids that wear slacks with the belt around their lower buttocks. I like the fashion because I’m incapable of it. Friedman and I differ in the regard in that Friedman’s suit and watch. I’m jeans and T-shirt.
Friedman couldn’t have been on the further side of the Iraq 2003 wrong circle than he was. That he wasn’t lonely for other hacks like Charles Krauthammer and George Will oughtn’t to exonerate him. Instead he is rewarded with book deals. And to continue blowing vile at the Slimes.
Very magnanimous of the NYS’s hack jefe to make matters tougher on principle for assorted and sundry countries. Reminiscent of Grover Norquist I think it was who said every 10 years or so the US has to take some crappy little country and toss it against the wall several times only to show it who’s boss.
Friedman can perhaps be considered redeemed in possessing that rare quality rare in the erudition of a scribe of his stature and unblemished integrity. But even more a warm-hearted humanitarianism and spirit of cooperation that can’t help but inspire it humanity’s wider 7.5 billion. Wow. Just when you were ready to lament the utter senselessness.
I would however take issue in finding it presumptuous of hack jefe to overuse the inclusive pronoun until it is like a theme of a Wagner opera. Repeated over and over again one is compelled to believe it. I guess that is to be expected of the stylings of married-into-it-journalist.
VSP indeed. Thank Gawd for VSP’s. Especially special beaters of the war drums like Friedman. Very convenience for money marrying hacks when they don’t have to fight and bleed. Or endure decades of PTSD for the thoughtlessness of stallions of the pen like he.
Incisive observance of the racism Adam. Which deep down illustrates race as nothing more than a social construct. What differentiates Friedman from a Syrian except perhaps the aforementioned marriage? And that the climate lottery has landed positively for Friedman? It’d be interested if in a pop quiz Tommy even knew how many lived in Syria. With allowances for the murderous variances his bloviating wall papers with his vomited bile. You’re goddam right I’m angry. At Tommy in particular. On March 17, 2003 I jumped in front of an SUV on a drizzly 50 mph freeway. And failed relatively miserably, in the short term at any rate, at that.
I think this actually is US policy. Friedman speaks for many, in his own banal, idiotic way. When he told us all on PBS that the answer to 9/11 was to tell the Iraqis to “suck on this” we had seen the ugly, naked (aside from a dumb mustache) stupidity of the rulers of our country.
Friedman is one of the greatest blowhard phonies of the age, sometimes as unintentionally hilarious as a fundamentalist tent preacher, alternately bawling and beaming, trying desperately to sway souls for Christ.
He frequently trips over his own lack of logic, resembling an awkward kid tripping on his own shoelaces, while churning out his endless stream of propaganda for the Pentagon and Israel, the two entities he holds tightly to his bosom.
But churn it out he does, literally small mountains of dog shit in columns, lectures, and books.
The establishment has fittingly recognized his amazing output by giving him three Pulitzer Prizes. For those not familiar with the Pulitzer, it was created by an American newspaper baron whose name it bears. It is awarded in a number of categories each year, but journalism and books are the best known.
In general, as with all such annual prizes, certainly including the Nobel Peace Prize and Hollywood’s Oscar, it represents some mixture of annual marketing promotion for an industry or organization to gin-up its sales, self-congratulations by the members of an industry or organization, fun annual parties, and opportunities to make political statements to the world, largely propaganda statements.
The prizes all have rather dismal records, the Peace Prize frequently going to murderers and frauds, the Oscar going often to unwatchable films whose subject happens to be something Hollywood wants to crow about. Quality is only accidentally present is winners, although much of the public naively believes all such prizes inherently mean quality. That’s why we see blurbs in books or articles along the lines of, “As Pulitzer Prize winner so-and-so said.” This is always a cheap trick to inflate the authority of the writer being cited rather than letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions.
The Pulitzer is right in there with a terrible record of having been awarded in journalism several times to outright frauds for invented story series, frequently for undistinguished efforts (“It’s my turn!”), and then to someone like Friedman who represents a powerful continuing force in American journalism, the so-called Israel Lobby, members of which own America’s major broadcast networks and major old-line newspapers.
Its record in books is not a great deal more distinguished, mediocre works frequently having won while original, interesting, or highly critical work is ignored. Books about America itself and what a great history it has and what a great place it is seem to get secret bonus points at the start of the selection.
In Friedman’s case, the New York Times, a paper which likes to style itself as the nation’s paper of record, has always, always supported every war and intervention of the national government. It has a long record of cooperating with outfits like the CIA and FBI, and several times it is known to have suppressed stories some smart reporter stumbled upon – famously, the Bay of Pigs invasion preparations. Several times, members of CIA or those entangled with CIA have been discovered on staff, creating a little scandal, but one suspects most were not discovered.
