Thomas Friedman defends Iraq, again. And wants more too?

Maybe I will seriously consider the NY Times' paywall only when the paper seriously rethinks having Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd as columnists.  Most of their columns are just fluff, or worse.

I am only now catching up with Friedman's column, thanks to conference stuff. (editor: when will you catch up with your classes? Awshutupalready!)  I had a metaphorical falling off the chair moment when I read this in his ranting:

The Arab world desperately needs its versions of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk — giants from opposing communities who rise above tribal or Sunni-Shiite hatreds to forge a new social compact. The Arab publics have surprised us in a heroic way. Now we need some Arab leaders to surprise us with bravery and vision. That has been so lacking for so long.
Another option is that an outside power comes in, as America did in Iraq, and as the European Union did in Eastern Europe, to referee or coach a democratic transition between the distrustful communities in these fractured states. But I don’t see anyone signing up for that job.

WTF! What a horrible "liberal" warmonger Friedman has been and continues to be!  Hey, here is an idea--even if those countries slip into civil war, which is their problem to begin with, why not employ your own Friedman Unit to advocate for patience?  You know, tell the American public that in six months those civil wars will turn a corner and, therefore, the US should simply stay out?  And then say the same thing again when the six months end. And again. And again. 

We need pundits to tell us the complex stories in language simple enough for all of us to understand.  Carl Sagan was a master at that. Paul Krugman does it well. Friedman, however, increasingly is being merely simplistic. Awful.

Why are Kristof and Friedman afraid of our messy democracy?

Of course, I yell and scream about how messed up the American democracy is.  But then I am not stupid enough to suggest that these democratic processes--the checks and balances, in particular--that we have are the worst form of democracy.

Yet, that is what both Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman do.  Friedman I can understand--over the last few years the guy has been wandering off on his own and sometimes I even wonder why the NY Times has him on the payroll.  Well, he is better than Maureen Dowd :)

But, et tu, Kristof? WTF!

In his column today, Kristof writes:

In my travels lately, I’ve been trying to explain to Libyans, Egyptians, Bahrainis, Chinese and others the benefits of a democratic system. But if Congressional Republicans actually shut down the government this weekend, they will be making a powerful argument for autocracy. Chinese television will be all over the story.

Hello?  This is one fantastic example of democracy in action.  I disagree with the stupidity of both the GOP and the Dems, but this is what representative democracy means.  In fact, I wish they had argued like this every time any President felt that penile urge to bomb the shit out of some country or the other. 

The more I think about it, Kristof can do us all a great service by showcasing this political show(down) as a classic example of representative democracy. 

The only consolation is that Kristof at least did not lead towards a conclusion that Friedman wrote a few months ago:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

Really, Mr. Friedman?  I can think a lot more worse things before I get anywhere near the messy system we have in place.  And that was not even the worst line; he added:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Look away and puke, dear reader.  Don't mess up your keyboard!

Americans do the right thing--after trying Republicans and everything else

Every once in a rare while Maureen Dowd writes something that is worth quoting; in her latest column, Dowd writes about President Obama:

In 2008, the message was him. The promise was him. And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him. 

That is a neat way to summarize the dynamics of this election.  Which is also why it is bloody dangerous to have personality-driven politics and leaders.  Bill Clinton's re-election was not about Clinton the person at all--not with all that baggage he carried around.  But, during the campaign season, the stock that Obama sold was himself, and now as President he has a tougher problem making a repeat sale.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof, who seems to have taken time off from the gruesome stories that otherwise he forces us to recognize, wants us to give Obama a break:

go ahead and hold Mr. Obama’s feet to the fire. He deserves to be held accountable. But let’s not allow economic malaise to cloud our judgment and magnify America’s problems in ways that become self-fulfilling.

I am not so sure about this argument. 

The problem is that the alternative, in terms of Republican leadership, is an even more pathetic joke.  If the GOP takes over the house, Kevin McCarthy will become number 3?  I remember him from my days in Bakersfield, and a few days ago I watched him on C-Span and the guy is as lacking as ever.  At least Bill Thomas, whose retirement paved the way for McCarthy, was a really sharp guy and, unfortunately, even more ruthless!

So, to some extent, I am with Paul Krugman who is worried about a Republican Congress:

This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

However, I wish, for the nth time, that Krugman would be less shrill and less hyperbolic, and engaged more like the economist he is; did he really have to write "Be afraid. Be very afraid" ...?


David Brooks lays out what Obama's problem is going to be if (when?) Republicans take over the House (and Senate?):

[If] Obama is to rebound, he is going to have to suppress his natural competitive instincts. If he gets caught up in the Beltway fight club, the Republicans will emerge as the party of limited government and he’ll emerge as the spokesman for big government — surely a losing proposition.

