Post-War Wavering Columnists
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Also see "Pro-War Columnists" and "Anti-War Columnists"

Experts continued to chime in during the early weeks of 2005.  Some were hesitant in their support for the war. Bush Sr.'s Sec. of  State during the first Gulf War was James Baker.  He feels that Bush Jr. should consider a phased withdrawal of some of the troops.  Otherwise the U.S. risks being suspected of having an "imperial design" in the region. For more on Baker in the fall of 2006, see "US Politics '06"

David Broder, long-time columnist for the Washington Post, did not often write of Iraq.  But in early August 2005 his "Share the Facts on The War" looked at how the Pentagon reports to Congress.  Rumsfeld has delayed a Congressionally mandated report overdue by a few weeks on "a long list of measure gauging Iraq's economic and political stability, the extent of the insurgency, and the capacity of Iraqi forces to provide security for their own county...The quality of the information it has given lawmakers and the public is disappointing."  so that, according to one Senator, "Congress can have an informed debate."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former foreign policy expert under President Carter, feels that the "victory or defeat" options given by the administration are too limiting (WashPost, Op-Ed, 1/8/05) 

One of Thomas Friedman's contribution, "Are There Any Iraqis In Iraq" (4/8/04) did not focus on foreign terrorists, as one might presume.  A supporter of the war in the spring of 2003, he criticizes the administration for not having a good plan and for not bringing in more allies.  "If we try to fight this war ourselves, we will kill too many innocent Iraqis, blow up too many mosques and eventually turn the whole population against us--even if they know in their hearts that what we're trying to build is better than what the insurgents want."  Also see Friedman's pre-war thoughts in detail.

In May 2004 Friedman expressed doubts about how the war was going.  He saw the threat of WMD being replaced with "PMD", suicide bombings known as "People of Mass Destruction."

Among the December 2004 op-ed pieces on the insurgency was from Thomas Friedman a lukewarm supporter of the war.  His December 9 "The Suicide Supply Chain" illuminated the difference between WMD and "PMD".  "America's greatest intelligence failure...was not the WMD we thought were there, but weren't.  It was the PMD we thought weren't there, but were."  PMD, he explains, stands for "people of mass destruction"  who were far more numerous than anyone realized."

Friedman continues, "You know all those masked Iraqi youth you see in the Al Jazeera videos, brandishing weapons and standing over some foreigner who head they are about [to] saw off?  They are the product of the last decade of Saddamism and sanctions.  Those youth were 10 years old when the UN sanctions began.  They are the mushrooms that Saddam and the sanctions were growing in the dark. The Bush team had no clue they were there.  These deracinated, unemployed humiliated Sunni Iraqi youth are our biggest problem today.  Some clearly have become suicide bombers.  We can't say what percentage, because unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqi suicide bombers don't even bother to tell us their names or do a farewell video for mom.  They not only are ready to commit suicide on demand, but they are ready to do it anonymously.  That bespeaks a very high level of commitment or psychosis, or both."

"I would estimate," Friedman concludes, "that US forces have been hit with over 200 of these human missiles...the insurgents are quite confident about the supply of bombers...In Iraq, you deploy a suicide bomber in Baghdad, and another one is immediately manufactured in Mosul or Riyadh [Saudi Arabia]." 

Friedman's December 19 column looked at elections and the greater Middle East.  "The best way to reduce Iran's influence, and to prevent civil war [in Iraq] is to ensure as much Sunni participation...A sophisticated US approach that uses both sticks and carrots with Syrian, Iran and American's Arab allies could still shape a decent election in Iraq, but we have to get in gear right now, and be smart." 

Reacting encouragingly to the Iraqi elections, Friedman's "A Day to Remember" (2/3/05) opened, "As someone who believed, hoped, worried, prayed, worried, hoped and prayed some more that Iraqis could one day pull off the election they did, I am unreservedly happy about the outcome--and you should be, too.  Why?  Because what threatens America most from the Middle East are the pathologies of a region where there is too little freedom and too many young people who aren't able to achieve their full potential.  The only way to cure these pathologies is with a war of ideas within the Arab-Muslim world so those with bad ideas can be defeated by those with progressive ones."

