I think that effectively sums up anything that can be said about Friedman’s op/ed. You can hate on him, but there’s really no use.

He managed to get a bland, non-informative (at least not to anyone that’s been closely following The Situation in Libya), and generally toothless piece of writing published.

The only part where I take strong exception to his crappy narrative is when he quotes President Obama –

“Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And, as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

I can think of at least 5 major conflicts that came dangerously close to the genocide threshold and in some cases went galloping wildly across it where the U.S. stayed on the periphery, for whatever reason.

Friedman misses the political back channeling, the deceit, the truth twisting, and in many cases the simply naive foreign policy that the Obama administration seems to be following.

But like you, I love when awesome things happen without much work. So…we shall see.

Thanks for stopping by! Mr. Collier was generally cordial in his assessment of, and tone toward, his hosts. Yet, he did seem to establish certain parameters for the Command’s proper role, for example by expressing skepticism toward the usefulness of “conflict prevention” as a component of foreign policy. This, he indicated, could lead to an excessive amount of meddling justified by good intentions.

His primary interest is in the ability to translate resource extraction over the coming years into substantive increases in income across the continent, which in his assessment correlates to improved security and political circumstances. Accordingly, he emphasized the importance of a multitude of actors in this process, from official government aid agencies, to the UN, the AU, regional and sub-regional organizations, and of course the private sector.

I am not aware of a transcript, but AFRICOM public affairs has released this: http://www.africom.mil/getarticle.asp?art=4108

Rugby does seem to be more of an art form. Football is linear and calculating, whereas rugby is dynamic and intuitive (as you said). Interesting post.

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of Friedman, and in this particular case he seems to have made no effort to engage in anything but historicism, framing the last century as a universe of chaos swirling around and being brought into order by the shining light of the American sun. Perhaps I’m blessed (or cursed!) but I have a hard time sharing in the hyperbolic certainty to which Friedman’s stock is pegged. My reluctance to embrace his praise for military peacemakers on the one hand is perhaps a response to his flippant appeals to raw militarism on the other. I concede that this reaction may be more to the style of the delivery than to the substance of the message, but…

Two words: Friedman Unit!

check Tom Friedman’s thoughts as well in the 10/10/09 NYT.