Saturday, September 13, 2014

Thomas Friedman, "What’s Their Plan?": Three Things You Should Never Do in Life

Always ready with advice for the foolish and unwary, would-be Middle East expert Thomas Friedman begins his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "What’s Their Plan?," subtitled "Obama’s Strategy for Fighting ISIS Isn’t All About Us," by declaring:

"THERE are three things in life that you should never do ambivalently: get married, buy a house or go to war. Alas, we’re about to do No. 3. Should we?"

Go to war? Hold your horses, Tom! Didn't Secretary of State John Kerry just tell us that the US will be engaging in "a counterterrorism operation of a significant order," but not a war? Meanwhile, Kerry is attempting to stitch together a coalition of ambivalent and deceitful allies to fight the ISIS monster that even has Jon Stewart in . . . stitches.

Friedman's risible conclusion:

"ISIS loses if our moderate Arab-Muslim partners can unite and make this a civil war within Islam — a civil war in which America is the air force for the Sunnis and Shiites of decency versus those of barbarism."

Excuse me, Tom, maybe you would care to point me in the direction of some of those "moderate Arab-Muslim partners," which are not hanging homosexuals, facilitating "honor killings" of women, cutting off women's clitorises, murdering Christians and other minorities, sentencing to death those who abandon Islam, amputating the hands of alleged thieves, and executing persons accused of witchcraft.

"Sunnis and Shiites of decency versus those of barbarism"? Good luck in your search for them, Tom.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, Tom...I know you read Jeff's blog regularly so I thought this would be the best place to let you know.

    I've actually found a number of moderate Muslims
    and Arabs that the State Department can work with!

    Picking the top five out of 1.6 billion wasn't easy but it's a start and collaborating with these folks may save America from making hasty decisions ambivalently.

    For reasons of brevity, please Google each name for their full bio.

    1. Mosab Hassan Yousef (The Green Prince)
    2. Waffa Sultan
    3. Walid Shoebat
    4. Ibn Warraq (The 'other' Salman Rushdie)
    5. Nonie Darwish

    There are some caveats though. Yousef and Shoebat converted to Christianity however, according to Sharia law, technically, they're still Muslims. Also, Sultan and Darwish are women, meaning by default they're considered insignificant among most of your target audience.
    'Ibn Warraq' is of course a nom de plume, for obvious reasons. Oh, and all of them have a price on their head so the US will have to get to them before ISIS does.

    Please pass on the list to The President next time you get a chance to interview him in the Oval Office. Time is running out.

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  2. JG said, "Excuse me, Tom, maybe you would care to point me in the direction of some of those "moderate Arab-Muslim partners," which are not hanging homosexuals, facilitating "honor killings" of women, cutting off women's clitorises, murdering Christians and other minorities, sentencing to death those who abandon Islam, amputating the hands of alleged thieves, and executing persons accused of witchcraft."

    I say, "Bravo. Bravo. Brav-frickin-o!" In other words, "JG is correct."

    ReplyDelete