Judge not, lest ye be Friedman

Yes, it's Thomas P. Friedman, more frequently addressed as Thomas L. Friedman, Mystax Cholericus, with yet another insight to offer to an astounded public.

Aireekah at regretsy.

This one has to do with his wrath, for the Mustache is wrathful today. He is downright sparked off, in fact. We haven't seen him so indignantly quivering since the Iraq War ended in May 2003.

Yes, of course, May 2003. When did you think the war ended? He took his mustache onto the Charlie Rose show to announce it, on the very same day, May 29, as [jump]
 President Bush announced that the Weapons of Mass Destruction had at last been found, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad; and the mustache began to quiver with indignation as he bethought himself of the Talking Bubble of Terrorism.

The terrorism bubble that built up over the 1990s said flying airplanes into the World Trade Center, that’s Ok. Wrapping yourself with dynamite and blowing up Israelis in the pizza parlour, that’s Ok. Because we’re weak and they’re strong and the weak have a different morality. Having your preachers say that’s Ok? That’s Ok. Having your charities raise money for people who do these kinds of things? That’s Ok. And having your press call people who do these kind of things martyrs? That’s Ok. And that build up as a bubble, Charlie.

OK, so maybe he was expressing himself a little oddly, but still, his emotion was completely genuine. And he's unarguably right, in the sense that all those things that were OK according to the talking bubble of his mystical metaphor or perhaps hallucination are definitely not OK.

What he's upset about today is something of a double bubble, as represented by the hapless brothers Tsarnaev, terrorists of the Boston Marathon finish line, who are now being reported in the Washington Post to have been

‘self-radicalized’ through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and the war in Afghanistan.

The question is—supposing just for the sake of argument that there's something objectionable about the war in Iraq, which ended (apparently for the second time!) with the removal of the last American forces (except for the ones that are still there, of course, which may provide an opportunity for an unprecedented third end to the same war), and the war in Afghanistan—

But what in God’s name does that have to do with planting a bomb at the Boston Marathon and blowing up innocent people? It is amazing to me how we’ve come to accept this non sequitur and how easily we’ve allowed radical Muslim groups and their apologists to get away with it.

Well, I'm not altogether clear to what extent "we" have "allowed" "radical Muslim groups" and "apologists" to "get away with it". (Friedman seems to save his fury for after the war is over, or after the criminals are arrested, in a compulsive way.) But I certainly get the non sequitur part. Indeed, I've been thinking about non sequiturs and terrorism for a while.

Giant soap bubble from The Enchanted Tree.

For example what, in God's name, did your terrorism bubble of ten years ago have to do with planting a vast army in Mesopotamia and blowing up an entire country? Everybody knows what Friedman had to say about that non sequitur ten years ago, chatting on camera with Charlie Rose, youthful jowls shaking:

We needed to go over there basically uhm, and, uh, uhm take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble. And there was only one way to do it because part of that bubble said ‘we’ve got you’ this bubble is actually going to level the balance of power between us and you because we don’t care about life, we’re ready to sacrifice and all you care about is your stock options and your hummers. And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad uhm, and basically saying which part of this sentence don’t  you understand. You don’t think we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy we’re going to just let it go, well suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan,  We hit Iraq, because we could. And that’s the real truth.

Precisely. We're strong and they're weak and the weak have a different morality, so we can tell them to suck on whatever we want, whenever we want to. The non sequitur aspect is part of the program with which the bully establishes his authority: "That's for nothing, Saddam—wanna try something?" Suck on this.

It was one of the mightiest and completest non sequiturs in human history, and Ambassador Wolfowitz and all his mighty intellectuals, and Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice, and Feith and Franks, and the whole misbegotten crew, Apologist-in-Chief Thomas L. Friedman and his spittle-flecked, enraged mustache by no means least, got away with it clean. I'm not saying Friedman belongs in jail, he's just a cheerleader, but it's a shame to have him associated with the Times. The New Republic is too good for him. Is there an Energy CEO Quarterly, with shopping columns (tied to the ads) and party pix?

What a moral dirtbag.

Image from Pure Costumes.