Thomas "master manipulator of metaphors" Friedman, too, has something sensible, for a change, when he writes on why this election matters, as he looks at it from India while talking with some of his favorites (does Friedman talk to the 400 million poor there, I wonder!):

It looks, said Srivastava, as if “what is happening in America is a loss of self-confidence. We don’t want America to lose self-confidence. Who else is there to take over America’s moral leadership? American’s leadership was never because you had more arms. It was because of ideas, imagination, and meritocracy.” If America turns away from its core values, he added, “there is nobody else to take that leadership. Do we want China as the world’s moral leader? No. We desperately want America to succeed.”
This isn’t just so American values triumph. With a rising China on one side and a crumbling Pakistan on the other, India’s newfound friendship with America has taken on strategic importance. “It is very worrying to live in a world that no longer has the balance of power we’ve had for 60 years,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “That is why everyone is concerned about America.”

Well, we--in the US and in the entire world--will find out real soon.

My long term bets are always on the good ol' US of A.  As Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.”  And with a Republican victory in the midterms, we would have exhausted everything, and we will start doing the right thing.

Economic recovery depends on "gas now, brake later"?

The first time I came across the phrase was in this piece in the Economist:

Mr Obama’s fiscal policy has been described as “gas now, brake later”: wider deficits in the near term to keep the economy out of depression (which would risk even bigger deficits), followed by a switch to deficit reduction to cap the rise in the national debt. The switch, however, remains a future abstraction.

So, who actually coined that phrase anyway?  (I'll admit that it is too darn "cute" a metaphor.  So, it can't be Thomas Friedman ... muahahaha)
A Google search for "gas now, brake later" points only to the Economist as a source for it.  So, ahem, the Economist making things up but does not want to claim ownership and wants to pretend that it is something like a well-accepted descriptor of the current administration's economic policies?  Hey, whatsup?

Anyway, where will this sticky gas pedal metaphor take the US?

Fortunately, America has time. Its favourable demographic trends mean its fiscal day of reckoning is further off than Europe’s and the dollar’s reserve-currency status provides manoeuvring room. Yet this may not be the blessing it seems. Getting politicians to take the deficit seriously may well be impossible unless the bond market forces them. For now Europe’s crisis has done exactly the opposite: as investors flee the euro, the dollar has soared and Treasury yields have plunged. There is not much incentive to take the foot off the gas-pedal and apply the brakes just yet.

Great!

Iraq invasion: the re-writing is in full swing :(

I might not always agree with Glenn Greenwald.  Well, I mostly agree with him, and rarely disagree with his views!  But, there is no denying that he is one sharp thinker, never one to rant but always strong with evidence to back him up ... If I get into trouble, it is someone like Greenwald that I want on my side.
In this piece that he has on how the Iraq invasion is being quickly and easily retold by the likes of Thomas Friedman, Greenwald gets to the issue so easily as that damn warm knife through butter:

It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq.  For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives.  There's no question -- as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects -- that it's now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq).  It's nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing -- or, in Friedman's case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant -- the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses.  But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of "Washington insiders"-- because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.  Forget all those innocent dead people and destruction you caused; it all worked out in the end.

Yes, it is quite close to nauseating.

Stereotyping people based on their favorite NY Times writer

This (ht) is funny; how come some people are so creative?

Maureen Dowd
Women who remember fondly the first time they got their period.
Thomas Friedman
Men who refer to young women as "young lady."
Nicholas D. Kristof
People who are terrified others will find out that they don't actually read the NYTimes.
David Pogue
Your friend who sneers whenever they hear the phrase "social media expert" yet call themselves that.
Guy Trebay
Your friend's friend who always forgets to pay their part of the bill.
Frank Rich
People who spit when they talk.
Andrew Pollack
That guy your spouse knows who paid to have his whole genealogy mapped out.
Paul Krugman
People who realize that he's better looking than George Clooney.
David Brooks
People who recognize a fellow D&D player when they see ‘em.
Gail Collins
Your aunt in Boston.

[Lauren Leto's got a WordPress blog, because Tumblr's for pansies. Truth. She's based out of Detroit, counting fat stacks of cash from her book, Texts From Last Night, which you probably contributed to inadvertently. She also wrote an awesome blog post about who your favorite author is that she'll probably also get a book deal for. I say: If you're in a bar with people from Detroit, make sure they're on your side.]

