NYTimes: Thomas Friedman Wants America to Get Over 9/11

Newsbusters.org ^ | 9/30/07 | Warner Todd Huston

[Mobile Vulgus]

Thomas Friedman thinks you are "stupid" if you still care about the atrocity committed against this country by Islamofascists in New York on 9/11/2001. He thinks "9/11 is over" and we all should just move on. Even worse, he has decided that we are no longer a great country, but are filled with seemingly meaningless "fear," that we have a dilapidated infrastructure, and that while America used to be "the gold standard," he believes "We aren’t anymore." Friedman is falling for the typical, leftist doom-and-gloom scenario and imagines that China is better than we are, Europe is more inviting, and we have become the new Rome after the fall. His closing line is "We can’t afford to keep being this stupid!" By contrast to Friedman, my opening line to him is "We can't afford to be this self-loathing!"

Friedman starts his piece off comparing the current state of the U.S. to a satirical piece in the Onion, which is fitting because Frideman's own piece might be mistaken for a satire on the frivolousness and unserious nature of the left today. Unfortunately, he is serious about his self-inflicted amnesia and seems utterly unconcerned about the threats we face as a nation and a people. Like most truthers he seems to imagine that it has all been hype, a conspiracy theory made up by eeeevil Republicans who merely want to fool enough people to stay in power.

His lack of ability to understand the nature of the enemy we face is a perfect reflection of the Chamberlainesque, "peace in our times" left that would soon have us in thrall to Islamofascism by their ignorant policy prescriptions.

It seems he had an ulterior motive in writing this doggerel, though, as Friedman used his self-immolating New York Times piece as a veiled jab at Rudolph Giuliani who is, in his perception, a "candidate running on 9/11."

Says Friedman:

We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

He seems to be repudiating his previous writing on terrorism and, all of a sudden, imagining a world where all is honey and roses, but that the eeeevil terror-mongers are keeping us hiding under the bed in meaningless fear.

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

Friedman goes on to trot out the old leftist trope that all our evil can be wrapped up in the Guantanamo Bay detainment facility.

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

I'm sorry, is the security of the U.S.A. something we should be selling with slick, Madison Avenue ad campaigns so that Guantanamo is perceived as a garden spot by the rest of the world, now?

Should we be sad that immigrants might imagine that Guantanamo is a place that "visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration" are sent to? Few Americans will be too upset that we might be seeing fewer immigrants coming here, for sure. If immigrants fear Guantanamo, many Americans will think it so much the better. But that aside, his claims about Guantanamo are absurd propaganda fed to a willing European populace none of which has a lick of truth in it. It looks like Friedman is only too happy to feed that perception against the better interests and safety of his own countrymen.

Friedman then goes on to worry that foreign business travelers and tourists are avoiding the U.S.A. because we are so worried over terrorism here. But, even if he is right that our current airport restrictions are hurting tourism, he offers no solution. His bromides and whining offers us nothing to solve the problem he thinks he sees.

Friedman then claims that we are a dilapidated country because our infrastructure is falling apart.

Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.

He can thank his friends in the Democrat Party for the overweening regulation and the graft they have created with unions that hampers construction all of which causes this sort of stuff not the global war on terror or any security concerns across the nation.

And, yes, Friedman thinks China is better than we are.

I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore.

I see. Does anyone in the world, ANYONE, think the Red Chinese care a whit about the environment and "emission standards?"

His last paragraph is the "gold standard" of leftist idiocy, though.

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.

So, let's just hide our heads in the sand, folks. Mr. Friedman thinks this whole al Qaeda thing is over. It's all so yesterday, like bellbottoms and disco. Out with the old and in with the new, baby.

Friedman's ignorance of the threats we have faced since the 1970s -- even as we were unaware of them then -- is glaring in this lightheaded piece of fluff and a perfect example of how the left cannot be trusted with our national security.

His ideas are the pet rock of punditry. Sooo yesterday.

Read more at Newsbusters.org

[Mobile Vulgus]

Wow. Just wow! Forget all that 9/11 stuff huh? So, can we forget about slavery, Katrina and Global Warming, too??

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

I am over Thomas Friedman.

[kjo]

Let me take a wild guess as to whom he believes should be President...could her initials be HC?

[alice_in_bubbaland]

Old Tom is apparently just another mental midget lib. I think it’s frightening that anyone thinks this way.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

How about the Holocaust? Is can we get over that too, or are there just some things we should NEVER FORGET?

[johnny7]

Fried-man is Spitboy's... Grover Dill

[JimRed]

Friedman is falling for the typical, leftist doom-and-gloom scenario...

"Falling" for it? No; he's one of the ones who have CREATED it!

[george76]

[Tarpon]

I got over this moron long ago. Frankly it was much better when they were kept in walled garden, prevents crap from being spewed over the folks.

Raise taxes, fund socialism and ban guns. Not hard to understand Democrats.

[nuconvert]

If I started to respond to all the stupid points made in Friedman’s article, I’d be here for the next hour.

But I have to bring up one.......

“I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.”

W H A T ?!!? He says it’s NECESSARY to improve our security, but we’re just chasing rainbows by trying to accomplish it?? What’s his alternative???

[Dems_R_Losers]

Friedman is going to reap a whirlwind for this one. The unmitigated gall of a New York newspaper writer saying that 9/11 has made us stupid just boggles the mind. What 9/11 did was show how stupid this country’s leaders WERE to think that internationl Islamic terrorism could be handled like ordinary burglaries. I thank God every day that we have a President who is NOT stupid about the threats we face.

[Milhous]

I just knew this sort of thing would happen after Pinch took down his Times Select paywall and let his pet monkeys run free.

Flathead: The peculiar Genius of Thomas L. Friedman

...The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:

I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins

Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.

This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

[JimRed]

We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

Oh, the one who would have deported all non-citizen Muslims starting on 9/12 (and put all citizen Muslims under surveillance), built a double, mined border wall and sent the UN packing off to Brussels or Paris? That guy?

[Malone LaVeigh]

I'm sorry, is the security of the U.S.A. something we should be selling with slick, Madison Avenue ad campaigns so that Guantanamo is perceived as a garden spot by the rest of the world, now?

I thought we were already doing that.

[no-to-illegals]

Raise taxes, fund socialism and ban guns. Not hard to understand Democrats.

oh, so much more could be added to these creatures (democrats), like surrender, supporting an invasion of the United States, lie about our soldiers in the field.....

I best be quiet now.....my dandruff is coming in waves.....

[MNJohnnie]

Interesting he claims wants a 09/12 President yet Thomas El-Freedman is stuck in his 09/10 world view.

Come on Tommy. Tell the truth. You, like most of the rest of the leftist trash in the politically corrupt media, have NEVER moved beyond 09-10-01, you don’t want an 09-12-01 President. You want a 01-1993 to 01-2001 President. You want a President who will simply ignore all the problems in the world so your comfortably self satisfied pseudo intellectual little bubble world is not disturbed by any smidgen of world geo political realities.

[art_rocks]

I think one thing he said most Americans can agree, “that we have a dilapidated infrastructure”. Is there anyone happy with the roads they have.

Of course, for the government, the upkeep of buildings and infrastructure isn’t what they like to do. Ask a member of Congress to build some museum for something no one cares about, and they are there with checks in hands ready to build.

[gotribe]

Friedman titters when he speaks. Nuff said.

[VOA]

bump

[Tarpon]

The goals remain the same and unwavering for these cretins. Insults to soldiers are just a means to the end, and completely justified in their minds. They will do anything, tell any lie, cheat in any election, as long as Democrats win. It’s a carry over from their days as the KKK in the segregationist south, only without the sheets.