The long-time Times columnists continues, "We have to proceed with more wisdom and more allies.  But proceed we must, and now we can at least do so with the certainly that partnering with the Iraqi people to build a decent consensual government is not crazy..."  He looks forward to begin around for Iran's next election "when the ayatollahs try to veto reform candidates and Iranian Shiites ask, Why can't we vote for anyone, like Iraqi Shiites did?  Oh, boy, that's going to be pay-per-view.

Is Zarqawi a freedom fighter?  He claims, writes Friedman, to be the leader of "the Iraqi Vietcong--the authentic carrier of Iraqis' national aspirations and desire to liberate their country from 'US occupation.'  In truth, he is the leader of the Iraqi Khmer Rouge [Pol Pot in Cambodia].  a murderous death cult...This election has made is crystal clear that the Iraq war is not between fascist insurgent sand America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people."

I also enjoyed Friedman's look back at his From Beirut to Jerusalem book first published in 1989. His "Hama Rules" chapter described the brutal flattening of a Syrian city with Muslim extremists in it.  Tens of thousands of civilians were killed by the Syrian regime.   Following the huge February 2005 explosion in Lebanon which killed the former Prime Minister, Friedman, like the administration, pointed fingers at Syria.  In "Hama Rules" he links Hariri's assassination to lessons from Iraq.  Lebanon "must unite all their communities and hit the Syrian regime with "Baghdad Rules' which were demonstrated 10 days ago by the Iraqi people.  Baghdad Rules are when an Arab public does something totally unprecedented: it takes to the streets, despite the threat of violence from jihadists and Baathists, and expresses its democratic will...Baghdad Rules mean the Lebanese giving the Syrian regime--every day, everywhere--the purple finger [showing they voted]." 

"When Camels Fly" (2/20/05) looks optimistically at the Iraq election of three weeks earlier.  On the one hand, Friedman cautions that "I write to underscore that we are on the first step of a long, long journey...But we have to be very sober about what is ahead."  Yet, he leads with the optimistic view that "No one is more pleased than I am to see the demonstration of 'people power' in Iraq, with millions of Iraqis defying the 'you vote, you die' threat of the Baathists and jihadists." 

Merging domestic politics and Iraq, Friedman's "Calling All Democrats" (2/10/05) opens in his usually catchy manner, with Democrats recalling Vietnam elections that did not lead to democracy.  "I think there is much to criticize about how the war in Iraq has been conducted, and the outcome is still uncertain.  But hose who suggest that the Iraqi election is just beanbag, and that all we are doing is making the war on terrorism worse...are speaking nonsense.  He outlines four main reasons that Democrats should be excited:
1.  A multiethnic, multi religious Arab state making their own constitution;
2.  With no great alternatives toward Iran, "Iraq is our Iran policy" because the leaders of Iran will feel pressure to reform;
3.  "The war on terrorism is a war of ideas."  The improved situation in Israel is cause for hope.  "It takes a village, and the Iraqi election was the Iraqi village telling the violent minority that what is is doing is shameful;"
4.  "We have paid a huge price in Iraq.  I want to get out as soon as we can.  But trying to finish the job there, as long as we have real partners, is really important--and any party that says otherwise will become unimportant." 

"The Tipping Points" looks hopefully at the post-election developments.  For Iraq "to be tipped in the right direction" the elections was necessary but in addition we need a stable, decent government to emerge "that can also quell the Sunni insurgency.  That will depend in part on America's willingness to stay the course...It will depend in part of the Shiite majority's willingness to share power with the Sunnis--particularly one of the crucial cabinet portfolios of defense, intelligence or interior--and not go on a de-Baathification rampage.  And it will depend in part of the Sunni Arab leaders finally supporting the Iraqi majority." (2/27/05)

Friedman's "Let's Talk About Iraq" (6/15/05) is part of his return to the Middle East after months of focuses on Globalization and writing a new book.  He opens with some perspective: "Ever since Iraq' remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence  but no one is Washington wants to talk about it.

Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does.  Liberals don't want to...because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed."  He continues, "Well, we need to talk about Iraq.   This is not time to give up--this is still winnable--but it it time to ask:  What is our strategy?...Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point...Our core problem" remains Rumsfeld's "disastrous decision--endorsed by president Bush--to invade Iraq on the cheap  From the day the looting started, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops there."

Part of his closing commentary is about increases US troops:  "I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and democratizing Iraq is possible.  I still believe it is a vital US interest to find. out.  But the only way to find out is to create a secure environment.  It is very hard for moderate, unifying, national leader to emerge in a cauldron of violence.  Maybe it is too late, but before we give up...why not actually try to do it right?  Double the American boots on the ground" team up with the UN, and get an ambassador back to Iraq.

"Rooting Out the Jihadist Cancer", Friedman's July 8 piece, looks at how best to confront terrorism after the London bombings of the previous day.  He feels the Muslim world needs to do more or "the west will do it in a rough, crude way, by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its mist guilty until proven innocent."  He feels that "it takes a village" because the greatest restrain "on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful.  it is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed."

In the fall of 2005, Friedman still likes to criticize the administration but wants to part in taking out troops.  He concludes his October 5 piece looking at the looming Constitutional vote.  "In trying to bring some democracy to Iraq, we are not just challenging the dictatorial-tribal political order here, but the male-dominated culture as well.  In effect, we are promoting two revolutions at once:  Jefferson versus Saddam and Sinbad versus the Little Mermaids...Succeeding in this venture, to stem the drift of the Arab world toward Islamo-fascism and autocracy, is so much more important than the war critics have ever allowed.  But is is also so much more difficult than the Bush team ever understood or prepared for--even though it was warned.  The Bush team's greatest sin was not thinking that this war was important.  It was thinking that it would be easy."

Two days later, Friedman's "What Were They Thinking?" focuses less on the WMD intelligence than other issues.  Friedman loved the President's speech of October 6 ("excellent") because "he made it clear, better than ever, why winning in Iraq is so important to the wider struggle...But it only makes me that much more angry that he fought this war as though it would be easy--never asking for nay sacrifice, any military draft, any tax hikes or any gasoline tax--and that he tolerated so much incompetence along the way." 

"There is a civil war going on in the Sunni Muslim world today," writes Friedman on November 16.  "Terrorists wiling to blow themselves up at funerals and wedding of their own faith are...completely disconnected from humanity.  They feel no moral restrains."  He is concerned that the Sunni majority has "been largely passive" though after the hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan "it was heartening" to see so many Jordanians take to the streets against the violence, allegedly by Jordanian Zarqawi. 

The author of The World Is Flat wrote on November 23 about President Bush's third term.  Far from suggesting that the President should be re-elected, he hopes Mr. Bush can make some significant changes. He called Bush and Cheney tow men who have "fought this war without deploying enough troops, always putting politics before policy, without any plans for the morning after ad never punishing any member of their team for rank incompetence to then accuse others of lacking seriousness on Iraq is disgusting...We are about to produce the most legitimate government ever the the Arab world, and the Bush-Cheney team--instead of acknowledging its errors on WMD, seeking forgiveness and urging the country to unite behind the important effort to defeat the jihadists madness in Iraq--does what?  It start slinging mud at Democrats on Iraq."

Also see Friedman's pre-war thoughts in detail.

Friedman's thought in the spring of 2006 included his March 31  "Iraq At the 11th Hour".  With sectarian violence increasing in February and March, (See Violence '06 for details) the veteran Times columnist is confident that "the fate of the entire US enterprise...now hangs in the balance, as the war has entered a dangerous new phase....of the barbaric identity-card violence between Sunnis and Shiites.  In the late 1970s, I covered a similar moment in Lebanon and the one thing I learned was this:  Once this kind of venom gets unleashed--with members of each community literally beheading each other on the basis of their religious identies--it poison everything.  You enter a realm that is beyond politics, as realm where fear and revenge dominate everyone's thinking--and that is where Iraq is headed."

