Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Tom Friedman’s Elastic Deadlines

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Tom Friedman’s Elastic Deadlines

From dissidentvoice.org

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has been saying that Iraq’s do-or-die moment is “six months” away ever since the start of the war.

The N.Y. Times’ foreign affairs columnist has been saying that “the next six months” in Iraq will be the “decisive” ones—for the last two and a half years. FAIR documents a “long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.”

FAIR:

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman is considered by many of his media colleagues to be one of the wisest observers of international affairs. “You have a global brain, my friend,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews once told Friedman (4/21/05). “You’re amazing. You amaze me every time you write a book.”

Such praise is not uncommon. Friedman’s appeal seems to rest on his ability to discuss complex issues in the simplest possible terms. On a recent episode of MSNBC’s “Hardball” (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: “Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six monthsprobably soonerwhether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.”

That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn’t been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq war. A review of Friedman’s punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.

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By efhead, May 21, 2006 at 7:44 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I don’t have access to a lot of media, I am in iraq. There is a phrase, take what is useful and leave the rest. This is well applied to Freidman. When he speaks about how we as a nation need to adress our energy issues and how oil prices tend to influence international politics, reference article in Foreign Policy and interview with Tom Ashbrook on WBUR’s ‘On Point’ he is worth listening to and the establishment may take info from him that it would otherwise reject from a ‘liberal’ source. Don’t get to worked up over his comments about Iraq. I don’t see how anyone would take his comments seriously to begin with. Hell, most of the US press doesn’t know what they are talking about regarding Iraq.

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By Abhinav Aima, May 19, 2006 at 5:21 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I had written this Op-ed in a local Duluth, Minnesota, publication challenging Friedman’s overly-optimistic views, that almost always favor the U.S. foreign policy spin…

The article, focusing on Hamas and Friedman’s misguided views on globalization, brought forth angry denunciations from some readers, hooked on Fridmanesque visions of a righteous Israel fighting off terrorists…

Anyway, turns out Hamas did in fact come out stronger, and Friedman’s analysis was bogus on everything from Hebron to Halabja.

The article is available at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0409-11.htm

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By Ga, May 19, 2006 at 3:15 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Ah… he’s just been repeating the mantra of the Whitehouse. He sounds just like Dick “In the last throes” Cheney.

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By C Quil, May 19, 2006 at 1:00 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

“The next six months” mantra is beginning to sound like that famous other one:

“The man who holds the #3 position in al-Qaeda has just been captured…”.

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By harald hardrada, May 19, 2006 at 11:22 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

friedman was among the warmongers at nytimes [keller & safire were others] urging bush to take america into iraq—he thought it was going to be fun

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By anonymous, May 19, 2006 at 10:19 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The Emporer’s fool has no clothes.

What did we expect from a guy that still thinks the earth is flat.

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By Hilding Lindquist, May 19, 2006 at 8:41 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Wow!

After commenting yesterday on Tom Friedman’s brilliancy in mouthing what is the “establishment”—a la NY Times—party line ... I woke up this morning to Friedman proclaiming the new age of global economics doing the heavy lifting on world poverty ... as Paul Krugman continues to point out that we (as in the United States of America ) are teetering far out over the edge of economic stability.

In my humble—little ol’ farm boy from Northern Minnesota (Duluth)—opinion, Krugman deals in reality. Friedman deals in pleasing the hands that feeds him.

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By Hilding Lindquist, May 18, 2006 at 11:16 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Oh my gawd ... we’re gonna discuss Tom Friedman ... and you’re not kidding us.

Friedman brilliantly provides the editors of the NY Times with the sophisticated “established” views of the “establishment” for publishing in their paper. Problem is, he doesn’t have an original thought in the lot ... and reality has a way of overtaking conventional wisdom ... but he’s a bright boy! Gawd, is be bright.

An analogy from the classroom would be that sometimes getting a good grade is a matter of psyching out the prof ... other times it is a matter of original thought. It’s not too difficult to classify Friedman as to which group he’s in.

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