Tom Friedman, Jerk

Hilzoy makes an excellent point. Just because Tom Friedman thinks the Iraqi Sunnis don't think like he does, so then, the hell with them? How utterly arrogant! Especially after we've killed so many Iraqi Sunnis lately! Hilzoy's riff on Friedman:

It is feckless and irresponsible to advocate war without thinking through the various possible outcomes, including the bad ones. This is especially true when there is reason to doubt the basic competence of those who will be executing the war in question, as there surely was after, say, Tora Bora. It is also feckless and irresponsible to advocate leaving when you discover, to your amazement, that recreating a country that has been absolutely brutalized is not child's play, and that the people you knew would be in charge of that task are devoting no more attention to it than a child would. It is worse than irresponsible when the predictable result of withdrawal would be a full-scale civil war, when you explicitly recognize and even embrace that fact, and when you imply that that civil war, which would result in the deaths not just of combatants but of innocent civilians, is the inevitable outcome of Sunni amorality, and not, to any degree, of your own thoughtless cheerleading for a misguided imperial adventure carried out by people whose arrogance is matched only by their incompetence.

Just another example of American disdain for the Muslim world in general (after 9/11, I thought I'd never again quote Gary Kamiya, but my, how times change!):

But the neocons had a far darker view of Islam and the Muslim world as a whole. "A government official who had frequent dealings with Feith, Rhode and the others came up with an analogy for their attitude toward Islam: 'The same way evangelicals in the South wrestle with homosexuals, they feel about Muslims -- people to be saved, if only they would do things on our terms. Hate the sin, love the sinner."

The only thing flatter than the world is Friedman's understanding of it.