This cycle of fear and revenge, once "embedded", continues Friedman, "is almost impossible to break" as militias are formed and turned to out of desperation.  The government become powerless to restore order. Then, politicians appealing more "to fear than to hope" and "national reconciliation goes up in smoke."  The problem began with the "criminally negligent decision" by Rumsfeld not the deploy enough troops to maintain order and a security vacuum was formed.  When the only goals of the insurgency is that you fail, it is especially challenging.  Shiites have run out of restrain after months of Sunni killings and attacks.  "So the slide into a medieval barbarism has begun.  Do not believe any of the Bush team's happy talk."

Friedman concludes, "There is only one hope...a national unity government...sharing power."  Large numbers of troops and police must be deployed "to prevent more of these tribal killings.  If a national unity government is not formed soon, and if these identity-card murders gain more momentum, any hope for building a decent Iraq will vanish.  It is five minutes to midnight."

April 7 brought us Friedman views on three three main factions trying to unite politically.  If they can "forge their own social contact, democracy is possible in this part of the world  If they can't, then it's kings and dictators as far as the eye can see....Our job was to do one thing right:  provide a secure environment so that Iraqis could have a reasonably rational, peaceful horizontal dialogue, which is difficult enough given their legacy of fear from the Saddam years.  We failed to do that."

In May 2006, Friedman left environmental issues on May 17 to launch one of his strongest attacks on the administration, whose war he generally supported.  "What has eaten away most at the support for this administration...has been the fact that time and time again, it has put political and ideology ahead of the interests of the U.S., and I think a lot of people are just sick of it.  I know I sure am."  Linking these ideas to Iraq, he continues, "Is there no job...that is too important to be handed over to a political hack?  No. In his excellent book on the Iraq war, "The Assassins' Gate,"  George Packer tells the story of how some of the State Department's best Iraq experts were barred from going to Iraqi immediately after the invasion--when they were needed most--because that didn't' pass [Cheney or Rumsfeld's] ideology test.  And that is the core of the matter:  the Bush team believes in loyalty over expertise.  When ideology always trumps reality, loyalty always trumps expertise...What good is it to have loyal crew members when the ship is sinking."

Still supporting the war but losing patience, Friedman's May 26 contribution opens with the questions he is often asked. Why doesn't he just give up on Iraq and "pronounce it a lost cause?" He will do this when he doesn't see Iraqi politicians taking risks to build a democracy."That moment may come soon. It's hard to tell. I won't hesitate to say so--but not yet." The columnist sees a struggle in Iraq between "theocrats and autocrats...The theocrats fear modernity taking root...the autocrats fear democracy taking root in Iraq."

My favorite Friedman piece over the summer and early fall of 2006 was "The Central Truth" (9/8/06). He still feels the war was a good idea if it can provide an example of a democracy in the Middle East, but he is very critical of how the administration has handled the war. Friedman paints with a broad brush. The veteran Middle East reporter opens, "To listen to the latest Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld speeches, you'd think that our biggest problem in Iraq is a violent minority of 'extremists,' defying the democratic will of the Iraqi people. And you'd think that our biggest problem at home is a misguided group of Democratic appeasers, who want to cut and run in the great totalitarian struggle of the 21st century. I wish it were so. Unfortunately, we are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the 'fringes' there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change."

Friedman wonders why "we are in the fight of our lives" but have an "unprecedented wartime tax cut." He wonder why we didn't have enough troops and why Bush uses the war "as a wedge issue to embarrass Democrats, frighten voters and win elections." What about acting on our "addiction to oil?...Donald Rumsfeld demonizes war critics as 'morally confused.'

What is happening inside Iraq? Friedman feels that for two years "the Shiite center...put up with the barbaric Sunni violence directed against its mosques and markets...but eventually ...snapped, formed their own death squads, turned to Iran for military aid, and focused more on communal survival than on making Iraq's democracy work." The commentary concludes with a somewhat hopeful note: "Just staying the course" will not contain the conflict. "But before we throw up our hands...why not make one more big push to produce a more stable accord..."

