If you were to encounter this Friedman character---he would probably tell you that he only writes to sell newspapers.
Of course it might be an encounter, he might not forget to quickly.
Your email pal,
Tom L.
Carl Remick wrote:
> I'm willing to stand corrected, but, IMO, today's column by Thomas
> Friedman of the NY Times is the most obscene thing he has ever written.
> The problem, it seems, is not that NATO's bombing of Belgrade has been
> indiscriminate -- it has not been indiscriminate *enough* for TF's
> taste. He states: We are at war with the Serbian nation, and anyone
> hanging around Belgrade needs to understand that. This notion that we
> are only at war with one bad guy, Slobodan Milosevic (who was popularly
> elected three times), is ludicrous.
>
> The full text follows:
>
> Steady as She Goes
>
> By Thomas L. Friedman
>
> Is everybody done now?
> Jesse Jackson, are you done making a fool of yourself, praying together
> with the demented Serbian leader and mucking up American policy by
> flying into Belgrade to get out three U.S. P.O.W.'s -- as if they should
> be our top priority now? Network and cable television, have you shown us
> enough footage of the U.S. P.O.W.'s, telling us about each scratch they
> got and how they spent their days? Will you also keep us posted when
> they sign their book contracts and announce their Web sites? Chinese
> protesters, have you gotten it all out of your systems, or would you
> like us to really set off a riot outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing by
> announcing no more visas to America for Chinese?
> Can we get back to the war now?
> Yes, last weekend was a bad one in the Balkan wars, which is why this
> week has to be the week for steady nerves. That this war and its
> ramifications were so poorly thought out from the start by the Clinton
> team is no longer in doubt. They will have to answer for that later. But
> right now we still need to achieve our basic objectives, and despite
> last week's fiascoes, NATO's limited-war strategy is still the right one
> -- massed air power aimed at crippling Serbia's infrastructure until it
> agrees to negotiate a political settlement. And NATO's limited political
> objective is still the right one -- a return of the Kosovar Albanian
> refugees under some form of international protection. We do not have the
> luxury of doing less, and we do not have the allies, the national will
> or the national interest for doing more.
> That is why NATO and the Clintonites need to stay the course: intensify
> the bombing, intensify the diplomacy. I am sorry about the Chinese
> Embassy, but we have no reason to be defensive here. We are at war with
> the Serbian nation, and anyone hanging around Belgrade needs to
> understand that. This notion that we are only at war with one bad guy,
> Slobodan Milosevic (who was popularly elected three times), is
> ludicrous.
> The blunt truth is that since NATO's bombings began, more Serbs than
> ever support the regime's actions in Kosovo, Mark Mazower, a Princeton
> University European expert, wrote in The Washington Post. Hatred of
> Albanians is not something invented by Milosevic; it has deep roots in
> Serbian political culture. . . . The majority of Serb intellectuals are
> not liberals where Kosovo is concerned. The prevailing popular mood is
> an intense, if shortsighted, Serb nationalism -- resentful and
> narcissistic, claiming victimhood for itself and indifferent to the
> sufferings of the real victims of the past few months and years.
> Such attitudes cannot be uprooted by simply invading Belgrade and
> ousting Mr. Milosevic from power. Mr. Milosevic is deeply connected to
> his own people, and too many of his own people are full of hate for the
> Albanians. Trying to cure that hatred is a fool's errand. The best we
> can do is bottle it up. That is why our goal should remain bombing the
> Serbs until they agree to a NATO-Russian force in Kosovo. If we can
> achieve such a deal, most of the refugees should be able to return, and
> Yugoslavia would then be boxed in on all sides by either strong states
> or the international peacekeepers.
> And once that happens, Mr. Milosevic can stew in his own hatred. In
> fact, I can think of no greater punishment for the Serb people for what
> they have done, and what they have tacitly sanctioned, than having to
> live with him forever.
> The only way to cure the Serbs' hate, and to temper their nationalist
> fantasies, is for them to do it themselves. If this war can be brought
> to a diplomatic solution soon, the Serbs, as they rebuild all their
> broken bridges, roads and factories, may start to ask: Was it worth it?
> Was it worth setting our country back a generation so that the
> peacekeepers in Kosovo would wear U.N. blue helmets and not NATO green
> ones? And who led us here?
> Only when they conclude that their nationalist fantasies have brought
> them to a very dark and lonely corner will they change. The Balkans
> don't need a new Serbian leader, they need a new Serbian ethic that
> understands how to live in 21st-century Europe. NATO can't produce that
> transformation. But by intensifying the bombing and intensifying the
> diplomacy, it can create the conditions in which that transformation
> might begin. Stay the course.
> [end of text]
>
> Carl Remick