Tom Friedman

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria. W. W. Norton, 292 pages, $25.95.

 

 

Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World is one of those peculiar volumes public thinkers of a certain disposition, upon reaching a certain popular standing, seem compelled to write: an omnibus summation of the recent trajectory of their thinking—and, by extension, the state of the world.  read more »

Friedman Falls Flat   To the Editor:    read more »

Friedman Falls Flat   To the Editor:    read more »

Friedman Falls Flat   To the Editor:    read more »

Chuck Schumer tells Jason Horowitz that the biggest failing of the Democrats in the Senate was allowing Sam Alito onto the Supreme Court. He speaks up (now that the election is over) about his support for a controversial Iraq strategy. And he talks about his upcoming Democratic manifesto, to be entitled "Positively American: Winning Back the Middle Class Majority One Family at a Time."

Tom Scocca catches up with Tom Friedman in China, and sees him tell a crowd of Chinese readers that the 2008 election will be about... China. (See, also, Tom Friedman's column today on China.)

Rebecca Dana writes about that weird Election Night exit poll quarantine room.

Joe Conason thinks Nancy Pelosi is too close to John Murtha.

Steve Kornacki thinks Pelosi's opponents underestimate her in-fighting ability at their peril.

And Sara Vilomerson and John Koblin write about the surprising direction in which Jim Dolan has taken the Knicks.

-- Josh Benson

While visiting my mom, I took in a fine talk on U.S. dilemmas in the Mideast by Retired Ambassador William A. Rugh. The talk was sponsored by a local peace group and was remarkable to me for the use Rugh made of Robert A. Pape's book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape's book argues on the basis of extensive field research on suicide bombers that these bombers, from Sri Lanka to the west, are motivated not by religious fanaticism but by a desire to rid their lands of foreign occupation. This theory is of course at odds with the Bernard Lewis theory that suicide terrorists are angry that Constantinople is no longer the center of the universe, or the Peter Beinart and Tom Friedman theory that Muslims are chewed up by inadequacy because they aren't making microchips, or the George W. Bush-Paul Berman theory that there is an arc of Islamo-fascism. I mention Rugh's speech because Pape, a realist scholar at the University of Chicago, came out with his book more than a year ago (the paperback is lately released) and yet the idea is so powerful and important that it is only now beginning to resonate fully. Pape had an Op-Ed in the Times during the Lebanon war 2 weeks back, explaining Hizbullah's ascent as a response to the Israeli occupation of 82-00, and now here was that idea being put forward by a sage ambassador to 120 or so well-educated people in an Episcopal church meetinghouse, in a summer community on the Cape. That is intellectual influence.

I wonder if other readers of the Times Op-Ed page are as aware of the mighty struggle that seems to  read more »

Downtown bomb-thrower, Gen-X John Reed, better read than Red: Pissed-off prodigal son returns to tar  read more »

When the tank pulled Saddam's statue down in Baghdad, and Iraqis-a small crowd of them, anyway-jumpe  read more »

As Tom Friedman told it in his Feb.  read more »