There's a Splinter in Your Eye and it Reads React

Tom Friedman's up to it again.

A couple of paragraphs from today's latest missive of self-delusion:

"And in part this is because we are afraid to say the truth, because we - wrongly - believe these people are incapable of rational thought and will just react violently. Therefore, if we have an information campaign, it must all be about explaining to them who we are, and why we are not bad people, and why Newsweek made a mistake. It must never involve us asking who they are and why they are behaving in ways that don't live up to the values they profess.

Instead of sending Mr. McClellan out to flog Newsweek, President Bush should have said: 'Let me say first to all Muslims that desecrating anyone's holy book is utterly wrong. These allegations will be investigated, and any such behavior will be punished. That is how we Americans intend to look in the mirror. But we think the Arab-Muslim world must also look in the mirror when it comes to how it has been behaving toward an even worse crime than the desecration of God's words, and that is the desecration of God's creations. In reaction to an unsubstantiated Newsweek story, Muslims killed 16 other Muslims in Afghanistan in rioting, and no one has raised a peep - as if it were a totally logical reaction. That is wrong.'"

Thomas, poor Thomas. Let me tell you the story about the beam in your eye.

It's a war that was born in lies and has cost the lives of more than 100,000 people. It's shock and awe, torture, rendition, medals of freedom to war criminals. It's a desecration of our principles as a nation, about a weird form of Christianity that says it's OK to kill as long it's to "promote democracy" (read: control oil and play out some Oedipal thing with Poppy).

I figure I should link to the whole article.