Far from applauding Friedman, I'd note that he misses the point completely that the Europeans count on Obama to never ask for anything. That's why they like him. Who really believes that the Europeans are eager for a president they can respect before Germans actually fight in Afghanistan in the "good war"? Sure, the Spanish are eager to go mano-a-mano with the Taliban out in the field but for their distress at the Bush presidency. Please.
But I'm not really out to mock Friedman's alliance thoughts. What I want to address is this idiocy, cast out as an aside in his piece:
I understand any foreigner who objected to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the gross mishandling of the postwar.
Friedman, it should be noted, supported the war until his wife informed him some time in 2004 that his position was making it too difficult for her to get invitations to parties from the "in crowd." Then he turned on the war.
As for the so-called "gross mishandling" of the postwar, get real. In only five years, when insurgencies commonly last a decade or two, we adapted our conventional military to defeat a series of insurgencies that were notable in how well financed they were and for how much ammunition was lying around in Iraq for their use.
We beat the Baathist dead enders. We beat the al Qaeda invasion. We beat the Sunni Arab nationalists. We beat the Shias who obey Iran. And we beat the indigenous Sunni jihadis. They are all remnants of their former glory being hunted down along with the criminal gangs.
And we did this with troop strength that both opponents and supporters of the war consistently said was inadequate (and which I consistently disagreed with, using my primitive math skills to show we had enough troops to win). And we did it in only five years with historically low casualty rates.
If this is gross mishandling, what would military brilliance look like?
All I ask is don't read Friedman for anything other than humor value. The man is unfazed by a clue bat beating. I admit that I'm somewhat jealous that I didn't coin some phrase like "The Ox Cart and the Belgian Endive" to describe the world and make tons of money from swooning Center-Left types. But the man hasn't a clue. Really.
Mind you, Minerva isn't actually defending Friedman or extolling his brilliance, but just linking to the man should be a crime (and I feel somewhat dirty myself for doing so here).
No offense MM, I enjoy your blog and respect your thoughts on international affairs. You had no idea that you'd hit a sore spot of mine.
