Friedman Unit

Thomas Friedman is, I think, the second dumbest of our nations columnists and has the most malevolent influence on policy. Like most pundits he just blurts out whatever comes to mind, as a recent book documents. So, for example we find that

[o]ne week will see Friedman calling for US aggression against Iraq so as to “create a free, open, and progressive model in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world to promote the ideas of tolerance, pluralism, and democratization.” The previous week would have seen him announcing that “we can invade Iraq once a week and it’s not going to unleash democracy in the Arab world,” while a third reflection has him describing the invasion as “the most important task worth doing and worth debating,” even though it “would be a huge, long, costly task—if it is doable at all, and I am not embarrassed to say that I don’t know if it is.”

 So there you have it, a flattened world of meaningless  opinions in the service of neoliberalism at home and neoconservativism abroad.