Friedman's Folly For All Time

I linked here and here last Friday to Little Tommy Friedman of the New York Times in the post about James Poniewozik of Time without really acknowledging the fact that it was the fifth anniversary of “Suck. On. This.” day in which the “serious” New York Times columnist postulated that indiscriminately killing dark-skinned people half a world away is fitting recompense for the horror we suffered on September 11th; no matter how many times I watch that clip, it still makes my blood run cold.

Well, in my naiveté, I somehow held out hope that Friedman would feel a sense of remorse for all that has transpired partly as a result of his incessant cheerleading for the slaughter in Iraq, and I wondered if he felt any culpability at all when I read most of his column two days ago.

But then I read this (re: Friedman’s claim that we don’t have “leverage” in that area of the world)…

…the Bush team has so squandered U.S. power and credibility in the Middle East, and has failed to put in place any effective energy policy, that negotiating with Iran could only end up with us on the short end.

And after doing so, I realized beyond any doubt that Friedman will never acknowledge the role he played in this fiasco (apparently, the "Bush team" makes mistakes in a vacuum as far as he's concerned; indeed, Friedman may yet give us a repeat performance concerning Iran, and some have already accused him of that), never understand that he encouraged this slaughter by misunderstanding both the true nature of the threat and the sorely deficient “leadership” so tirelessly calling for a response against an “enemy” that never attacked us.

And at long last, I also realized that the words “culpability” and “blame” will apparently never exist in Friedman’s vocabulary concerning himself.