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October 7, 2005

Tom Friedman's elephant in the bathtub

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How big a fool is Tom Friedman? He provides more data today. Fortunately for Tom, internet readership of his column is now restricted to those willing to pay cash money for the privilege. And, interestingly enough, the Times is not telling anybody how many people have signed up, suggesting that not many have.
 
In his column today, Friedman lays out a list of causes of the devastation of Iraq society over the years. And he leaves off Saddam Hussein!
 
You would think that Tom Friedman would at least make an issue of how decades of Saddam's rule have corrupted civic culture and society in Iraq; how the best and the brightest emigrated or were killed (and thus those remaining behind had no role models); that Saddam created a Hobbesian world in which only the cruel survive; and that Saddam's fertility promotion (to replace people lost in the war against Iran) led to too many children without fatherly control.
 
Wouldn't any rational observer at least mention some of this? Instead Freidman lays the blame on the defeat in the 1991 War and the imposition of sanctions—basically blaming America.
 
Ed Lasky   10 07 05