"If I Had One Wish" (10/4/06) hopes for Democrats to win back the House and Senate in November. "Incompetence" is the common theme of the new books out, including Bob Woodward's State of Denial. To solve problems, the Republican Party needs to suffer from "election shock," Friedman suggests. "There is something immoral about kicking Iraq down the road for someone else to deal with...Yes, Mr. Bush's original vision of a unified democratic Iraq was compelling and important. But it's not happening...Our top military people..know the Bush team won't order a Plan B, because it would be construed as an admission of failure and used in domestic politics. So we are staying a failing course."

In the week before the November 2006 election, Friedman was the most direct in his criticism of the administration that I can recall. "Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence" (11/3), opens provocatively, "George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid" because they can "get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the US military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe [joke[ at the President. What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the US military than to send it into combat...without enough men...or force...or equipment...left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal." He insulted Rumsfeld with, "Hey, you go to war with the army you've got--get over it." There was no "coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction." Friedman concludes, "Let Karl [Rove] know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has--through sheer incompetence--brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable."

Friedman in 2007 is often placed on other chapters/pages of this site. He did return to a common theme on March 2. Why aren't Muslim speaking out against the Muslim on Muslim violence in Iraq? He is hoping for a "moral surge." One expert at a think tank feels that no one in the Arab world "has the guts to say that what is happeing...is wrong--that killing schoolkids is wrong...The battleground in the Arab world today in not in Palestine or Lebanon, but in the classrooms and newsrooms."

"Watch the Sunni Tribes", Friedman advised in late August 2007 (8/29/07). Their willingness "to work side by side with Americans", which Friedman saw on his recent trip to Iraq, was encouraging because these same Americans "they've been shooting at for four years." One general told him that the Sunni tribes "still hate us. They just hate Al Qaeda even more right now and they hate the Persians even more than them. But they could turn their guns back on us anytime."

Friedman jokes that in October (10/24) we have "forgotten" Iraq. "Boy, am I glad we finally got out of Iraq. It was so painful waking up every morning and reading the news from there. It's just such a relief to have it out of mind and behind us. Huh? Say what? You say we're still there? But how could that be--nobody in Washington is talking about it anymore?" This silence could be due to Petraeus' testimony, less violence, and "the fact that all the leading Democratic presidential contenders have signaled that they will not precipitously withdraw." The columnist worries that we have stopped talking about Iraq.

Friedman's "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" (11/14/07) doesn't fit neatly into the Politics or Cost chapters. He examines a gasoline tax, Iran, and Iraq. "We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region. If you want to see us negotiate with Iran, not bomb it, you want a gasoline tax that will give us some real leverage by helping to reduce the income of the ayatollahs. If you're conservative and you believed that the Iraq war was necessary to drive reform in the Middle East, but the war has failed to do that and we need "Plan B", for the same objective, you want a gasoline tax that will reduce the flow of wealth to petrolist leaders who will never change if all they have to do is drill well holes rather than educate and empower their people."

Friedman wrote less often about Iraq in 2008. His November 20 piece, "Obama's Iraq Inheritance" appreciates the independent judiciary which may develop. "It's a reminder of the most important reason" for going to war: "to try to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world a region that stands out for its lack of consensual political and independent judiciaries." Since suicide bombers are still an "almost daily reality," al Qaeda has not been defeated. Friedman adds that "there is now, for the first time, a chance--still only a chance--that a reasonably stable democratizing overnight, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political state." Over the years, I note, Friedman tries to remain optimistic about the future of Iraq, seeming to kick to can of progress further down the road. Obama, he notes, "has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did--that he'll wait forever for them to sort out their poltiticians--while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons...Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic' Party' national security credentials than" doing the right thing in Iraq.

"Rice's Blind Spot", was Sebastian Mallaby (Post, 1/23/06) asking "the big question" in foreign policy.  It is "not whether you are a realist [like Rice] or an idealist.  It's whether you are an optimist or a pessimist:  whether you think that Iraq has gone badly merely because the Bush administration mishandled it, or whether you believe that no amount of skillful management could have achieved stability after three years."