Posted on 09/24/2004 6:34:48 AM PDT by Hawk44
Tom Friedman was on Imus in the Morning. Unfortunately, I was on the phone during most of the legthy interview.
However, Friedman said that Muslims nations have applied for 200 patents in the last twenty years while on American company, Hewlett-Packard has appplied for 11,000 patents. Therefore, it is the backword people against the rest of the world.
This is wrong - they have at least 200 patents on how to tie stuff on to donkeys and how to torture infidels alone...
They (Muslims) know how to kill innocent men, women, and children though.
And, as usual, Imus lapped it all up.
Friedman made note of the comments of the muslim journalist who questioned recently why fatwahs were issued against Rushdie, yet none were ever issued against bin Laden.
How Islam Lost Its Way
Yesterday's Achievements Were Golden; Today, Reason Has Been Eclipsed
By Pervez Amir Ali Hoodbhoy
Sunday, December 30, 2001; Page B04
[snip]
Though genuine scientific achievement is rare in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-science is in generous supply. A former chairman of my department has calculated the speed of heaven: He maintains it is receding from Earth at one centimeter per second less than the speed of light. His ingenious method relies upon a verse inthe Islamic holy book, which says that worship on the night on whichthe book was revealed is worth a thousand nights of ordinary worship. He states that this amounts to a time-dilation factor of 1,000, which he puts into a formulaof Einstein's theory of special relativity.
A more public example: One of two Pakistani nuclear engineers recently arrested on suspicion of passing nuclear secrets to the Taliban had earlier proposed to solve Pakistan's energy problems by harnessing the power of genies. He relied on the Islamic belief that God created man from clay, and angels and genies from fire; so this highly placed engineer proposed to capture the genies and extract their energy.
He said that HP applies for, on average, 11 new patents every day.
I've heard Friedman give his assessment on the Arab/Israeli conflict and the Middle East in General before (I think on C-Span).
Granted, the man is a bursting liberal in most aspects of his life, but when it comes to the Arab/Islam ect. world, he's very sharp and does Not mix words....
If this is a fact, it's not disrespectful as your title implies.
A bigot?
Then I'm one too!
I tend to be a bigot against a group or race that would want to butcher me and my family if given half a chance.
Freidman's ego doesn't make what he says untrue.
Its ok to shoot the enemy but not hate them??
But.....but.......but......they have a very forwar religion.
Friedman is worth listening to. Half of the time I want to yell at the radio and the other half I listen with rapt attention. He does his homework and makes plenty of observations worth listening to. But then he has these huge blind spots that he can't seem to work through. He's so set on seeing the administration's mistakes that he has a hard time seeing what good can come out of it. I thought he made a lot of good comments--like the Muslim world has only produced 270 patents in almost 25 years in contrast to HP who has 11 a day. I think he made some great insights about the capability of the Arab world to rule themselves and seems to understand the tension between the Sunnis and Shias. But he doesn't seem to recognize the wealth of people in Iraq like the current Prime Minister. Yet I appreciated his comment about Rushdie, fatwahs and Bin Laden.
Freidman is IMHO a flaming a-hole. Sure, he's got a few good points - I heard his whole interview and when he wasn't taking swipes at Bush he was basically saying that the *only* way to solve the global terrorism problem is do exactly what we are doing and have done in Iraq. All of that aside, though, he's an arrogant, self-promoting p***k, not half as smart as he thinks he is, and the thing that really galls me is that he has this preposterous idea that what he says actually matters in the overall scheme of the universe when nothing could be farther from the truth. Anyone remember when he got summoned to some Saudi prince's tent to receive the "Saudi Peace Plan"? I think Iowahawk did a great piece on that.
Yes, but has Tom wandered off The New York Times reservation? Doesn't sound like the company line to me.
The main points that I took from the Imus/Friedman interview:
1. The war is justified on moral grounds.
2. We are not nation-building because Iraq has never been a single nation. We are "nation-creating", which is much harder.
-- so far, so good --
3. Bush didn't commit enough troops & resources to the task.
It's this last part that I don't agree with. As president, you sometimes have to pick an option from a list of bad choices and then live with the consequences. If GWB had committed greater manpower to Iraq, he would have left South Korea even more vulnerable to a move by North Korea. The US military would have had to scrap almost all it's force modernization programs and Ballistic Missile Defense would also be dead. That's just the short-list.
Friedman is so absorbed with the Middle East that he is basically a Johnny-One-Note.
Terrorism thrives in countries where injustice is rampant; where governments arbitrarily reward some and punish many; where the resources of the nation are not returned to the people; where the people are not invested in through education, freedom, etc. There was, he contends, no better example of that than Iraq.
We are taking the worst negative and trying to make it a positive. A stable, democratic Iraq would remove one blight and help us remove others (domino theory). If Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia see a free, Arab, Muslim country, they will ask: "Why not us?".
Friedman also contended we were doing a very good thing very badly. He would probably now say we're doing a very good thing in the worst way possible.
Personally, I wonder how these Monday morning quarterbacks contribute. Gen. Franks brought up a very good point at the end of his book. He was sure if we had to do it over we would do some things differently. He has no way of knowing, however, that the results would be better. Neither do the Friedmans, Imuses, O'Reilleys, Kerrys et al. But it doesn't stop them from pretending.
Nah, you can shoot the enemy all you like and hate them while you're doing it. I would even encourage pissing on the islamofascist baby killers.
But I would disagree with anybody who says certain people based on religion, race or geography are not capable of loving liberty and freedom. It is contradicts everything I believe.
But you're free to believe anything you want. One of your inalienable rights.
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