Dear Mr. Friedman: Suck On This

In response to Tom Friedman's column today:

Dear Mr. Friedman:

No, sir, you did not support the Iraq war because we might transform, or collaborate in transforming, Iraq into a democracy. You said, in your column right here, that after 9/11 we needed to do something to show the Arab world and Al-Qaeda that we were still capable of strong military response, and that Iraq was as good a place as any. It came down to, in one of your columns, nothing more nor less than 'because we could', and, as 'winning progressive' points out above, in one of your TV interviews, a schoolyard bully's 'Suck on this!' You do not get off as easily as you would like.

Your 'And, of course, Iraqis paid dearly as well' is appallingly glib. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees, destroyed infrastructure, looted antiquities, the movement into the power vacuum of people with no interest whatever in democracy. You don't mention Abu Ghraib, white phosphorus bombs, or the $9 billion in cash that vanished. The improbable empowerment of the Iranian theocrats in a country with which they fought a savage, pointless war.

And you didn't mention in your column the name of a single dissenter, offering that opinion before the war. There were a few. Some inspect nuclear weapons sites for a living. Some write in the very newspaper for which you write. One, even, serves to this day as president of the United States.

Not well played, Mr. Friedman. Not well played at all. It won't wash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/opinion/friedman-the-end-for-now.html?_r=1