Are we about to turn a corner in Iraq, or should we just cut our losses and get out now? How much longer should we let things play out before we take a decisive step towards disengagement? Let’s ask Tom Friedman, the New York Times’s resident Sensible Liberal and global brain. Apparently, we need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until November or December of 2006. Then we’ll know:

Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Hardball, MSNBC (May 11, 2006)

How much longer should we let things play out before we take a decisive step towards disengagement? Let’s ask Tom Friedman, the New York Times’s resident Sensible Liberal and global brain. Apparently, we need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until March or April of 2004. Then we’ll know:

The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.

—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 30, 2003)

We should let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until December of 2004 or January of 2005. Then we’ll know:

What I absolutely don’t understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it’s over. I don’t get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what’s the rush? Can we let this play out, please?

—Thomas L. Friedman, Fresh Air, NPR (June 3, 2004)

The next six months are critical. Give it until April or May of 2005. Then we’ll know:

What we’re gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation, CBS (October 3, 2004)

Give it until June or July of 2005:

Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won’t be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.

—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 28, 2004)

We’re in the end game now. Give it until March or April of 2006:

I think we’re in the end game now…. I think we’re in a six-month window here where it’s going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that’s my own feeling—let alone the presidential one.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Press (September 25, 2005)

Give it until March or April of 2006:

Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time.

—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (September 28, 2005)

June or July of 2006:

We’ve teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it’s going to come together.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation (December 18, 2005)

July to October of 2006:

I think that we’re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool’s errand.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Oprah Winfrey Show (January 23, 2006)

We’re in the end game now. We’ll see by sometime around May to July of 2006:

I think we’re in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We’ve got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they’re going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they’re not, in which case I think the bottom’s going to fall out.

—Thomas L. Friedman, CBS (January 31, 2006)

We’re in the end game now. We’ll see by sometime around September to December of 2006:

I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq. —Thomas L. Friedman, Today, NBC (March 2, 2006)

We need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until November or December of 2006. Then we’ll know:

Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.

—Thomas L. Friedman, Hardball, MSNBC (May 11, 2006)

Next month: Tom Friedman thinks that we’re going to find out whether it’s time to leave Iraq in the next six months! Give it until January 2007…

Be sure to bear in mind, in case you are confused, that there are always more corners to turn when you are lost in an endless maze.

(Quotes thanks to FAIR 2006-05-16. Link thanks to Dominion Weblog 2006-05-16.)

So it seems that Tom Friedman isn’t happy with the State of the Union speech that he’s likely to get; he decided to play make believe and write his own speech for Bush to read. If I recall correctly, this routine has been part of Friedman’s schtick for a few years; the whole thing seems more than just a bit self-important to me, but then, so does the State of the Union speech. Friedman’s idea, it seems, is that Bush should suddenly change into an alternative energy crank (or perhaps skip halfway steps and just suddenly change into Tom Friedman); and that he should use the bully pulpit to expound his newfound faith and lay down a Kennedyesque challenge to the American energy industry. (If he does not jawbone us about Friedman’s pet cause, apparently, you can stick a fork in the Bush Presidency.) So here’s what he’s informed Mr. Bush he’d like to hear tonight:

My fellow Americans, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy gave an extraordinary State of the Union address in which he called on the nation to marshal all of its resources to put a man on the Moon. By setting that lofty goal, Kennedy was trying to summon all our industrial and scientific talent, and a willingness to sacrifice financially, to catch up with the Soviet Union, which had overtaken America in the field of large rocket engines.

While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, Kennedy said, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.

I come to you this evening with a similar challenge. President Kennedy was worried about the threat that communism posed to our way of life. I am here to tell you that if we don’t move away from our dependence on oil and shift to renewable fuels, it will change our way of life for the worse — and soon — much, much more than communism ever could have. Making this transition is the calling of our era. …

—Tom Friedman, New York Times (2006-01-27): State of the Union

… and so on, and so forth.

Well, I have my own ideas about what’s important. So I humbly submit my own speech for Mr. Bush to consider giving tonight. I know that this is last minute, but it would be surprisingly easy for him to memorize. And I think it’s important. If Mr. Bush steps up to this challenge, the speech could be a new beginning for our country. If he doesn’t, you can stick a fork in this administration. It will be done — because it will have abdicated leadership on the biggest issue of our day. So here’s the speech I’ll be listening for tonight:

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Cheney, members of Congress, fellow Americans…

I resign.

Anything else is just going to mean more of the same old bullshit.

Postscript

Just remember: when these folks get in front of the camera they just lie. Politicians’ aims are political victory, not truth, and not justice. Hanging on the words and dickering about this or that point and fuming about this or that plain non sequitur will be talking past them entirely. You may as well spend the same amount of time cleaning your house, or sorting old photographs, or sucking on lemons.

Pointing out some piece of plain nonsense may have some value in provoking other people—the so-called rank and file, i.e., you and me—to think for a moment; and it may be worthwhile to use it to call on those other people to discourse that moves a bit beyond the braying of talking-points. But lingering on the endless talk of politicians or the professional political windbags inside the Beltway, as if these folks care what we think, or about what is true, is like trying to beat a street hustler at his three-card monty. It’s a scam. Just walk away.

—GT 2005-02-02: The State of the Union: live-blogged for you!