Thomas Friedman of the NY Times remains as juvenile as he was the last time I bothered to lambast him (with help from the lovely Karl Kraus: "No ideas and the ability to express them: that's a journalist.").
For some reason, however, his latest "no ideas" column is so striking I can't let it pass. Perhaps it is the first paragraph:
"Well, the numbers are in and the numbers don't lie. At the Madrid aid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged 0 new dollars. Add it all up and the bottom line becomes clear: Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France."
Did a columnist in what is supposed to be the best, most intelligent newspaper in the United States actually write that "Saudi Arabia...cares...about nurturing democracy...?" Yes, it apppears he did.
Why might Saudi Arabia have coughed up one billion dollars? It obviously can't have anything to do with this feudal kingdom, staunch supporter of Islamic fascism the world over, having any interest in democracy. Someone with, say, an 8th-grade education, and a casual familiarity with current events, might surmise that the Saudis had other motivations: insuring that the next rulers of Iraq (assuming Iraq doesn't become a US client state in perpetuity) not be likely to invade their country; or perhaps insuring that the world's leading rogue imperial power not invade them next--given their large oil reserves, their close connections to fundamentalist terrorism, and their having supplied the vast majority of the suicidal religious maniacs on 9/11, etc.
But 8th-graders don't write for the NY Times, only graduates of elite East Coast universities do, and they "know" better. ("They have something of which they are proud," says Zarathustra of the herd. "What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them.")
And what then of the French and Germans, "old Europe" (that's in contrast to the "new Europe" of such powerhouse US allies as Albania and Lithuania)--what was their motivation? Friedman, in his idiot savant way, actually provides the answer, without noting it as such. He remarks in passing: "Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny."
They not only believe it, they're actually justified in believing it; indeed, the only thing to marvel at here is that anyone with an 8th-grade education doesn't believe it. After all, the Europeans, not being as thoroughly cowed and indoctrinated, may have noticed that the US outspent Iraq on warfare preparations by a ratio of 400 to 1; indeed, that the US outspends the next ten biggest spenders on warfare preparations; that the US has nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, while Iraq does not; that the US has invaded or overthrown governments in more than a dozen countries, unleashing ruthless reins of terror unparalleled outside Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, while Iraq, as a third-rate power, had merely invaded one country, and had unleashed terror only against its own population (with essential help and support from the US); that the US war machine is now run by religious zealots, while Iraq was a secular state, and so on.
All this might have led someone modestly rational to conclude that the US was a far greater threat to world stability than some absurd second-world dictator, who had fallen out of America's good graces.
But no one modestly rational writes for the NY Times. Which brings us back to Karl Kraus: "No ideas and the ability to express them: that's a journalist." And that's Thomas Friedman.
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