Lounsbury: Friedman: or his more rational twin

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November 29, 2004

Friedman: or his more rational twin

| often have a hard time figuring out Friedman, for just when I think I can utterly write him off, he reaches out and touches rationality for a second.

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Last Mile
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 28, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/opinion/28friedman.html?8hpib

Of note in his comments

Consider one small example. Last week, The Times's defense correspondent, Thom Shanker, wrote about a study conducted by the Defense Science Board, which found that nearly two years into the war in Iraq, America's institutions charged with "strategic communications" - about what we are doing in the world and why - are broken. The study found that "the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam."

No kidding. We are losing a public relations war in the Muslim world to people sawing the heads off other Muslims. But this is only one dimension of a larger problem, which cannot be allowed to continue.

An amusing turn of phrase that.

But his analysis, for the sheer novelty value, makes sense:
Here's why: The Bush team early on compared the fall of Saddam's statue in that Baghdad square with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wrong. The Berlin Wall was a completely artificial barrier that had no organic connection to the society it was repressing. Once that wall was removed, the free-market, civil society and democratic traditions that were already there in places like East Germany, Poland and Hungary could resurface. All we had to do was get out of the way.

In Iraq, and in Palestine, when Saddam and Yasir Arafat toppled over like walls, their disappearances did not leave behind civil societies yearning to be free, united and democratic. Saddam and Arafat were products of their societies more than we want to admit - not artificial impositions.

While overstated (one has to make allowances for the brief format of such pieces), he does capture an essential difference between the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe and the issues in the Midle East.

In the long run their departures are huge opportunities. But in the short run they have left behind two pots that are boiling over - two highly tribalized societies, full of pent-up problems, with few civil society institutions or consensus leaders. They left behind two huge rebuilding challenges. The Bush team helped remove the lids off both these pots. But the first rule of cooking and warfare is: Never take the lid off a boiling pot unless you also have a strategy for turning down the heat. President Bush had a lid-removing strategy only. He's been improvising on the heat part ever since.

Well the turns of phrase are not fellicitious but there is a clear point there.

Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.

Right, right..... it's already lost on its original precepts, rather about managing downsides.

Here is a good obs:
Wars are fought for political ends. Soldiers can only do so much. And the last mile in every war is about claiming the political fruits. The bad guys in Iraq can lose every mile on every road, but if they beat America on the last mile - because they are able to intimidate better than America is able to coordinate, protect, inform, invest and motivate - they will win and America will lose.

November 29, 2004

Friedman: or his more rational twin

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