THOMAS FRIEDMAN: "Osama and Katrina"

[sabra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/opinion/07friedman.html?hp

Osama and Katrina

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 7, 2005

On the day after 9/11, I was in Jerusalem and was interviewed by Israeli TV. The reporter asked me, "Do you think the Bush administration is up to responding to this attack?" As best I can recall, I answered: "Absolutely. One thing I can assure you about these guys is that they know how to pull the trigger."

It was just a gut reaction that George Bush and Dick Cheney were the right guys to deal with Osama. I was not alone in that feeling, and as a result, Mr. Bush got a mandate, almost a blank check, to rule from 9/11 that he never really earned at the polls. Unfortunately, he used that mandate not simply to confront the terrorists but to take a radically uncompassionate conservative agenda - on taxes, stem cells, the environment and foreign treaties - that was going nowhere before 9/11, and drive it into a post-9/11 world. In that sense, 9/11 distorted our politics and society.

Well, if 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

[wellstone_democrat]

1. fucking enabler

he'll be back in line by week's end

Mr. W_D

[ignatius 2]

13. Amen to that,who beat the war drum any louder than this

asshole? Every article he wrote about the march of freedom,bringing democracy to Iraq,blah..blah..blah

Fuck off Friedman,the blood is dripping from your hands along with the rest of the maniacs.

[enki23]

2. great friedman. welcome back. now go sit at the children's table.

.

[agates]

3. Wow

"These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it..." Says a whole lot, doesn't it???

[Mr_Spock]

4. Sittin in a Tree

:D

[Don Claybrook]

5. There should be a revokable journalism license

Just for self-impressed twits like Friedman.

It sure was nice being able to read Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman in place of Friedman.

[NNadir]

8. Agreed. Freidman bought and promoted Iraq hook line and sinker.

He never had the guts to apologize.

What a freak.

[BeyondGeography]

6. "So much better at taking things apart

than putting them together." True, that.

So explain to me again, Friedman, exactly why you thought this President and this government would know what to do once it had control of Iraq?

[Pithy Cherub]

7. TF saw rats deserting the republican ship and bought new swim trunks!

Bush cheerleader says no to joing in cheer waaaaaay after the fact.

[iamahaingttta]

9. Who gives a fuck what Freidman says!

My father was his editor when he was assigned to the middle east, he was a weenie then and he's a weenie now.

Fuck him!

[stevedeshazer]

10. Thomas Friedman is absolutely the best

mustache model on the staff at NYT.

[hatrack]

11. Day late, dollar short, piss off Tommy-boy

I guess 51% certainty was good enough for a war. What certainty was necessary for you to realize that these venal thugs could drop a bowling ball off an apartment building and manage to make it not fall. 70%? 85%?

You enabled, you aided and abetted, and now you have regrets?

Fuck off, Friedman. Fuck off and die.

[oasis]

12. He should be sharing a corner with Judith Miller inside the Superdome.

[Maple]

14. Well Friedman says he's a Democrat

Guess you guys will have to live with him.