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@gawker.com

It is not "global warming." It is "global weirding"

After a long time, Thomas Friedman has a column that is quite good.  I wonder why he can't stay focused and produce quality ones like this ....
In particular, I liked this observation:

Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.
The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

But, the final paragraph is total blah.  Maybe he needed to fill in the space, eh!

Quote of the day

"Work somewhere in a soup kitchen or something if you can’t take the pressure."

I suppose this is a rephrasing of "if you can't stand the heat ...." Anyway, that is California's governor quoted in Maureen Dowd's column.  I cannot understand though why that is a column--it is more like Dowd reporting on a meeting/interview.  Where is the analysis/insight?  I say this not because I am not a fan of Dowd.  Well, of course, I am not a fan of Dowd; but, that is beside the point.

Speaking of NY Times columns, Frank Rich, as always, has a good commentary and with hyperlinks.  Nicholas Kristoff has taken a break from detailing something on the freaky side of unfortunate aspects of lives somewhere, and has a neat column on an offbeat and upbeat experience. The good thing about Thomas Friedman's column is that he does not lead with how he had yet another insightful conversation at lunch with somebody.  The bad news is that his penchant for manipulating metaphors is right at the title for the column! 

How Thomas Friedman loses credibility .... the little bit left

I watched the re-run of the Daily Show (getting old to stay up late!!!) and was shocked at Thomas Friedman's honest admission that he over-reacted to the 9/11 incident, and that the country over-reacted.
I disagree with that--the guy is trying to back-pedal so that he can continue with his punditry. 
Friedman over-reacted, and the Bush-Cheney crowd also did when they hastily trained their guns on Iraq.  And Friedman was notorious for his constant pontificating that things will turn a corner in a few months--so much so that it earned a well-deserved "Friedman unit" measure, which can also be neatly abbreviated to "FU"!  Those were the errors. 
To have gone in the way we did, along with support from pretty much the entire world, and to dislodge the Taliban government was absolutely the right thing to do.  There was no over-reaction there.
It was sheer arrogance, combined with stupidity, to have left Afghanistan unfinished at that time, and then to have allowed it to fester for seven years.
Nice try, Mr. Friedman.  I am not buying it.

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The only sensible part of Friedman's crappy column

I wonder if Thomas Friedman outsourced his column :-)  It was a whole lotta blah, blah and blah.  What was the only sensible part?  His statement (not an argument, because of all the blahs) for "So what do we do?":

The standard answer is that we need better leaders. The real answer is that we need better citizens. We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay, yes, higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble.

I agree with him here.  If only people will forget that no president or governor can be the game-changer and that, in fact, the constitution divvies up the powers so well that the power really lies only with the people.  But, if we doze off, well, then that is what we deserve.

My classes are wonderful examples of this.  (Not about dozing!)  When I present students with the petroleum issues--who the exporters are, and how anti-democratic most are--they immediately see how our oil consumption then ends up supporting those nutcases.  If more citizens understood this concept, well, not only will we be better off, the entire planet will be better off.  And oil is only one such issue ....

Power to the people, indeed. 

The imbalance between production and consumption: a tale of US and China

Robert Reich has a neat observation:

Both societies are threatened by the disconnect between production and consumption. In China, the threat is civil unrest. In the U.S., it's a prolonged jobs and earnings recession that, when combined with widening inequality, could create political backlash.

Reich makes a great point that China's export-driven, Yuan-pegged-to-the-dollar, approach that is so much focused on production is a social policy.  Of course, this is not anything new; Friedman, in his metaphor-driven style, compared this to the movie Speed where a minimum speed has to be maintained or else the bus blows up.

But, what is China's endgame in this approach?  Let us say that in 2039 China is one rich country.  Will it still be the Commie-facade economy?  I simply do not understand what is next in China's speeding bus.  The more I think about this, the more I think of my nutty bottom line, and the next game-changing event of history.  And neither one is a good scenario to look forward to.

Israel/Palestine: quote of the day

“When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

 Thomas Friedman in the NY Times

One party democracy. Send in the clowns.

I have mentioned this before, and I will repeat it forever: Thomas Friedman writes good columns when he stays away from metaphors. The latest NY Times column is an example of a good column; excerpt:

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.

The Republicans are being utterly irresponsible. I mean, aren't representatives supposed to act on behalf of their constituents, and not merely react all the time?
Send in the clowns.

The United Printing Press, er, States of America :-(

Every once in a while, the master manipulator of metaphors, Thomas Friedman, comes up with something really, really good. Like this from his column:

Sometimes, I worry, though, that what oil money is to Russia, our ability to print money is to America. Look at the billions we just printed to bail out two dinosaurs: General Motors and Chrysler.

