1) Friedman supports the ideological motives of the war (e.g., sponsorship of democracy in the region, counter to our nation’s past sponsorships — and believes this is a core-mission to the American-nationstate), and
2) is a realistic critic of our military civilian leadership’s curious habit to place ideology in the driver’s seat of on-the-ground policy (e.g., the doctrine of always trying to use smaller and smaller human force while equipping them with massively superior technology to the threat)

I also like that Friedman makes regular trips to the region and has cultivated hundreds (if not thousands!) of everyman contacts. More than once he has explained, smack-dab, the Arab world view in the context of currentevents in simple terms to us Western peeps.

Friedman has the world insight and post-9/11_reasoning more akin to the toddler’s of today, and the citizens of the next few decades, than of us present disneyworld_era nostalgics.

rob@egoz.org