(Late) Monday Smackdown: Tom Friedman Really Should Have Retired 20 Years Ago Edition
Duncan Black: Eschaton: Almost Forgot: "Happy 'Suck On This Day'! Has it been 14 years already???..." http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/05/almost-forgot.html
...I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.
[...]
We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, 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.
[...]
What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"
You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?
Well Suck. On. This.
Okay.
That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could...
Duncan Black: Still Sucking: "Yes we laugh at Little Tommy Friedman, age 9... http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/05/still-sucking.html
...and the "Suck. On. This." is extra funny coming from a Very Serious Pundit, but the reason to return to that piece over and over again is "burst the [terrorism] bubble" was the kind of thing that passed for Deep Wisdom at the time. We have long been ruled by idiots...
