Friedman has now posted a contribution to that Slate forum, and he offers quite a smorgasbord of reasons for the war, i.e.: "I think there were four reasons for this war ... the stated reason, the moral reason, the right reason, and the real reason." Whatever. The perennial fog that fills Friedman's prose lifts a little when he gets around to the "real reason." Close inspection of the passage that follows reveals that Friedman's shares most Americans' slippery grasp of reality and believes that Saddam was somehow "accountable" for 9/11 even if he wasn't responsible. We had to "smash something" -- anything! -- to show those pesky Arabs who's boss:
"The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the 'terrorism bubble,' which had built up during the 1990s. This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as 'martyrs,' and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it's not very diplomatic—it's not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period."
<http://slate.msn.com/id/2093620/entry/2093763/>
Carl
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