Replies to post #193713 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Rewrite Thomas Friedman's Syria Column, Win a Free Hand Grenade

by: Matt Taibbi
November 14, 10:45 AM ET


Thomas L. Friedman

I know, this is getting very old. I promise, after this, to not mention Thomas Friedman for a long time. But his column today was so old-school, it deserves some attention.

Friedman on the Middle East this morning: [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 ]

Ever since the start of the Syrian uprising/civil war, I've cautioned that while Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia implode, Syria would explode if a political resolution was not found quickly. That is exactly what's happening . . .

What to do? I continue to believe that the best way to understand the real options — and they are grim — is by studying Iraq, which, like Syria, is made up largely of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Kurds. Why didn't Iraq explode outward like Syria after Saddam was removed? The answer: America.

Friedman's idea seems to be that ethnically-fractured Middle Eastern countries like Syria would be more stable today, if they'd only been occupied first and had their nation-states built on a foundation of political compromises brokered by a strong military power like the United States. Veteran Friedman readers know that this line of thinking usually leads to either an "iron fist" column, or a "midwife" column. Today, he went with both.

Friedman used to believe that Arabs were not physically capable of resisting the urge toward ethnic violence. Years ago, in an effort to explain what he called his "Pottery Barn" metaphor (the "You break it, you own it" line used to describe Iraq, and later appropriated by Colin Powell), Friedman remarked [ http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/opinion/29friedman.html?_r=1&hp&tsType=try&ocid=82&ts_today=Y&incamp=ts:chall_article_trial&ocids=82|81&headline=Ten%2bMonths%2bor%2bTen%2bYears&; ] that in the case of Iraq, the pottery pieces were broken long before we arrived. They were, he said, "broken . . . by 1,000 years of Arab-Muslim authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni Baathist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N. sanctions. [Iraq] was held together only by Saddam's iron fist."

So you had all of these pottery pieces being held together by an iron fist, but we took away the iron fist, and the pottery pieces fell apart again. This could have been fixed, he wrote, by inserting our own iron first, and commencing therapy, but we screwed that up, resulting in a vacuum: "Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course," he wrote. "But instead we created a vacuum by not deploying enough troops."

That was six years ago. Friedman was very down on Iraq then. "There are so many people killing so many other people for so many different reasons," he wrote, that Iraq is "not even the Arab Yugoslavia anymore. It's Hobbes's jungle." It was a jungle, he wrote, where we were "throwing more good lives after good lives into a deeper and deeper hole filled with more and more broken pieces."

An endlessly-deepening hole, containing broken pottery pieces at the bottom, rapidly filling up with the dead bodies of good people. That is a very strange and depressing image, and it's what Friedman saw in Iraq in 2006.

Now, however, Iraq looks good compared to Syria. In an attempt to explain how that could be, given that six years ago it looked quite a lot like our invasion of Iraq triggered a wave of ethnic violence, Friedman is re-explaining the history of the Iraq war.

It turns out that when we went into Iraq, we weren't trying to put back together the broken pieces of the national pottery that had been held together for so long by Saddam's iron fist. Rather, what we were doing was . . . well, let him explain (emphasis his):

For better and for worse, the United States in Iraq performed the geopolitical equivalent of falling on a grenade —that we triggered ourselves. That is, we pulled the pin; we pulled out Saddam; we set off a huge explosion in the form of a Shiite-Sunni contest for power. Thousands of Iraqis were killed along with more than 4,700 American troops, but the presence of those U.S. troops in and along Iraq's borders prevented the violence from spreading. Our invasion both triggered the civil war in Iraq and contained it at the same time.

So Saddam wasn't an iron fist holding together broken pottery pieces at all, but the pin in a metaphorical grenade in which the explosive power of inevitable civil war was contained. Why you wouldn't just leave a pin in such a grenade is anyone's guess, but we didn't – we pulled the pin and then sent 4,700 young Americans to throw their bodies on the explosion (i.e. the civil war). We contained the destructive power of this civil war by physically sealing off the borders, letting the fire of ethnic conflict "burn itself out," and by brokering a power-sharing agreement between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias. Then we left.

(However, Friedman notes grimly, "it is not at all clear that the deal will survive our departure," which would mean we didn't dive on a grenade at all, but merely set off an explosion that will ultimately destroy the entire region – but for now, termporarily, the jumping-on-a-grenade-we-ourselves-threw metaphor is holding.)

The lesson Friedman takes from all of this is that if you're trying to knock over an iron fist which is also a pin in a grenade, what you really need is a midwife. "If you're trying to topple one of these iron-fisted, multisectarian regimes," he writes, "it really helps to have an outside power that can contain the explosions and mediate a new order."

