Dean's Weblog

Well, not being much up on this so-called "blogging" thing, I'm not sure if/when/how it's appropriate to post a comment to someone else's "blog". That being said, I feel compelled to plunge right in re: this Tom Friedman article.

Dean, if you are posting this article as a statement of what you would say about the situation if you had the time or the journalistic skills or whatever, I have to say that I am very disappointed. I think this piece is a well-enough-written piece of broad overstatement. While it may be amusing, and while it certainly leaves no doubt as to where he stands on this issue - if indeed there is exactly an issue to take a stand on - it strikes me as dangerous to the point of being irresponsible.

I've found one sentence in the piece that I agree with wholeheartedly: "Having France working with us in Iraq, rather than against us in the world, would be so beneficial for both nations and for the Arabs' future." Who could argue with that? But I can't think that we are well-served by riling up resentment against France at a time when we absolutely need world cooperation. I may not be any Madeline Allbright, but it doesn't seem to me that we gain anything but increased touchiness all around by overstating an already-troublesome situation this way.

"France's campaign Operation America Must Fail" - good grief! I can only imagine what you would have to say to me if I presented such a ridiculously overblown bit of writing to you from Harpers or any of my other Leftist sources. I'm sure it's fun for Friedman to write such stuff; everybody loves to overstate their case almost to the point of farce, after all, and especially when there is a quasi-legitimate chance to get a dig in at those pompous Frenchies, but this does not foster responsible, solution-oriented thinking. If his basic premise is that France is being difficult over the issue of what to do with/to/about Iraq, or that it is surely in the best interests of all involved (I guess that would be pretty much the whole world) for the US and the European nations (not to mention Iraq) to cooperate to find a solution to the governance of Iraq, I couldn't agree more. But the way to get there isn't by exaggerating our differences and taking little jabs at each other.

Good thing I'm not in charge, as I often say. But it's a good thing Tom Friedman isn't in charge either, and I hope those who are will stay far away from this kind of rhetoric.

I could only wish that Tom Friedman really was overstating his case "almost to the point of farce", but I'm afraid he may not be. I've certainly been impressed with the other things he has had to say about Iraq and the Middle East - many of them none to kindly toward the current administration.

I think that a key issue is whether the French are at all interested in creating a stable, democratic and peaceful Iraq, or instead are most interested in using Iraq to try and "rein in" the United States. Tom Friedman is certainly not alone in believing that France's main goal has little to do with causing good things to happen in Iraq and much to do with opposing the U.S.

Here's an item from Andrew Sullivan's weblog (http://www.andrewsullivan.com) commenting on an article in L'Express (in French at http://www.lexpress.fr/express/info/monde/dossier/irak2/dossier.asp) that makes much the same point:
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FROM THE FRENCH: An email from my France correspondent, catching me up on the latest grotesqueries from perfidious Paris:

An article in this week's L'Express pretty much lays bare France's diplomatic aim on the US-Iraq-UN front, namely, to revamp the UN as a useful weapon against the US. This poisonous article has to be read to be believed, but basically the theme is that Bush's offer to get the UN involved again in Iraq is a "poisoned present" that only a "dupe" would accept, but that nonetheless the demarche offers a not-to-be-missed opportunity to restore both "credibility" and "diplomatic survival" to the UN and its Security Council, which alone can hope to control the "all powerful" US. Anyway, here's the last paragraph: "In the name of their credibility, and of their diplomatic survival, the UN and its Security Council can't afford to miss the opportunity to bring back the all-powerful America into the fold and to retake some semblance of initiative on the critically important Iraq dossier. But it remains to measure their hypothetical power, once more, by the measuring stick of concessions from Washington." I reread the article, you know, looking for something about doing good work amongst people who could sorely use some, and found nothing. And there's nothing about bringing democracy to the Middle East either. It's all about bringing the US to heel.

And what else do the French care about?
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It seems likely that if we believe that the French are actually interested in being partners in creating a safe, stable, democratic Iraq, then we should behave in one way. On the other hand, if the French are only interested in using Iraq to try and beat concessions out of the U.S., then we should behave very differently.

Unfortunately, solution-oriented thinking requires an agreement on what "problem" one is trying to solve.