The paper has also taken secret tips from a frequently blundering FBI to go after individuals with no evidence at all – famously, nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, wrongly accused of giving top secrets to China, but there are many other examples including the man, Richard Jewell, wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. And then there was the woman it went after viciously, inappropriately revealing her identity in a rape case, who was accusing a member of the Kennedy clan of the rape. It only recently was revealed that every single story on the Middle East concerning Israel in any possible way is dutifully sent by the New York Times to be passed by the Official Israeli Censor before being published.
The best description of the impossibly-pretentious New York Times ever given is “the house organ for America’s power establishment.” It runs enough sound and interesting material on non-controversial and non-political subjects to hold a reputation for quality. It also, remarkably, in the insanely-confused morass that is American politics, is regarded as “liberal,” something impossible for a genuine liberal to even understand.
Supporting every colonial war of the post-WWII American empire is anything but liberal, but the New York Times pretty consistently supports Democrats, and in America, that is somehow regarded as liberal, the party somehow having escaped the nickname it deserves, the War Party. Johnson, Clinton, Obama, and Mrs. Clinton – mass killers every one of them.
Anyway, that provides some context to understand why Friedman has been kept aboard for what seems like ages, pounding out rat shit propaganda and periodically being awarded another “Pulitzer.”
Here are several past pieces on Friedman – despite his awards and the pretentiousness with which he is treated, his bloated nonsense actually makes him a pretty easy target. Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/thomas-friedmans-life-as-a-pet-hamster/
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/thomas-friedman-spokesman-for-enlightenment/
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/the-dumbest-story-ever-written/
It would seem that Thomas views the Syrian-Iraqi border as a concrete reality, a line on which our policy can pivot 180 degrees and no one will notice… He asks why be consistent in a fluid and violent situation more akin to an LA gang war than the nice clean Cold War conflicts of the past… In fact the enemy of your enemy is just as likely to become your enemy as he is to be your friend… Perhaps more so if you have already demonstrated a tendency to abandon friends when it becomes inconvenient… On the other hand he does ask a question that has bothered me since 2002… Why does it seem that we find ourselves fighting alongside the Shiites (Iran and the Iraqi Govt) against the radical Sunni in Iraq while we are allies of the moderate Sunni rebels in Syria, fighting an Alawite Shia regime allied with Iran and Hezbollah…? It is as if in WWII we fought against the Germans in France but fought along side them on the Eastern front, at the same time…
Dear Adam :
Thank you very much for exposing Thomas Friedman for this distorted logic .
I just want to expand on one point and that is the notion that ISIS are against Iran, and against Assad.
Assad has strengthened ISIS, bought oil from ISIS, for $400 millions in 2014 alone, he could have bought it easily from his allies: Iran or Iraq which seems to be the logical thing to do not to strengthen the enemy, does that say something about the cooperation between Assad and ISIS?
Also if we look at the countries affected by ISIS: Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia,Yemen, UAE, Libya, Tunisia and possibly Egypt , not to mention the European counties and USA, can you tell me the main countries in the area that have been called their enemy and whether they were targeted by ISIS any time or not: i.e. Iran and Israel, does that say anything about who is their enemy and who is their friend?
Can you now tell me now who is the real foe and who is the real friend of ISIS ?
Why is it that so many men , who have never been to war, want so much to make others go? And too, it is so sad that the ISIS name was stolen from that ancient Egyptian goddess, ISIS herself. ( sigh) Denegrated female history is tiring. And especially for ISIS, as when the evil Set, killed Osiris and chopped him into pieces, ISIS was able to reconstruct the one part that was missing, and was able to produce a son, Horus for Osiris. Pretty impressive! : ) If ISIS, the goddess is still alive, perhaps she could help Mr. Friedman too. If he could make love, perhaps he would be a much nicer person. : )
ISIS is not the Afghan Mujaheddin or even the Taliban. Those were LOCAL resistance groups fighting foreign invasion. ISIS is an Internationalist Islamic group that arose much later. (See BBC Documentary “Bosnia, Birthplace of Jihad”.) Their support is completely external (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, CIA, etc.). What the US establishment and Friedman is supporting is a foreign invasion of a sovereign country and is against international law and the UN Charter.
Wow is it any wonder we have such catastrophic fuck ups and endless war when a major news outlet like the New York Times allows the writing of someone like Friedman influence policy? My oh my. Great mythbusting piece as always Adam and FAIR, if anyone wants more cringe moments of pieces Friedman publishes I highly recommend Rolling Stone investigative reporter and columnist Matt Taibbi’s many pieces of Friedman lol.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/05/01/thomas-friedman-s-life-as-a-pet-hamster/
Israel Israel Israel…