NN Friedman V. Pynchon

[pynchonoid]

Controversial as it might be, but if this is the reslt
of all Friedman's education,  I'll go with Pynchon's
insight into world affairs.


SOLOMON: A Pulitzer for Tom Friedman, the 'Give War a
Chance' Guy
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
February 22, 2002

Thomas Friedman has just won a Pulitzer Prize for
commentary, adding yet another accolade to his storied
journalistic career. Specializing in foreign affairs,
Friedman reaches millions of readers with his
syndicated New York Times column. And he's often on
television – especially these days. "In the post-9/11
environment, the talk shows can't get enough of
Friedman," a Washington Post profile noted. He appears
as a guest on "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation,"
"Washington Week in Review" and plenty of other TV
venues. He even went over big on David Letterman's
show. 

A passage from Friedman's 1999 book "The Lexus and the
Olive Tree" sums up his overarching global
perspective: "The hidden hand of the market will never
work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish
without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S.
Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the
world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to
flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and
Marine Corps." 

Friedman has been a zealous advocate of "bombing Iraq,
over and over and over again" (in the words of a
January 1998 column). Three years ago, when he offered
a pithy list of prescriptions for Washington's
policymakers, it included: "Blow up a different power
station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the
lights will go off or who's in charge." 

In an introduction to the book "Iraq Under Siege,"
editor Anthony Arnove points out: "Every power station
that is targeted means more food and medicine that
will not be refrigerated, hospitals that will lack
electricity, water that will be contaminated, and
people who will die." 

But Friedman-style bravado goes over big with editors
and network producers who share his disinterest in
counting the human costs. Many journalists seem eager
to fawn over their stratospheric colleague. "Nobody
understands the world the way he does," NBC's Tim
Russert claims. 

Sometimes, Friedman fixates on four words in
particular. "My motto is very simple: Give war a
chance," he told Diane Sawyer four months ago on "Good
Morning America." It was the same motto that he'd used
two and a half years earlier in a Fox News interview.
Different war; different enemy; different network;
same solution. 

In the spring of 1999, as bombardment of Yugoslavia
went on, Friedman recycled "Give war a chance" from
one column to another. "Twelve days of surgical
bombing was never going to turn Serbia around," he
wrote in early April. "Let's see what 12 weeks of less
than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance." 

Another column included this gleeful approach for
threatening civilians in Yugoslavia with protracted
terror: "Every week you ravage Kosovo is another
decade we will set your country back by pulverizing
you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We
can do 1389 too." 

Last November, his column was in a similar groove.
"Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me:
Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we're talking
about. Check the map. It's far away." 

Friedman seems to be crazy about wisps of craziness in
high Washington places. He has a penchant for touting
insanity as a helpful ingredient of U.S. foreign
policy; some kind of passion for indications of
derangement among those who call the military shots. 

During an Oct. 13 appearance on CNBC, he said: "I was
a critic of (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld
before, but there's one thing ... that I do like about
Rumsfeld. He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just
a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they
always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I'm
glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback
– who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you
never know what that guy's going to do, and I say
that's my guy." 

And Friedman doesn't just talk that way. He also
writes that way. "There is a lot about the Bush team's
foreign policy I don't like," a Friedman column
declared in mid-February, "but their willingness to
restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of
our enemies, is one thing they have right." 

Is Thomas Friedman clever? Perhaps. But not nearly as
profound as a few words from W.H. Auden: "Those to
whom evil is done / Do evil in return." 

Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media." His syndicated column focuses on
media and politics.

<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12465>


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