There's no IED explosion on Mr. Friedman's resume. No years spent as a linebacker in the NFL.
Still, here's what he wrote under the title "5 Principles for Iraq" in the Sunday Review at NY Times. ISIS had already taken Mosul, so this is nothing if not a war plan.
To begin with Friedman speaks of the ordinary Syrians and Iraqis as though their nations are manned by incompetent children. They are immature, incapable of governing themselves. All but Wards of the State... if there was any effective State over there willing to take them on.
Please, allow me to summarize Friedman's "5 Principles" at a 5th Grade level:
1. Iraq and Syria are disintegrating. Among all the Arab tribes and other people who live there, only the Kurds are interested in broadly based political systems and national economies. "Other than the Kurds, we have no friends in the fight."
2. “No victor, no vanquished” is the only motto that can produce stability anywhere in the Middle East. Any solution has to start there. In contrast,"fighting over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad from the 7th century" as the Sunni vs. Shi'ia rivalry gets top billing for local motivation.
3. Iran's General Suleimani, the man who is organizing the fight against ISIS, is addressed personally with this claim: "'This Bud’s for you.' Now your forces are overextended in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and ours are back home." Apparently for Freidman it is a mistake to have your career military go into battle. (ISIS taking Mosul in Iraq a week earlier than this piece getting published is not addressed.)
4. Najimaldin Omar Karim, a Kurdish neurosurgeon by training, formerly practicing in America, is the model for leadership.
5. "Finally, while none of the main actors in Iraq, other than Kurds, are fighting for our values, is anyone there even fighting for our interests: a minimally stable Iraq that doesn’t threaten us? And whom we can realistically help? The answers still aren’t clear to me, and, until they are, I’d be very wary about intervening."
Looking back one
Friedman Unit / six-months of time, what he had to say looks brain damaged.
Taken as an example of ill informed, destructive advice this piece is the worst of it from Friedman.
ISIS had just sent a horde of psychopaths down into Iraq. They got help by bribing former-Saddam loyalists and started a campaign of mass murder, kidnapping, rape, vandalism, and torture. They started with an estimated 12,000 raiders and eventually swelled that to 20,000 overall. So what do we get here from Friedman ??? He writes for his audience, the American business community, that the proper attitude is to be "wary about intervening."
One can imagine the responses to this article in the bowels of Iran's intelligence service. Had Friedman become another Colbert character, doing it 24/7/365 ?
And of course there is no mention that ISIS had been created by the Saudi intelligence service, as admitted by Bandar bin Sultan. No mention of the flow of the Syrian war, of the roles of the various Saudi-backed al Qaeda-clone militias.
No mention that J. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, was the dictator who kicked the Iraqi Sunnis out of their jobs after the 2002 invasion. Banned them from employment in any national organization based on their individual tribal identities. Dismissed the 400,000 trained soldiers and officers of the Iraqi military. No mention that Bremer had served the goals of Perpetual War by forcing the insurgency that followed on for years after his reign.
No mention that the Saudis finance a bombing campaign (2002 to present) that has targeted Shi'ia civilians by the thousands.
No mention that Iran's Quds/Jerusalem Force had a couple battalions (6,000 men) fighting the al-Qaeda offshoots in Syria. That Lebanon's Hizb Allah had something on four times that number of soldiers in the same fight. No mention that ISIS and al-Nusrah are America's enemies.
Basic facts ??? Missing more than present. Facts are at odds with whatever it is that Friedman is selling.
And please, don't blame the local Iraqi Sunnis for these slaughters. Local Sunni tribes in Iraq had never, ever in the modern era carried out bombings on Shi'ia civilians. Or carried out other such mass murders. Baathist regimes were never sectarian -- Saddam was Sunni, the Assads are Shi'ia and both applied Baathism's form of nationalism to advance their country's development. The Baathists built schools and clinics and hospitals.
Atrocities under Saddam were meted out with equal opportunity. The Marsh Arabs are Shi'ia and they got hammered on a par with slaughters of Kurds, who are a mix of Shi'ia and Sunni. Saddam killed hundreds when an assassination hit his regime -- location was the trigger, not sect.
In Syria the whole of the economy went up together. Between 1990 and 2010 the per capita annual income went up from $1,800 to $5,200. That's about what you got with China. And the new lamb feed lots went in by the dozens, raising the protein content of the national diet. Shi'ia and Sunni and Kurd areas went up more or less together with urban areas in the lead.
Baathism approximates the "no victor, no vanquished" theme. Not that Friedman or his audience know jack about Baathism.
Dr. Karim is a fine man. He's the governor for Kirkuk. But why on earth would NY Times or any other news organization present him as the leader for carrying out this war with ISIS ??? He's a manager, not a military guy.
Offering an alcoholic beverage to Qassim Suleimani -- albeit hyperbolically -- has to be the bottom for Friedman's jests. Quds Force and their allies in AAH, Badr, Hizb Allah, Peshmerga, the Sunni tribes, and regular ISF (Iraqi Security Force) have been giving up lives steadily to defeat the Salafi mad men in Syria and Iraq, now focusing on ISIS.
Old men from the Persian side of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War are over in Iraq training recruits for the big push surrounding and retaking Mosul later this winter. Several have been killed, gray beards or no.
Whether Friedman understood it or not, this is a Coalition of willing participants. They are there because they want to be there. Risk of death included. Revulsion at the Salafi ISIS runs deep all across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Pretty much equally for Sunni and Shi'ia.
On the ground these days carrying out a "surround and annihilate" siege against ISIS is not a bullshit operation like "The Surge." Pushing AQI/ISIS around in 2007/2008 was useless; you have to kill them to win. The goal at al-Qusayr, Tikrit, Amerli, Jurf al-Sakhar has been to kill ISIS to the man.
So far, so good.
Kinda the absolute opposite to Friedman's "wary of intervening" and a military opposite to "The Surge." Long on results, short on careerist bxllshxt.
At end of year 2014 this is a war where the anti-ISIS Coalition is killing the xxxx out of the psychos, a couple thousand a month. Since Mosul the Coalition has won every set-piece battle.
Still, that's not what hits the pages at corporate media. Not the corporate line.
Iran put two battalions/~6,000 troops into Syria along with ~25,000 Hizb Allah career soldiers. Along with the Kurds and Assad's people they are playing to win. Iran put similar numbers of troops into Iraq along with the Old Guy volunteer trainers and house-to-house experts from Hizb Allah.
Within a week of ISIS taking Mosul, they had formed alliances with everybody who matters. The Coalition in Iraq is also playing to win.
Bodies count.
America kept roughly 120,000 troops in Iraq for a decade. 4,475 US military dead and 32,221 wounded in action overall. At most a few hundred learned Arabic; on the Iraqi side they mostly hate us for our brutality at 1,455,000 civilian TEDs.
Iran's got 12,000+ on the ground. They kinda know what they're doing: nobody rides around cities in HUMVEE jeeps trying to get blown up. They'll lose a few hundred soldiers and officers, maybe a thousand. They've all learned Arabic. Nobody in Iraq hates them but the Salafis.
That's pretty much the real story. Not in the interests of the Perpetual War Party? Not good for profiteers? Those fxckxrs want this fight to last two or three years. The more civilians get killed, the better.
Maybe that's the key to "wary about intervening." The longer the war goes on, the more people get killed. The more money gets made.
Follow the money.