Doublethink Junction

With liberals like Tom Friedman on the job, George Bush can look forward to a kingly crown with equanimity.
Yup yew guessed, chirpy, naive', easily duped Tom Friedman Pulitzer Prize winning columnist was on the Imus in the Morning Program.
He was hyperventilating ad nauseam on the subject of "bursting the terrorism bubble" in the Middle East. Tom doesn't spare the free market slang when it comes to yelping like a scalded dog in defense of Bush's Iraq policy.
I give him credit though, he is honest.
Friedman asserted that deposing Saddam was necessary solely to send a message to other terrorist sponsoring regimes in the region nothin' more nothin' less. That and a tour of the front in April was enough to seal in Friedman as a prime mark out for the conquest of Iraq.
He then lists all the alleged non-elites to "get this" among them the plain folk of America, and the U.S. Forces now occupying Iraq.
Now in the later part of that unremarkable realist argument, Friedman does come perilously close to argument that we attacked Iraq because the Army somehow wanted it.
Which is when his terminal case of cognitive dissonance kicks in and Friedman starts ripping up Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In a voice throbbing with ersatz emotion Tom worries that three years of atrocity and counter atrocity have wrought a "fundamental sociological change" among the Palestinians".
Where is this bleeding heart concern for the civilians of Iraq who, when they are not shooting at our soldiers are living in a Hobbesian state of lawlessness which the White House has dubbed "freedom"?
It is pretty clear to me that Friedman thinks it okay for the U.S. to jack up Iraq but somehow it harms the peace process when the I.D.F. goes tearing through the West Bank looking for potential suicide bombers.
He still thinks the Palestinian Authority can somehow reign the militants in...as I said yesterday if the best infantry in the world can't stop the Intifada then what are a bunch of ill armed policemen supposed to do?
His answer is perfectly chilling and perfectly delusional "both sides need a civil war" the Palestinians against Hamas et al and the Israelis against the settlers....
Well fine that might look like splendid Aristotelean logic on paper but the reality is, Hamas would probably WIN that fight (unless U.S. Troops intervened and even then) whilst the settlers would flee in a heartbeat if it looked like they might have to fend for themselves.
If that is the outcome, then what do you have?
Nothing....but it all looks brainy and well thought out if you are a New York Times columnist.
Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally licensed public airwaves
and elsewhere
6-19-03
7:50 AM EST