ATRIOS CATCHES TOM FRIEDMAN AND ALL TOO MANY OTHERS

Tom Friedman is a respected, SERIOUS, member of the American Foreign Policy Establishment and that means we are in deep trouble because he's at best a bloodthirsty narcissistic half-wit. Atrios catches puerile remarks Friedman made on the Charlie Rose Show (here and here) and Digby also has posted some of his nationalistic, war-mongering idiocy. For example, Digby catches Friedman sounding like that wacko in Philly:

Even though that was such a wrenching moment for our nation, I look back on it now with a certain longing and nostalgia. For it was such a moment of American solidarity, with people rallying to people and everyone rallying to the president.

The problem here isn't just one columnist for one of America's leading paper, it's a rot that is all over the Foreign Policy Establishment. And make no mistake, they protect their own. Matt Yglesias finds that Gideon Rose, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, perhaps the most prestigious American foreign policy journal, has written what amounts to a defense of the Establishment Hacks like Friedman and O'Hanlon. Rose compares the liberal bloggers, like Glenn Greenwald, to the war-whore hacks among the neo-cons:

The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the "foreign policy community." The funny thing is...hell, I’ll just come out and say it: the netroots' attitude toward professionals isn’t that different from the neocons', both being convinced that the very concept of a foreign-policy clerisy is unjustified, anti-democratic and pernicious, and that the remedy is much tighter and more direct control by the principals over their supposed professional agents.

This criticism is both self-serving and misguided. The criticism we have is that there is a "moral hazard" for the Foreign Policy Establishment. They can be profoundly mistaken - as almost all were about the decision to invade Iraq - and still be upstanding members of the Community, still have syndicated columns, still appear on SERIOUS news shows. The real experts, many of whom were correct about Iraq, are mostly invisible in the main stream media. Ilan Goldenberg of Democracy Arsenal provides some of the names:

There is a long list of foreign policy experts who specialize in the Middle East (And did so before 9/11 came around). Jon Alterman, Brian Katulis, Mark Lynch, Ray Takeyh, Steven Simon, Flynt Levrett, Vali Nasr, Steven Cook, Rob Malley to name just a few. Most of these people speak Arabic or Farsi. Most have spent sigificant time in the region or spent a great deal of time studying the history of the region and the intimate details. They know much more than you, me, Matt Yglesias or Gideon Rose do about the Middle East. Not surprisingly a large majority of these regional experts were opposed to the Iraq War. The problem is no one listened.