By which he means a midwife. Who is also a fireman:

There is no outside power willing to fall on the Syrian grenade and midwife a new order. So the fire there rages uncontrolled . . .

By the end of the piece, Friedman suggests that what we really need to do is call Syria's lawyer, to see if he can broker an arrangement that would contain the fire, which in turn would prevent acid from flying out of the country and dissolving the "bonds" that are standing between the Middle East and chaos:

It's a real long shot, but we should keep trying to work with Russia — Syria's lawyer — to see if together we can broker a power-sharing deal inside Syria and a United Nations-led multinational force to oversee it. Otherwise, this fire will rage on and spread, as the acid from the Shiite-Sunni conflict eats away at the bonds holding the Middle East together and standing between this region and chaos.

I'll be awarding a replica hand grenade paperweight [ http://www.amazon.com/ATLANTA-ARMY-NAVY-SUPPLY-Paperweight/dp/B000UVQEUO/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1352900010&sr=8-23&keywords=grenade ] to the person who, in the comments section below, does the best one-paragraph summary of the metaphor-fest in today's Friedman piece. And please, if you do a submission, don't forget to check back to see if you won, so you can send me contact information.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/rewrite-thomas-friedmans-syria-column-win-a-free-hand-grenade-20121114

UPDATE: Read the winners! [ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-grenade-of-understanding-winners-of-the-write-like-friedman-challenge-20121115 ]

LoL ... thought you might enjoy all this ... . also betcha you could give a short response to tom's article too! .. ;) It's too late for the grenade though .. ;)

[Lebaneseproud]

It could be Israel's nightmare far more than Obama's nightare.
Israel needs to tread very carefully right now. As fuagf's series of articles posted suggest, this time could be far more dangerous than the conflicts of the past.

Israel is much more vulnerable now than in the past. Syria is very unstable and big trouble could spill over from the Golan. Hamas has a great number of rockets (more advanced than in the past as well) capable of hitting many parts of Israel. Egypt is very unstable these days and their is no telling what Egypt or rogue elements within Egypt will do to participate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hezbullah who is militarily stronger than ever, sits within Lebanon perched on the Israeli border and they have assembled a massive arsenal of rockets now capable of striking all parts of Israel. They now have thousands upon thousands of rockets that can match the number held by most nations on earth. Al_Quaeda is alive and well (contrary to recent political election propaganda to the contrary) and has issued statements of their solidarity with the Palestinians and there is no telling what they are capable of at any given time as evidenced recently in Benghazi. And of course there is still Iran , racing to become a nuclear player and who even without nuclear is a very strong military power in the region. Iran has funded and supplied arms and rockets to all of the above with the exception of maybe Al-Quaeda.

So why is Israel so much more vulnerable today in my opinion? Because scenario's can play out where Israel could find itself entangled with several(or even all) of these players mentioned above at the same time. Yes, Israel has a super powerful military and the best of equipment and weaponry capable of inflicting massive damage against all of the above. Yes , they have this Iron-Dome to protect against incoming rockets. But this dome is not tested against hundreds and thousands of these rockets coming at them all at once directed at any and all points within Israel. Israel's enemies are capable of creating major damage as well within Israel if the conflict escalates and this wasnt always the case in the conflicts of the past. Yes, Israel has nuclear weapons if they ever became needed for survival but with there enemies all perched so close to Israel, Israel itself would have fallout and major problems as a result of using such weapons.

As surrounding players get stronger , I think Israel can be overrun and destroyed in the years ahead. I dont want to see this. I also want to see the problems of the Palestinians fairly addressed and resolved. Its critical that their be a peaceful solution to all of the current flare-ups in the middle east. If not , Im afraid these nations and people can destroy each other. Every nation on earth needs to step in and offer to help facilitate a peaceful resolution to current list of crisis simultaneously happening in the region. I dont think it should be just the United States. Many of the players distrust the US and their loyalties. It needs to be a coalition of many nations.

Netanyahu needs to tread very carefully before launching an all out assault and ground invasion. Even though he can justify it in my opinion because of the rockets launched against his people, he still needs to weigh the consequence. It could unleash a chain of unforseen events that can bring even more misery on the Jewish people and the Arabs as well that live within Israel. The same chain of unforseen events could be unleashed if he decides to attack Iran. I dont believe the Iron-dome can protect the people within Israel completely if something errupted on several of these fronts. It will protect them quite a bit but I believe massive damage can be inflicted the likes of which Israel has not seen.
I pray peace prevails and good sense prevails in the minds of the leaders on each side.