The fall of Tom Friedman - to me

**I must confess I have been a fan of Tom Friedman for many years. I read both The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The Earth is Flat and thought they were both insightful and prescient about the new world order powered primarily by the internet and technology. I had casually accepted the premise that it would be a good thing for the Middle East to become democratic. Shame on me. It's easy to assume that what one is used to is easily accepted by people who don't share your background or preferences. But in recent months I've come across commentaries about Friedman that suggest that he isn't the visionary I thought he was. His unqualified promotion of "globalism" seems to ignore the real human costs in favor of unrestrained corporate expansion. The following critique by "Hunter" at dailykos.com strikes me as perceptive and is certainly thought-provoking. But judge for yourself:

Think Progress presents the comedy stylings of Iraq War advocate Tom Friedman:

FRIEDMAN: I’m really sorry. Next time — Next time Ishwar [caller], I promise, I really promise, I’ll be a better liberal. I’ll not in any way support any effort to bring democracy to a country ruled by an oil-backed tyranny. I promise I will never do that again. I promise I’ll be a better liberal. I will view the prospect of Arabs forging a democracy as utterly impossible. They’re incapable of democracy. I agree with you on that now.

Estimates put the number of Iraqi dead above half a million people. Even the most conservative (cough) estimates confess the number to be in the multiple tens of thousands.

That's more people than Thomas Friedman will ever shake hands with in his entire life. That's more people than he will ever exchange direct eye contact with. That's more people than will ever serve him a drink or take his plate away in every speaking arrangement he's ever done and billed for. And every six months (or "Friedman Unit") the number of dead again increases by five figures.

They're dead because Thomas Friedman and people like him thought they had a great idea, and wouldn't listen to any of the experts telling them they were wrong. He was convinced that reforming the Middle East via American military attack would be a brilliant and necessary strategy, convinced by his own goddamn notions of what the Middle East should look like and how many bullets it would take to get it there.

And now he hides behind the notion that the only problem, in all of this, was that the damn liberals wouldn't clap hard enough for the transparently puerile "plan". He doesn't have a problem with any of it, except for the criticism he personally gets as a result of the chaos. No, the whole problem was either that the damn Arabs didn't sufficiently greet us as liberators and get on with reshaping their country according to his plan, or that the liberals had the audacity to point out that his "plan" was idiotic.