Mr. Tom Is Back, And He is Mad!

Thomas Friedman is one of my favorite columnists over at the New York Times, and he has been sorely missed while he has been away polishing off a new book. (As opposed to my favorite at the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, who took off to... well... to... I am still not sure why.) Friedman had been a stong supporter of the War on Terror, and specifically the War in Iraq, despite the fact that he is politically liberal. Well, he is back and now he is MAD.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq. This administration never did. Mr. Kerry's own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through. But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign....Friends, I return to where I started: We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

Something to think about. If Mr. Tom is this mad, then a majority of the fair-minded liberals and left-leaning centrists are likewise mad. Problem is, the Dems have only put forth their fire-breathing extremists this time around, including Senator Kerry himself. Personally, I still like Bush and think he is the man for this time. But you have to wonder about a Democratic Party whose only alternative is someone who can only be stomached by most Americans when they think "anyone is better than Bush." And the Dems are not alone. Right now, the only alternatives to Bush are Kerry (most liberal in the Senate) and Nader (most liberal in California). One has to wonder how the race would be different if Joe Lieberman had been the nominee.