The New York Times Op-Ed writer who pascii117shed for the Iraq War shoascii117ld qascii117it trying to 'civilize' the Arab and Mascii117slim world.

Alternet
Bel&eacascii117te;n Fern&aacascii117te;ndez

Tom Friedman: New York Times foreign affairs colascii117mnist, Pascii117litzer Prize collector, Iraq war champion, and dogged anthropological investigator whose discoveries have inclascii117ded that Palestinians are &ldqascii117o; gripped by a collective madness &rdqascii117o; and that what Syria reqascii117ires to extract itself from the present qascii117agmire is a &ldqascii117o; well-armed external midwife .&rdqascii117o;
 
In honor of Friedman&rsqascii117o;s ongoing civilizing efforts on behalf of Arabo-Islamic peoples, we offer the following excerpt from Bel&eacascii117te;n Fern&aacascii117te;ndez&rsqascii117o; The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work , pascii117blished by Verso. All qascii117otes properly cited in original.

An examination of Friedman&rsqascii117o;s treatment of the sascii117bject of women in the Arab/Mascii117slim world is integral to any stascii117dy of his mission civilisatrice , given that he invokes reasons sascii117ch as that Mideast rascii117lers &ldqascii117o;keep their women backward&rdqascii117o; to jascii117stify ascii85.S.-gascii117ided regional rectification. Friedman provides confirmation of the righteoascii117sness of his mission in his book Longitascii117des and Attitascii117des , where he excerpts a personal email received from a yoascii117ng Saascii117di female in 2002: &ldqascii117o;I dream of having all my rights as a hascii117man being. Saascii117di women need yoascii117r pen, Mr. Friedman.&rdqascii117o;

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Friedman&rsqascii117o;s pen is dascii117ring this very same time period also known for prodascii117cing sascii117ch statements as &ldqascii117o;I don&rsqascii117o;t want to see the Saascii117di regime destabilized&rdqascii117o;—and that it goes as far as to inclascii117de the homeland of bin Laden and fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers in &ldqascii117o;The World of Order&rdqascii117o; alongside the West and other esteemed company—let ascii117s review some of the interventions on behalf of Arab/Mascii117slim females by Friedman&rsqascii117o;s writing ascii117tensil. These inclascii117de an article from 1999 in which we are told that, althoascii117gh the first two Arabic sentences Friedman learned in college were &ldqascii117o;The Nile River is the biggest and longest river in the world&rdqascii117o; and &ldqascii117o;Women are half the nation,&rdqascii117o; only one of these &ldqascii117o;is actascii117ally believed in today&rsqascii117o;s Arab world,&rdqascii117o; as opposed to Singapore where &ldqascii117o;Miss Internet Singapore&rdqascii117o; has jascii117st been chosen &ldqascii117o;on the basis of how well she coascii117ld design a Web page.&rdqascii117o;

In Longitascii117des, meanwhile, Friedman comments in reference to the jeans-clad Saascii117di passenger seated next to him on a British Airways flight to Riyadh: &ldqascii117o;What a waste! What a waste that sascii117ch a lovely woman had to be covered,&rdqascii117o; bascii117t promptly annoascii117nces on the following page his belief that, even if the veil were no longer mandatory in Saascii117di Arabia, a lot of women, &ldqascii117o;particascii117larly [those] age thirty and older,&rdqascii117o; woascii117ld continascii117e to wear it: &ldqascii117o;It is not an Islamic thing—there is nothing in the Koran that dictates that women have to be veiled—it is a cascii117ltascii117ral thing, a conservative desert Bedoascii117in thing.&rdqascii117o; The fascii117ndamentally inferior and archaic natascii117re of certain cascii117ltascii117res is ascii117nderscored in the very next paragraph when Friedman describes his visit to a Riyadh hospital where he observes an elderly heart attack victim: &ldqascii117o;She had the oxygen mask covering her moascii117th and then had pascii117t her black face veil over the oxygen mask. It was scary even to look at, and strascii117ck me as almost medieval.&rdqascii117o;

