Dear Tom Friedman...TMYFK!

New York Times Op/Ed Columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, outdid himself today with his continuing refusal to see the US domination in the Middle East for what it is. Ever since his February 17, 2002 NYT article, “An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince”, in which he wrote about his meeting with Prince Abdullah, Friedman has seen himself not as a columnist but as a world leader. A world leader whose words can change the course of events in the Middle East. Get over yourself, Mr. Friedman. The world sees you as slightly less cogent than Al Sharpton...and a lot more ego-driven. Your prose is not going to alter history. Okay...here we go...this morning’s latest Friedman idiocy: Friedman said our tsunami aid to Muslim countries was not going to make us better loved by Muslims. “If the fact that American soldiers have risked their lives to save the Muslims of Bosnia, the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Somalia, the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq has earned the U.S. only the false accusation of being ‘anti-Muslim’, trust me, U.S. troops passing out bottled water and Pop-Tarts in Indonesia are not going to erase that lie.” That lie? The false accusation? Oh please! There is not a single born-again Christian who has been in Iraq who is not anti-Muslim. And let us not forget born-again Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, who said in 2003 when discussing a battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." This is the General Boykin who last year said, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this.” So what was Boykin’s plan for a born-again Army of God in Iraq? Does a Christian Army of God risk death so Muslims can worship Allah, or have these soldiers "been raised" to fight a crusade against Christ’s enemy? The Bushmaton is as fervent about pushing his Christian beliefs in the Middle East as he is about giving aid to the rich in the US. Being a born-again means your belief system is anti-Muslim. This is unarguable. It is also indefensible. You cannot be a born-again--born-agains believe all who have not confessed Jesus Christ as their savior are going to everlasting hell and deserve to go to everlasting hell--and not be anti-Muslim. The reason born-agains want Israel to prevail over Palestine is so that the Judeo/Christian prophesies will prevail. It has nothing to do with right, wrong or supporting Jews. It is so that Muslims will not control what born-agains believe is their God-given right to control the part of the world where Christianity was born. We are not in Iraq because we want to promote freedom and democracy. We are in Iraq because the White House thought it was a good place to begin its drive toward global supremacy. And into the bargain, the WH wanted to control the oil business in Iraq. Our being in Iraq is economic and political. But in order to get the simple-minded Bushmaton on board (not to mention Bush’s chief speech-writer born-again Michael Gerson, and warmonger-born-again Attorney General John Ashcroft), the prophets in the White House preached to their born-again faction that invading Iraq would drive forward the evangelical far-right conservative agenda to rid the world of the Anti-Christ--Islam. The real political/economic reasons for the US zeal to control the Middle East may not be anti-Muslim. But the powers in the White House are using to their advantage the anti-Muslim prejudice inherent in the born-again belief. Politically, the US is not in Iraq to save Iraq’s soul. But the US is a Christian nation and many Christians believe Muslims are enemies of Christianity and need to be exterminated. When Islam is defeated, then Iraq can emerge as a country worthy of a Christian god. And, Mr. Friedman, although born-agains are tolerating the Jews in the Middle East and the rest of the world, it is only until they can be converted. Jews also are non-believers who will go to hell unless they confess Jesus as their Lord and their Savior. So don’t think you’ve been let off the hook by all those pious, freedom-and-democracy-preaching conservative, evangelical born-again Christians who are out to save the Middle East...unless you plan to carry the cross of Jesus in the foreseeable future. “U.S. foreign policy for the last 15 years has been dominated by an effort to save Muslims-not from tsunamis, but from tyrannies, mostly their own theocratic or autocratic regimes,” Friedman says. The only thing the US and Great Britain has ever wanted to do in Muslim countries for the last 100 years is to replace Muslim theocratic and autocratic regimes with US and British theocratic and autocratic regimes. Pull your head out of...um...the desert sand, Mr. Friedman. Have a good look at the real world.