typepad seems funky this morning, so i can't link tom friedman's column. but i think he's showing his stripes, his...ass. he actually suggests that the nobel peace prize should go to the american military. now i will admit that the relation between peace and military power is complex, and that one way to keep the world peaceful would be to subdue it entirely by the overwhelming threat of violence, a threat that you'd have to substantiate every so often by killing a few thousand/a few million people. friedman on the other hand must be aware of certain ironies of such a position: the heroes who, you know, vaporized the inhabitants of hiroshima, or destroyed the village in order to keep it free, or set up a system of worldwide black site torture facilities, or helped turn ptsd into a worldwide epidemic, or phosphorized fallujah, or predator-droned the wedding etc: i'm not sure how they really stack up against king and gandhi as embodiments of peace.

the military may be necessary. indeed perhaps the power to entirely destroy life on earth is necessary, or at least useful (oops, maybe not), but as an emblem of peace per se you'd be better off awarding the nobel to a fungus or a clock radio, on the grounds that they never napalmed any children.

what i would call attention to, however, is the culture of obedience, a culture of which friedman represents one form: he tends to call it 'education.' i suggest that you cannot be a hero in virtue of obeying orders, and that that's why the bush/biden/friedman theory that every soldier is an american hero is...as terrifying as it is mindless. king called on you to observe the absolute dictates of conscience. the military calls on you to trade in your conscience for...donald rumsfeld, or whomever happens to have risen to power. now perhaps in obeying these orders you do something good: storm omaha beach etc. or perhaps you do something evil. what you're saying is that making those calls isn't up to you.

get enough people in this mode and you've got...a world at war. cool! but you might want to skip the peace prize.

Comments

[mr.fun]

that is hysterical, crispin, simply because I know (and know of) many a soldier/marine/midshipman in the various branches of the military that would be royally ticked off at the President, this President, for saying such things, and claiming such things, at his acceptance speech. because they suspect that he doesn't support them, he doesn't support their mission, simply because he questions it, or accepts it with conditions.

what an idiot Thomas Friedman is. he doesn't understand a damn thing.

he did support the Iraq War, so whatever. I can't believe that anyone reads him and takes him seriously. I just can't.

[Stephen]

I've always thought that one word that never gets used enough is "fool". A fool is such a great concept, because it encompasses bright and dull alike. Otherwise, fools would be so hard to pin down and mock, since they often are a seemingly impressive jet-setting crowd, travelling the world over, quoting literature, speaking several languages and earning prestigious degrees. Yet ultimately, unlike sincere learners, their interface with reality is hopelessly flawed. They treat any knowledge or person as a means to an end. Ergo, a synonym for them is "tool". Tom Friedman is a fool par excellence. Other notable fools of his ilk are Alan Greenspan, most of the 'New Atheists', Ben Stein, the entire Eagles band and so many others.