Lately, there has been way too much talk about minting dollars and too little about minting our next Thomas Edison, Bob Noyce, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Vint Cerf, Jerry Yang, Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, Bill Joy and Larry Page. Adding to that list is the only stimulus that matters. Otherwise, we’re just Russia with a printing press.

Hey, give credit where it is due, eh!

More on Obama's Cairo speech: fatigue!

At a dinner at a friend's place, I commented that Obama's speech was perhaps more well received in the West than in the Middle East. I am actually tired of his big speeches; of course, the problems are immense and varied, and big speeches maybe needed. But, I think I am developing Obama fatigue. It will be neat if for a few days he can kind of lie low and let others do the speechifying!

I agree with the following comment in Cohen's column in the NY Times:

“Some of his sentences and paragraphs are a little complicated for the average listener. It sounds as though he thinks he’s speaking to the M.I.T. faculty or the New York Times editorial board.”

Indeed!

And how about this also from Cohen:

All the rhetorical groundwork the president has now laid — on Iran, Israel-Palestine, the Muslim world — will come to nothing if high principle is not matched by street-smart cunning and maneuver. Obama’s got to get off the podium and down into the bazaar if he’s going to come home with the goods.

Yep. This is what I was telling my friends at the dinner table. Which is also why I do not agree with Friedman's comment that it is not Obama but the Middle East countries that ought to act; Friedman writes:

“It’s not what he says, but what he does,” many said. No, ladies and gentlemen of the Middle East, it is what he says and what you do and what we do.

Nandan Nilekani v. Deepak Chopra

The mustache is the difference; otherwise they look alike?

The youth are screwed

When Thomas Friedman doesn't write as the master manipulator of metaphors, he makes a lot of sense and clearly articulates his argument. Such as this one:

Since the last debate, John McCain and Barack Obama have unveiled broad ideas about how to restore the nation’s financial health. But they continue to suggest that this will be largely pain-free. McCain says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true.

We are all going to have to pay, because this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.”

Never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the Bush years. Under George W. Bush, America has foisted onto future generations a huge financial burden to finance our current tax cuts, wars and now bailouts. Just paying off those debts will require significant sacrifices. But when you add the destruction of wealth that has taken place in the last two months in the markets, and the need for more bailouts, you understand why this is not going to be a painless recovery.

The Bush team leaves us with another debt — one to Mother Nature. We have added tons more CO2 into the atmosphere these last eight years, without any mitigation effort.

Well, my intro class students know really well the argument about burdens being shifted to future generations--even they have started referring to how much their futures are screwed :-( They have pretty much adopted as their slogan "we are screwed". I am to be blamed though, as their blog posts make it clear.

Thomas Friedman: Master Manipulator of Metaphors

Maybe I should copyright "Master Manipulator of Metaphors" :-)
Gregg Easterbrook starts his review of Friedman's latest multi-million dollar generator, er, book, with:

Buzz. BUZZZZZZZZZ. There are so many buzz phrases in Thomas Friedman's new book that it practically vibrates in your hand. Code Green. Day-trading for electrons. Green is the new red, white, and blue. Subprime planet. Petrodictatotrships. The Common Era, Friedman tells us, should be supplanted by the Energy Climate Era; the year is 1ECE.

So, Easterbrook was expecting something other than buzz phrases? As always, Easterbrook does a wonderful job. I liked his jab: "The cynical view is that his embrace of max-PC alarums about global warming is Friedman's bid to make everyone forget he pounded the table in favor of an American invasion of Iraq." Good point, man!

And then Easterbrook writes,

He presents many examples of higher world resource demand, noting that even if
America cuts back, reductions here will be swamped by increases elsewhere: "The
biggest downside [of globalization] is that in raising standards of living,
globalization is making possible much higher levels of production and
consumption by many more people." Yet if resource trends and climate change are
driven by rising population and rising affluence, which of these, precisely, do
you propose to ban?

More troubles for Friedman:

his factual assertions are impossible to weigh, since Hot, Flat, and Crowded
contains no footnotes or source notes. Friedman asserts, for instance: "In fact,
the American pet food industry spends more each year on R&D than the
American utilities industry does." Good luck figuring out the "in fact" part.

And then:

Friedman's book-talk schedule for the first month alone of Hot, Flat, and Crowded promotion requires jet aircraft trips that, the calculator at Terra Pass estimates, will generate about 3 tons of carbon dioxide—the same as driving a Hummer for almost half a year. Friedman counsels, "[P]ersonally lead as environmentally sustainable a life as you can" but himself lives in a 11,400-square-foot mansion, whose carbon footprint may be visible from orbit. Rather than address this straight on, he squirms to paint his lifestyle green ... Friedman can't bring himself to admit he is lord of a manor and racing through more resources in his daily life than 10,000 rural Africans.