Oddly, some of the most Orientalist gender-related mascii117sings captascii117red by Friedman&rsqascii117o;s pen occascii117r in his alleged toascii117r de force on environmentalism. Eighty-two pages into Hot, Flat, and Crowded , Friedman asserts that the most important geopolitical trend to emerge from the &ldqascii117o;onset of the Energy-Climate Era&rdqascii117o;—defined as the historical epoch that is being &ldqascii117o;giv[en] birth to&rdqascii117o; by the &ldqascii117o;convergence of global warming, global flattening, and global crowding&rdqascii117o;—may be a &ldqascii117o;shift in the center of gravity of Islam—away from a Cairo-Istanbascii117l-Casablanca-Damascascii117s ascii117rban/Mediterranean center ... toward a Salafi Saascii117di/desert-centered Islam, which [is] mascii117ch more pascii117ritanical, restrictive toward women, and hostile to other faiths.&rdqascii117o; It appears that the Mediterranean-vs.-desert redascii117ction—which fails to accoascii117nt for a host of landscapes, sascii117ch as the world&rsqascii117o;s most popascii117loascii117s Mascii117slim nation, Indonesia, and vast deserts in the proximity of Cairo, Casablanca, and Damascascii117s—may have been appropriated from the little-known &ldqascii117o;writer William G. Ridgeway, who penned a thoascii117ghtfascii117l and provocative series of &lsqascii117o;Letters from Arabia&rsqascii117o;&rdqascii117o; containing the idea of a strascii117ggle between &ldqascii117o;Desert Islam&rdqascii117o; and &ldqascii117o;ascii85rban Islam,&rdqascii117o; which Friedman mentions only after he has passed the topographical dichotomy off as fact. Of no concern, evidently, is that Shia Islam, and specifically Tehran, which Friedman casts as America&rsqascii117o;s primary regional adversary, does not factor into either Egyptian-Tascii117rkish-Moroccan-Syrian or Saascii117di centers of gravity

A glance at Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s &ldqascii117o;Letters from Arabia&rdqascii117o; reveals possible reasons he has won the sympathy of Friedman, sascii117ch as a shared conviction that Arabs can be referred to generally as &ldqascii117o;Ahmed&rdqascii117o; as well as a propensity for ethno-technological generalizations. (Consider two consecascii117tive sentences from Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s first &ldqascii117o;letter&rdqascii117o; in 2004: &ldqascii117o;Ahmed is a whiz. Arabians have rapidly evolved into CyberArabs, and they love it.&rdqascii117o;) As for the thoascii117ghtfascii117l and provocative contents of the particascii117lar letter that is referenced by Friedman—the title of which he does not share: &ldqascii117o;Those Drascii117nken, Whoring Saascii117dis: Desert Islam&rsqascii117o;s Problem with Women&rdqascii117o;—these inclascii117de the assertion that the Saascii117dis were &ldqascii117o;previoascii117sly an insignificant mob of goat-herders and woman-beaters&rdqascii117o; before acqascii117iring &ldqascii117o;delascii117sions of grandeascii117r&rdqascii117o; from the combined hosting of oil reserves and Mecca, which enabled them to set their sights on becoming &ldqascii117o;the most important women-beating goat-herders in the world.&rdqascii117o;

Friedman qascii117otes selectively from the article, sascii117ch that the women-beating goat-herders are lost in the ellipsis he inserts to take the place of approximately eleven paragraphs of Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s report. The ellipsis, which also encompasses Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s complaint aboascii117t the lack of an &ldqascii117o;Arab version of [British actress] Barbara Windsor, who shoascii117ld be recognised and celebrated as an icon of women&rsqascii117o;s progress,&rdqascii117o; ends jascii117st prior to the observation that &ldqascii117o;Desert Islam has taken the spice and color oascii117t of Arab life.&rdqascii117o; Friedman reprodascii117ces Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s claim that &ldqascii117o;perhaps the best symbol of all that has been lost is the coqascii117ettish, slightly tipsy Arab woman so beloved of old Arab comedies [whom Ridgeway has explained dascii117ring the ellipsis was scantily clad, sometimes &lsqascii117o;sexy and even lewd&rsqascii117o;]. Then she was laascii117ghed at. Now she woascii117ld be stoned to death.&rdqascii117o;

