Dear Tom Friedman: Let Me Get This Straight

Your NYT Op/Ed piece this morning using that dreary brussels sprouts parable of Michael Mandelbaum's is actually saying: No one in the world should be making nuclear weapons except the United States Is that about the size of it? Everyone in the world--North Korea, Iran, and China--should opt out of the bullying game of producing nuclear weapons except the USA. We get to keep on making nuclear weapons because it's our God-given right to be bullies. How about EVERYONE stops making nuclear weapons? Oh…I forgot. That would put the Carlyle Group out of business. That would mean Halliburton's subsidiary in the UK, Brown and Root, would have to stop poisoning the air with radiation fallout from their nuclear weapons plants. So the only sensible global law is that the US gets to proliferate the manufacture of nuclear weapons all over the world because the US is the only country that has the right to defend itself against aggression. Is that the plan, Mr. Friedman? Okay. I think I get it now. According to your plan, the US can aggress against whomever it wants because the US has the right to make nuclear weapons. And, the US has the right to back any regime in the world because the US has nuclear weapons. At the same time the US has outlawed the manufacture of nuclear weapons by all countries except where the Carlyle group has its US-sponsored arms factories. Nice plan, Mr. Friedman. The United States and its fascist leaders will force liberty, democracy and freedom on the world, because if the world doesn't comply with whatever the US calls liberty-democracy-freedom we'll threaten to nuke the shit out of them. And we'll be the only nation in the world to have the actual weaponry to back up the threat. But that's being a despotic, totalitarian, oppressive, terrorist nation, Mr. Friedman. I truly do get it now. Terrorism is okay as long as the United States is the terrorist.