Thomas Friedman: "Iraqis...hate each other more than they love their own kids."

[Eric J in MN]

The quote is from a NY Times op-ed (Select subscribers only) via http://thismodernworld.com/3950

I find it offensive and racist against Arabs.

He wouldn't say that America entered Vietnam because we hated the Vietnamese more than we loved our own kids, or that we entered Afghanistan because we hated people in Afghanistan more than we loved our own kids, or that we entered Iraq because we hated Iraqis more than we loved our own kids.

But Friedman wants to portray Arabs as warring with each other because of lack of love for their kids.

[cali]

1. I agree. It is offensive and racist not to mention

simplistic and stupid. What do you expect from Friedman. He writes and talks in soundbites.

[CJCRANE]

2. Another empty slogan

that sounds convincing.

[choie]

3. Golda Meir

said something similar regarding Palestinians - "when they love their kids as much as they hate the Israelis, there will be peace" (I'm paraphrasing). As if they aren't as human as we are. It IS disgusting.

[Eric J in MN]

12. You're right. Thomas Friedman is basing that off a Golda Meir quote.

That Golda Meir quote seemed fine to me until tonight, when I read Thomas Friedman's version, and I realized that her quote is also dubious.

I doubt she would have said that the US invaded Vietnam because we hated communists more than we loved our kids, but she explained Arab wars against Israel in a similar way.

[silverojo]

4. I believe it's a reference to suicide bombing

When people strap bombs on their kids, that clearly indicates that they value their wars more than their children. No child should be strapped with bombs and sent into enemy territory.

[Richard Steele]

7. You got a LINK to prove that any Iraqi ever strapped a bomb to their own child?

Or are you just positing dehumanizing hypotheticals
in a fashion that could be mistaken for statements
related to actual events?

[Eric J in MN]

8. Friedman is referring to fighting between Sunni and Shiites in general.

Most of the fighting doesn't involved suiced bombing, let alone suicide bombing in which kids are strapped to bombs.

[regnaD kciN]

5. ...but not as much as WE hate them...

Right, Tommy?

:puke:

[Richard Steele]

6. Typical RW crapaganda; their opponents du jour are always somehow "less than fully human".

Just like asians have no concern for individual human life,
and negros are only 3/5ths of a person.

Same racist bullshit, different day. Friedman is a pathetic
excuse for a man.

He doesn't reach 3/5ths human on his best day; and his best days
are few and far between.

[BlueManDude]

9. they're supposed to be grateful that we have invaded and occupied their country.

[Eric J in MN]

13. Yes, that is another implication by Thomas Friedman in the pasage.

===================
Visiting Centcom commander, Adm. William Fallon, chats with the hospital staff, who are all here on different rotations — 30 days, 60 days, 180 days. He asks how they coordinate everyone. A voice from the back, an American nurse, says: “We’re all on the same team, sir.” I look around the room. I see African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans — the whole melting pot that is America — working together. Half are women, including mothers who have left their families for long stretches to serve here.

We don’t deserve such good people — neither do Iraqis if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids."
===================

[BlueManDude]

16. I hear this from my RW friends - we're doing all the right things but they're too savage to...

appreciate it.

[leftchick]

10. he is a war pig

see this....

By Norman Solomon, CounterPunch. Posted September 7, 2007.

Nowadays you'll read the NYT's Thomas Friedman decrying the "madness that is Iraq," but the real Friedman is the man who called invading Iraq "one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad."

Hooked on War: Thomas Friedman's Deadly Addiction

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/61853/

The column, under a Baghdad dateline, is boilerplate Friedman: sprinkled with I-am-here anecdotes and breezy geopolitical nostrums. For years now, the man widely touted as America's most influential journalist has indicated that his patience with the war in Iraq might soon run out. But, like the media establishment he embodies, Friedman can't bring himself to renounce a war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue.

On the last day of November 2003 -- eight months after the invasion -- Friedman gushed that "this war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan." He lauded the Iraq war as "one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad."

But the assumptions built into a Friedman column are murky outside the context of his worldview. "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist," Friedman wrote approvingly in one of his explaining-the-world bestsellers. "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

Those words appeared in Friedman's book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but the passage first surfaced (with a few tweaks of syntax) in the New York Times Magazine on March 28, 1999, near the end of a long piece adapted from the book. Filling almost the entire cover of the magazine was a red-white-and-blue fist, with the caption "What The World Needs Now" and a smaller-type explanation: "For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is."

[aquart]

11. Friedman continues to be an idiot.

At least he's consistent.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

14. The Union and the Confederacy

Hated each other more than they loved their kids.

[live love laugh]

15. Very racist and very much like the way Black crime is dismissed in America. nt

[slowry]

17. w - h - a - t- ? n - t

[gratuitous]

18. More tough talk from the progenitor of the Friedman Unit

From his "suck on this" faux macho posturing before the invasion down to the present day, Mr. Friedman has been a reliable volunteer of other people's lives to buttress his fantasyland talking points. Some of you may die in the effort to prove Mr. Friedman right or wrong, but that's a chance he's willing to take.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

19. I wonder how the Friedman unit is working out for tommy?

:asshat:

[bhumikag]

20. confused

if Friedman likes to quote golda meir( she said this about Palestinians: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian” no one should be confused about his views on Arabs..he is NOT their fan

about US entering Iraq..Friedman championed Iraq war in the beginning calling it "noble" and now he is against it(or that is what it seems..)..his portrayal of Arabs the way u mentioned is, I think, his way to justify his previous position

bhumika
politics desk,the newsroom