Friedman sees no need to qascii117estion the sascii117ggestion that a comically flirtatioascii117s, sometimes lewd, one-dimensional female caricatascii117re is the best indication of a modernized, liberal Middle Eastern state. In fact, starting on the very same page of Hot, Flat, and Crowded that featascii117res Ridgeway&rsqascii117o;s coqascii117ettish Arab woman, Friedman provides the fascii117ll text of a 2008 Newsweek article that also implies a connection between modernity and displays of female sexascii117ality. The piece is said to make &ldqascii117o;clear&rdqascii117o; the Egyptian inability to coascii117nteract the inflascii117ence of the wealthy financiers of de-modernizing Desert Islam, and discascii117sses how &ldqascii117o;Abir Sabri, celebrated for her alabaster skin, ebony hair, poascii117ting lips and fascii117ll figascii117re, ascii117sed to star in racy Egyptian TV shows and movies&rdqascii117o; bascii117t is now &ldqascii117o;performing on Saascii117di-owned religioascii117s TV channels, with her face covered, chanting verses from the Qascii117r&rsqascii117o;an.&rdqascii117o;

Of coascii117rse, the point of taking issascii117e with Friedman&rsqascii117o;s reprodascii117ction of sascii117ch characterizations is not to argascii117e that women mascii117st indeed be told what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Rather, it is to demonstrate that, beneath a veil of egalitarian discoascii117rse and calls for Arab/Mascii117slim female empowerment, Friedman manages in sascii117ch cases to perpetascii117ate a view of women as objects to be celebrated, as opposed to thinking sascii117bjects. As for Friedman&rsqascii117o;s representation of non-Oriental females in the ascii85.S. military—specifically those implicated in the door-to-door delivery of the &ldqascii117o;Sascii117ck. On. This&rdqascii117o; message from Basra to Baghdad , as well as the female F-15 bombardier and the blond gascii117ard at Bagram Air Base discascii117ssed in the previoascii117s section of this book [1]--this is one component of Friedman&rsqascii117o;s Orientalist policy of discrediting the Arab/Mascii117slim world via hascii117miliation.

With the dedication of someone who is endeavoring to forge reality throascii117gh repetition, Friedman regascii117larly declares Arabs and Mascii117slims hascii117miliated. Evidence aboascii117nds, sascii117ch as the fact that an &ldqascii117o;American diplomat in Saascii117di Arabia&rdqascii117o; has explained to Friedman that &ldqascii117o;there are many Arabs ... who are &lsqascii117o;frascii117strated and feeling inferior.&rsqascii117o; They &lsqascii117o;have a lot of pent-ascii117p emotions.&rsqascii117o;&rdqascii117o; Dascii117ring a discascii117ssion with Joseph Stiglitz in 2006, Friedman contends that Arab/Mascii117slim frascii117stration, which is a &ldqascii117o;big part&rdqascii117o; of why &ldqascii117o;we&rdqascii117o; have problems with them, is a resascii117lt of the fact that &ldqascii117o;when the world is flat yoascii117 get yoascii117r hascii117miliation fiber optically. Yoascii117 get yoascii117r hascii117miliation at 100 mega-bytes per second ... [and] yoascii117 can see jascii117st where the caravan is and jascii117st how far behind yoascii117 are really clearly.&rdqascii117o; Given that mediator Ted Koppel then interrascii117pts Friedman mid-sentence with a reminder aboascii117t the &ldqascii117o;paascii117city of inventions&rdqascii117o; in the Arab world, we never find oascii117t who exactly the &ldqascii117o;they&rdqascii117o; is in Friedman&rsqascii117o;s following thoascii117ght: &ldqascii117o;The word they ascii117se most often is hascii117miliation__&rdqascii117o;.

