Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon, takes on political superhack Thomas Friedman, one of America’s most influential (and highly paid) propagandists for corporate globalization and apologists for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What is most disturbing about people like Friedman is that no matter how incontrovertible the facts become in challenging their world view analysis, they simply carry on as if nothing has changed and none of that reality has any relevance. I could go in more detail about how these people’s increasingly delusional fantasies transcend issues of political debate, crossing more distinctly into the realm of unhinged psychological conditioning, but Mr. Greenwald does a good deal of that with this overview, and much more pointedly and lucidly than I would.

Just when it seemed Thomas Friedman realized the destructive nature of Dick Cheney’s foreign-policy vision, the New York Times columnist suggests today that the VP’s approach is not only healthy, but should play a role beyond 2008 if a Democrat succeeds Bush. Specifically, Friedman seems excited by the prospect of an “Obama-Cheney ticket.” (Friedman goes so far as to say “they complete each other.”)

I think a President Obama offering to go to Tehran would have a huge impact on that country and create lots of internal debate, especially if we made clear that America would be satisfied with a verifiable change of Iranian behavior.

But Mr. Obama’s stress on engaging Iran, while a useful antidote to the Bush boycott policy, is not sufficient…. Mr. Obama’s gift for outreach would be so much more effective with a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm.

Glenn Greenwald continues to tear this inane line of thinking apart quite effectively in his Salon article here…

So obviously, Freidman’s mentality — aside from being both childish and barbaric — was completely about himself and his perceptions of his own weakness and some lurking belief that he had to “restore his virility.” That’s why he loved and loves Dick Cheney, and it’s why our press corps so admires the faux swaggering idiocy of Rudy Giuliani.

The “philosophy” which the Very Serious Tom Friedman was spouting was exactly the same as what truly absurd figures like Michael Ledeen and Jonah Goldberg were running around spouting (”Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”). That was the childish, inane playground tripe pouring forth in 2002 from America’s Most Serious Liberal Foreign Policy Expert (Friedman’s own version of “The Ledeen Doctrine” was expressed through his now-infamous “Suck. On. This.” justification for the Iraq War).

As Friedmans’ column this morning demonstrates, this is exactly the same mentality which our pundit class continues to embrace today: America can only succeed in the world if we run around constantly threatening countries that we will invade and incinerate them. Thus, Democrats like little Obambi are too weak and not enamored enough of war to be Serious in national security. The country needs the Real Tough Guy Republicans like Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani — the crazed warmongers — to stay safe.

The drooling, bloodthirsty desire for war and vengeance which Friedman spewed forth in the months after 9/11 has been suppressed some as a result of the disaster in Iraq, but it is still lurking in him and the rest of our pundit class with all the vibrancy it had in 2002. And now that they are starting to convince themselves that they were Right After All about Iraq, they’re starting to unveil it again, in completely unchanged form. They have learned absolutely nothing. They cannot, because they are convinced that they are the Guardians of Great Wisdom and cannot err. Even in Iraq, they did not err.

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