Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Thomas Friedman, "Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy": Is Friedman Angry at Obama?



Is Thomas Friedman angry at Obama? Is the honeymoon over? In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy," Friedman writes:

"The New York Times Magazine just profiled one of the president’s deputy national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, reporting how he and his aides boasted of using social media, what the writer called a 'largely manufactured' narrative, and a pliant press to, in essence, dupe the country into supporting the Iran nuclear deal. The Donald is not the only one given to knuckleheaded bluster and misrepresentation on foreign policy.

. . . .

President Obama has been patting himself on the back a lot lately for not intervening in Syria. I truly sympathized with how hard that call was — until I heard the president and his aides boasting about how smart their decision was and how stupid all their critics are. The human and geopolitical spillover from Syria is not over. It’s destabilizing the E.U., Lebanon, Iraq, Kurdistan and Jordan. The choices are hellish. I would not want the responsibility for making them. But nobody has a monopoly on genius here, and neither Obama’s victory lap around this smoldering ruin nor Trump’s bombastic and simplistic solutions are pretty to watch."

Or stated otherwise, it took Friedman seven and a half years to understand that Obama and friends have destroyed American credibility and deterrent power. Better late than never, I suppose.

2 comments:

  1. Jeff, it really is not a case of "better late than never".
    This is an example of simple, slippery self-exculpation of a journalist.
    Friedman campaigned on Obama's behalf, vaunting his opinions from his self-proclaimed Olympian heights.
    The damage is done. And now he escapes with a little "scuse me". This is why such self-aggrandizing journalists should not be given the latitude they claim. Will Tom Friedman learn from this? Will it prevent him from vaunting his supervacuous and un-ratified opinions in future? You bet it won't!

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  2. more likely TomFriedman does not like being spun by Ben Rhodes AND relearning of this in the hallowed NYT Sunday Magazine.

    In other sad news:
    http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/05/11/mock-eviction-notices-accusing-israel-of-host-of-crimes-plastered-across-dorms-of-connecticut-college-by-pro-palestinian-student-group/

    unthinkable eight years ago...

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