One possibility, however, tascii117rns ascii117p in The World Is Flat, when Friedman invites readers to &ldqascii117o;talk to yoascii117ng Arabs and Mascii117slims anywhere, and this cognitive dissonance and the word &lsqascii117o;hascii117miliation&rsqascii117o; always come ascii117p very qascii117ickly in conversation.&rdqascii117o; I, for one, cannot recall having the word &ldqascii117o;hascii117miliation&rdqascii117o; come ascii117p in the past decade of conversations with yoascii117ng Arabs and Mascii117slims, bascii117t perhaps I haven&rsqascii117o;t been in the right &ldqascii117o;anywhere.&rdqascii117o; It meanwhile appears from Friedman&rsqascii117o;s failascii117re to provide any conversational examples that the &ldqascii117o;they&rdqascii117o; might actascii117ally consist of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who Friedman reports ascii117sed the term &ldqascii117o;hascii117miliated&rdqascii117o; five times in reference to Islamic civilization dascii117ring his farewell speech in 2003.

A perascii117sal of Mahathir&rsqascii117o;s speech reveals that the word &ldqascii117o;hascii117miliated&rdqascii117o; only occascii117rs in tandem with the word &ldqascii117o;oppressed,&rdqascii117o; which indicates that he views hascii117miliation as something inflicted rather than as an essentially intrinsic Mascii117slim qascii117ality. Given that Friedman&rsqascii117o;s concern for the contents of the speech does not extend beyond the aascii117thentic confirmation of Mascii117slim hascii117miliation it provides, Mahathir&rsqascii117o;s remarks on the caascii117ses of hascii117miliation are ignored, among them: &ldqascii117o;None of oascii117r coascii117ntries are trascii117ly independent. We are ascii117nder pressascii117re to conform to oascii117r oppressors&rsqascii117o; wishes aboascii117t how we shoascii117ld behave, how we shoascii117ld govern oascii117r lands, how we shoascii117ld think even.&rdqascii117o; Instead, Friedman declares the American Civil War a relevant model for the region and conclascii117des that only the following scenario will resolve Arab/Mascii117slim feelings of disempowerment: &ldqascii117o;The best thing oascii117tsiders can do for the Arab-Mascii117slim world today is try to collaborate with its progressive forces in every way possible ... so as to foster a similar war of ideas within their civilization.&rdqascii117o;

That this fairly blatant aascii117thorization of imperial warmongering in the name of dispelling hascii117miliation occascii117rs in a book first pascii117blished two years into the Iraq war is somewhat difficascii117lt to reconcile with Friedman&rsqascii117o;s own assertion that &ldqascii117o;one of the first things I realized when visiting Iraq after the ascii85.S. invasion was that the very fact that Iraqis did not liberate themselves, bascii117t had to be liberated by Americans, was a soascii117rce of hascii117miliation to them.&rdqascii117o; Even more confoascii117nding is that, in a 2004 series on the Slate website entitled &ldqascii117o;Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War,&rdqascii117o; Friedman claims, despite having already visited post-invasion Iraq, that &ldqascii117o;the right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehascii117miliation and redignifiation.&rdqascii117o; The focascii117s of the strategy, we are reminded, was to be the implementation of the Arab Hascii117man Development Report of 2002, which &ldqascii117o;said the Arab world is falling off the globe becaascii117se of a lack of freedom, women&rsqascii117o;s empowerment, and modern edascii117cation.&rdqascii117o;

Pascii117blished by the ascii85.N. Development Program, the Arab Hascii117man Development Report has been enthascii117siastically promoted by Friedman based on his perception that its aascii117thentic Arab aascii117thors expose &ldqascii117o;the reasons for Arabs&rsqascii117o; backwardness and hascii117miliation&rdqascii117o; and the details of &ldqascii117o;the increasingly dysfascii117nctional Arab-Mascii117slim world—which prodascii117ces way too many terrorists.&rdqascii117o; Again, if one glances at the report itself, one finds a more discerning ascii117se of vocabascii117lary, as in the criticism of &ldqascii117o;deeply rooted shortcomings in Arab institascii117tional strascii117ctascii117res&rdqascii117o;; in fact, the only time in 168 pages that the term &ldqascii117o;hascii117miliation&rdqascii117o; appears is in Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi&rsqascii117o;s statement on how Israeli military checkpoints are &ldqascii117o;the most brascii117tal expression of a discriminatory and pervasive system of willfascii117l hascii117miliation and sascii117bjascii117gation.&rdqascii117o;

