Usually he waits at least two days before contradicting himself
"The most frightening, scary, terrifying thing we could do to Iran today — short of an outright attack — is to get out of Iraq. The second most frightening, scary, terrifying thing we could do to Iran is to succeed in Iraq." —Thomas Friedman, March 17, 1st and 2nd paragraphs.
"The only thing more frightening to the Iranians than the U.S. leaving Iraq, would be — and this is my preference — the U.S. succeeding in Iraq." —Thomas Friedman, March 17, 9th paragraph.
Comments
Clearly Mr. Friedman is drawing a subtle difference between things that Iran (as a physical entity consisting of geographical features) is afraid of, and the things that the inhabitants of Iran are afraid of. My question is, is he taking into account the opinions of babies and small children? Because I think they might consider someone sneaking up behind them in the dark and shouting "Boo!" to be pretty damn scary.
Posted by: Francis | March 17, 2006 3:28 PM
For some reason this reminds me of the classic Woody Allen bit: "I think that, if you know me at all, you know that death is my bread and danger my butter - oh, no, danger's my bread, and death is my butter. No, no, wait. Danger's my bread, death - no, death is - no, I'm sorry. Death is my - death and danger are my various breads and various butters."
Of course, Woody never did absurdism as well as Freidman.
Posted by: radosh | March 17, 2006 3:55 PM
As a child, I was frightened of a picture we had, of a woman whose eyes followed you. Even though that was something I couldn't see with my limited vision, I was scared to go near it.
I was also afraid of New Jersey, because my mother told me that's where a lot of gangsters were. Or maybe, because I confused it with Germany, where Nazis came from. But I think the picture scared me more.
Posted by: Sam | March 17, 2006 4:11 PM
Maybe we could ship Friedman off to some island . . .
Posted by: Chris | March 17, 2006 5:12 PM