Thomas Friedman doesn’t like threats of massive bombing when they’re made by someone else.
Thomas Friedman has some harsh words in his New York Times column (12/9/15) for Donald Trump and his unsophisticated grasp of the complexities of foreign policy:
As for Trump, well, he may be a deal maker, but he’s no poker player ready for the Middle East five-card stud sharks. His xenophobic rhetoric and unrealistic, infantile threats of massive bombing make up the kind of simplistic hand you’d play in “Go Fish” — not in this high-stakes game.
Where could Trump have gotten the idea that his “infantile threats of massive bombing” would be taken seriously as foreign policy proposals? Well, as a resident of New York City, maybe he reads the New York Times:
Massive bombing of Iraq: Friedman was for it. (cc photo: Andy Dunaway/US Army)
There is only Option 2 — bombing Iraq, over and over and over again, until either Saddam says uncle, and agrees to let the UN back in on US terms, or the Iraqi people eliminate him…. Given the problems with the other options, we may have no choice but to go down this road. Once we do, however, we better have the stomach to stay the course.
–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 1/31/98)
Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who’s in charge.
–Friedman (New York Times, 1/19/99)
Massive bombing of Serbia: Friedman was for it. (cc photo: Darko Dozet)
Let’s at least have a real air war. The idea that people are still holding rock concerts in Belgrade, or going out for Sunday merry-go-round rides, while their fellow Serbs are ‘cleansing’ Kosovo, is outrageous. It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted….
Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.
–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 4/23/99) on Serbia
People tend to change their minds and adjust their goals as they see the price they are paying mount. Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let’s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance.
–Thomasa Friedman (New York Times, 4/6/99)
Massive bombing in Afghanistan: Friedman was for it.
My motto is very simple: Give war a chance.
–Thomas Friedman (ABC News, 10/29/01) on Afghanistan
Let’s all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about.
–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 11/2/01)
I was a critic of [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld before, but there’s one thing…that I do like about Rumsfeld. He’s just a little bit crazy, OK? He’s just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I’m glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback — who’s just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy’s going to do, and I say that’s my guy.”
–Thomas Friedman (CNBC, 10/13/01)
There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.
–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 2/13/02)
Telling Iraqis to “Suck. On. This”: Friedman was for it.
We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick… and there was only one way to do it…. What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?
You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well: Suck. On. This.” That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia; it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
–Thomas Friedman (Charlie Rose, 5/30/03)
Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its air force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians–the families and employers of the militants–to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”
—New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (1/13/09) on why Israel needed to kill civilians in Gaza
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or write to public editor Margaret Sullivan: public@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Thomas Friedman is an azz hole and stereotype of the ‘typical war mongering, kill those who don’t agree with you’ mentality that is inbred into the average US citizen. Could be why there have been more mass shootings than days in the year . .this year, more unarmed people killed by law enforcement alone than most countries have murders/suicides … and over 33,000 US citizens kill by US citizens with guns so far this year. My wish for XMas is that a stray ‘drone’ accidentally fires a smart bomb through his orfice … I mean office window. See how he likes it :P
Friedman
“the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians”
Quite the reverse, for as Israel exemplifies when you start wasting civilians and babies, province has in store for you a most haunting refrain.
For in BC 1405, Jews did a genocide on a native population and renamed the place Israel.
Then 802 years later, because of their excessive wealth, Babylon did a genocide of the Jews and Israel was no more.
Then in 70 AD, because of their excessive wealth, The Roman Empire did a genocide of the Jews and Jerusalem was leveled flat to the ground.
Then in 1941 AD, again because of their excessive wealth, Germany did another genocide of the Jews.
So, starting in 1948, Palestine was invaded, an ethnic cleansing proceeded and a more nuke crazy and genocidal nation there could hardly ever be.
“Love of money
Is the root of all evil”
So, is giving up all our wealth the only solution?
Well, with the lower half of society it is most doable as it has already been done for them. For wealth is what you own above what is needed to live, a luxury virtually unknown by all those who hard labor generate all of society’s wealth.
Love of money being what it is, poverty being a most perfect way to impose slavery, surely our laboring-class has always endured a state of absolute poverty well below the healthy and well fed state of zero wealth.
So, every penny of wealth in this greed driven and wealth hoarding Empire of ours, surely it needs to be put to good use eliminating this suicidal thing called global warming, that’s what I always say.
how refreshing – media that criticizes what is really wrong with the political landscape, not just the infantile mud-slinging. “surgical strikes” is more like bombing hospitals and killing MSF doctors. Trump’s polls are a product of two things: the miniscule choices offered up to us by the Powers That Be, and the public brainwashing by the Powers That Be. serves ’em right! was so looking forward to that meeting w/Netanyahu…
out here on the west coast we even have Philip Maldari of KPFA brushing off callers that say ‘can’t we stop bombing them?’ with ‘of course not – look what they did to Paris’! not one media voice can say the obvious truth – we don’t need to rid the world of ISIS/AQ/whatever in the first place (because it wanes when we leave them alone and grows powerful when we arm them and bomb them), so the ‘debate’ about how to deal with it is an intentional trick question (which KPFA falls for).
Trump is the perfect face of our foreign policy. I love that he scares the Powers That Be. they scare me all the time.
“…unsophisticated grasp of the complexities of foreign policy…” guess that explains why the US screws up everything it touches.
Humans burning in fire smell like frying pork. That includes you Mr Friedman. Fried? I digress. How about end this war BS and realize every human is at the same level? There is no superior race with a divine gift to control the planet.
Thom Friedman, just another hypocrite jew.
Good listing of TF’s endorsements of bombing of civilians. What’s striking and irrefutable is that it wasn’t just ONE episode – – – as the quotes show, he’s been publicly promoting that for at least a decade in numerous situations. He can’t just beg-off with the typical weasel-out of ‘… oh, that was taken out of context from one instance! etc, etc,’, he’s saying it over and over and over and over again. There’s NO mistaking it for anything else. Needless to say that this is against humanitarian ideals that we supposedly espouse in this country (at least on 4th of July ceremonies and other similar events) as well as things like the Geneva Conventions and UN by-laws, etc. I just wish that the media would regularly post simple two-column listings of what these war-mongering types say that WE (the U.S.) can/should do militarily vs what ‘THEY’ (our enemy du jour) can/should do. While I’m not under the delusion that it would convert everyone, I think enough people would be struck by the non-pragmatic aspect of the obvious hypocrisy that things might slowly start changing, vis-a-vis our American militarism/war mongering…