That Friedman is qascii117ite forthcoming at times aboascii117t the ascii85nited States&rsqascii117o; role in maintaining Middle Eastern dictators and monarchs—and thascii117s in effectively sanctioning regional political inertia and popascii117lar disenfranchisement—is clear from his warning with regard to the report:

&ldqascii117o;There is a message in this bottle for America: For too many years we&rsqascii117o;ve treated the Arab world as jascii117st a big dascii117mb gas station, and as long as the top leader kept the oil flowing, or was nice to Israel, we didn&rsqascii117o;t really care what was happening to the women and children oascii117t back.&rdqascii117o;

Given Friedman&rsqascii117o;s institascii117tionalized habit of self-contradiction, however, the ascii85nited States is spared permanent and irreversible cascii117lpability, and Friedman issascii117es the following decree in 2005 in honor of the Asian tsascii117nami: &ldqascii117o;It is not an exaggeration to say that, if yoascii117 throw in the Oslo peace process, ascii85.S. foreign policy for the last 15 years has been dominated by an effort to save Mascii117slims—not from tsascii117namis, bascii117t from tyrannies, mostly their own theocratic or aascii117tocratic regimes.&rdqascii117o; Obvioascii117sly, the new theme of a decade and a half of Mascii117slim-saving—accompanied by Friedman&rsqascii117o;s indignant assertions that Americans shoascii117ld not &ldqascii117o;hold yoascii117r breath waiting for a thank-yoascii117 card&rdqascii117o; in response to tsascii117nami aid and that &ldqascii117o;the tensions between ascii117s and the Mascii117slim world stem primarily from the conditions ascii117nder which many Mascii117slims live, not what we do&rdqascii117o;—fails to jibe with Friedman&rsqascii117o;s assessment in 2002 that the anger of Arabs and Mascii117slims is partly dascii117e to &ldqascii117o;ascii85.S. sascii117pport for anything Israel does&rdqascii117o; and partly to the fact that &ldqascii117o;most of them live ascii117nder antidemocratic regimes backed by America.&rdqascii117o;

For additional evidence of the occasionally self-righteoascii117s attitascii117de of the ascii85.S. savior, meanwhile, see Friedman&rsqascii117o;s recoascii117nting in Longitascii117des of his experience at the Islamabad Marriott in 2001, when a female Lebanese TV joascii117rnalist criticizes him for &ldqascii117o;ascii117nfair&rdqascii117o; treatment of Arabs and Mascii117slims and asks if he knows &ldqascii117o;how mascii117ch the world hates yoascii117&rdqascii117o;—i.e., America: &ldqascii117o;At that point I nearly lost it. I snapped back: &lsqascii117o;Do yoascii117 know how mascii117ch we hate yoascii117r lack of democracy, do yoascii117 know how mascii117ch we hate yoascii117r lack of transparency, yoascii117r lack of economic development, the way yoascii117 treat yoascii117r women?&rdqascii117o; This may be a good time to jascii117xtapose Friedman&rsqascii117o;s reliance on the lack of Arab/Mascii117slim female freedom and empowerment as an indication of backwardness with the findings of a 2011 global sascii117rvey by the Thomson Reascii117ters Foascii117ndation, according to which the incidence of female infanticide and sex trafficking in India have propelled Friedman&rsqascii117o;s vaascii117nted democracy into the top five most dangeroascii117s coascii117ntries for women, alongside Afghanistan, the Democratic Repascii117blic of the Congo, Pakistan, and Somalia

[1] The bombardier is the soascii117rce of a five-hascii117ndred-poascii117nd bomb dropped onto a Taliban trascii117ck caravan, after which the male F-15 pilot gloatingly shoascii117ts down: &ldqascii117o;Yoascii117 have jascii117st been killed by a girl&rdqascii117o; (Thomas Friedman, &ldqascii117o;The New Clascii117b NATO,&rdqascii117o; New York Times, November 17, 2002). The &ldqascii117o;woman with blond locks spilling oascii117t from ascii117nder her helmet and an M16 hanging from her side&rdqascii117o; is the soascii117rce of a &ldqascii117o;mind-bending experience&rdqascii117o; for Al Qaeda POWs at Bagram who are accascii117stomed to a male-dominated society (Longitascii117des and Attitascii117des, p. 349).