Tom Friedman doesn’t get it. Glenn Greenwald does:
If there were a powerful nation (besides the U.S.) that had a leading foreign policy analyst unapologetically justifying the brutal destruction of another country by explaining that its citizens needed to “Suck On This,” and had a leading presidential candidate who sung songs about dropping bombs on the U.S. and who told jokes about killing Americans (while his leading ally demands that that country attack even more countries), we would be subjected to an endless array of Op-Eds from Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer condemning them and demanding that “meaningful action” be taken against such a “rogue nation.” And Tom Friedman would be righteously and darkly insisting that such a country be “compelled to change its behavior.”
Actually, I don’t think this goes nearly far enough.
One of the reasons the right so wants to bomb Iran is because what Ahmadinejad has said about Israel - wiping them off the map.
Imagine an Iran where Ahmadinejad sang little ditties about wiping us off the map. Imagine a world in which Iran actually had the fearsome power conservatives think it does, and openly talked about making an example out of the United States, as Friedman says we needed to make an example of the Arabs in Iraq after 9/11.
Conservative vehemence certainly wouldn’t be limited to Hiatt or Krauthammer literary broadsides. I can practically see the spittle emanating from the AM radio dial now; how dare this murderous country threaten us so blithely!
Yet as always, it’s ever so different when we do it.
The chief difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to foreign policy is that Democrats are usually able to understand how our actions look through foreign eyes, and base decisions, at least in part, on that. Republicans, or at least the avowed conservatives within it, simply don’t grasp the concept. Axiom #1 is that America is by default the moral arbiter of the world, and thus anything America does is by nature moral. And if there’s any doubt at all, refer to Axiom #1.
Given that this has been the prevailing attitude in recent years, the mystery isn’t that so many people around the world now distrust out country. It’s why anyone still would.