I do agree with Easterbrook on this point:

First, the author. Few who reach the top of any occupation have remained so hard-working, intellectually curious, and professionally conscientious. Despite considerable personal means, Friedman is in constant transcontinental motion, including to not-glamorous parts of the world, and constantly exposes himself to criticism by speaking at colleges.

BTW, before you jump into any conclusion that I am a global warming denier: no, I am not.
Also, youcan save yourself the few dollars by not buying Friedman's book. Instead, you can read a much better version of Friedman's argument, which was a neat, short, and to-the-point essay in Foreign Policy. Easterbrook also refers to this essay. I have used it in my classes too. It is in such essays that Friedman shines. And I like his metaphor of "First Law of Petropolitics."

The world is curved. No, it is flat. How about spiky?

Not too long ago, Thomas Friedman--the master manipulator of metaphors--asserted that the world is flat. The book earned him quite a few million dollars, I am sure, and then he went on to talk and write about a green revolution--about green energy--apparently oblivious that the green revolution is a phrase that is already under use. Now, thanks to Friedman the popularizer of metaphors, people are going to the forget the importance of improving agricultural productivity in poorer countries--the green revolution--which ought to be the #1 global priority.

One of the best critiques of Friedman's metaphor came from Edward Leamer, an economist at UCLA. He had a fantastic prologue to the book review:

When the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World
is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, I responded with enthusiasm, knowing it wouldn’t
take much effort on my part. As soon as I received a copy of the book, I shipped it overnight by UPS to India to have the work done. I was promised a one-day turn-around for a fee of $100. Here is what I received by e-mail the next day: “This book is truly marvelous. It will surely change the course of human history.” That struck me as possibly accurate but a bit too short and too generic to make the JEL happy, and I decided, with great disappointment, to do the work myself.

A few months after Friedman's book was published, in October 2005, Richard Florida wrote in the Atlantic that the world is spiky. In discussing that, Florida threw in more metaphors--valleys, hills, playing fields, ....

I suppose people decided that we have played around with metaphors enough. Enter David Smick and his book, The World is Curved. A Q/A with the author at that website has this:

The title The World Is Curved is sure to draw comparisons with Tom Friedman’s book The World Is Flat. Why did you select the title? Why is the world now curved? Was it ever flat?
Friedman brilliantly presents the first installment of the globalization story, concentrating on the revolutionizing (flattening) of the global supply chain. But there is a second installment—the financial side of the story where the world is not flat; the world is curved. You can’t see over the horizon. Sight lines are limited. As during the subprime mortgage crisis, we are forced to travel down an endless, dangerously twisting and turning road of volatility with steep valleys and risky mountainous climbs. We can’t see financial risk ahead. A small village in Arctic Norway can see its
entire financial future destroyed because its financial managers invested heavily in a Citigroup product called a collateralized debt obligation.

Can somebody please pass a law that playing with metaphors to explain global economic geography will result in a forced Peace Corps volunteer service in Moldova for two years?

As always, it is the first one who gains the attention and money--something that Friedman knows really well. Even if he is not always right in his analysis, he is definitely a trendsetter. I am pretty sure, and unfortunately for Florida and Smick, that people will not pick up the world is curved or spiked metaphors.

Bonus if you read until here. Matt Welch wrote a fine commentary on Friedman's punditry through metaphors and cliche.

Gorbachev is ticked off--at America!

In the NY Times opinion piece, Mikhail Gorbachev writes that Russia did not have any choice, and that Putin and Medvedev acted appropriately and wisely. Gorbachev writes,
For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

And, Thomas Friedman offers a different take. He does agree with Gorbachev that expanding NATO--supported by Clinton and Bush--was stupid. That Georgia was reckless with the military incursion. But, Friedman writes that Putin takes the gold:
That is why the gold medal for brutishness goes to Putin. Yes, NATO expansion was foolish. Putin exploited it to choke Russian democracy. But now, petro-power-grabbing has gone to his head — whether it's invading Georgia, bullying Western financiers and oil companies working in Russia, or using Russia’s gas supplies to intimidate its neighbors....
Russia would be wise to reconsider Putin’s Georgia gambit. If it does, we would be wise to reconsider where our NATO/Russia policy is taking us — and whether we really want to spend the 21st century containing Russia the same way we spent much of the 20th containing the Soviet Union.