By R. Congress
Poor US of A! crack NYT pundit Tom (always wrong) Friedman was wailing in today's Sunday Times (12/5/10) over the mess that our great value-laden republic finds itself in over that wayward, incorrigible Middle East. They will never behave! Even among our allies we have corrupt government officials pocketing our money (Afghanistan, among others), double-dealing nations that want us to solve their problems and take the heat, or who aid fundamentalist America/Israel-hating Islamic groups (the Saudis) and the Taliban (Pakistan) Well, Pakistan and Afghanistan are not really the Mid East, but why quibble?.They are supposedly helping us to fight against the groups they are aiding on the sly. For Friedman the Wikileaks revelations just underscore how Uncle Sam, that naive,affable chump, is being taken for a ride by those crafty, swarthy A-rabs
But we brought it on ourselves, Friedman complains. The U.S. is addicted to oil and thus dependent upon the Saudi rulers and other oil producing states for this vital resource. So now we have no leverage to get those Mid Easterners to change their corrupt and devious ways so we can win our multiple wars for democracy and against terrorism and once and for all straighten out those people who are giving such a hard time to... us, the USA, the leader of the fee... I mean free world... you know, the West!, with its top drawer values of honesty and democracy.
Whining, round earth leftists question poor Uncle Sam's motives and try to drag in irrelevant items like the historically verifiable, indiscriminate mass murder Washington has visited upon, say, Vietnam, Palestine (by proxy) Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. (But it's only collateral, accidental, damage -- to get one really bad guy it's necessary to wipe out six or eight other people.) Anyway, we shouldn't listen to those wet blankets. They even say that the USA is full of corruption and fuels it abroad. Don't these miscreants know that, especially since the latest ruling by the Supremes, corruption in the USA is now perfectly legal!
Not only has the USA lost its leverage in the Mid East because of its oil consumption, but it has lost leverage in the whole world because of its massive borrowing and its debt to China. When the "indispensable nation" can't throw its weight around and make those countries populated by brown and yellow people jump, then civilization as we know it is in jeopardy.
Rodney King asked "why can't we all just get along?" Tom Friedman asks, "why can't we just go green and live within our means?" I mean, really, America, just shape up! Demand electric, solar and nuclear powered cars. Stop buying Chinese imports... or something like that, maybe. But free trade shouldn't be tampered with (says Friedman in his flat-earth books).
Well, whatever the solution is, this is serious!
* referencing, of course, that literary defender of 19th Century British colonialism, Rudyard Kipling. Someone might object that now we have a non-white president of the USA. My reply is "deeds, not words...or melanin."
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