Friedman: An American in Paris

[democratic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/opinion/20friedman.html?oref=login&oref=login

An American in Paris
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: January 20, 2005

PARIS

Watching George Bush's second inaugural from a bistro in Paris is like watching the Red Sox win the World Series from a sports bar in New York City. Odds are that someone around you is celebrating - I mean, someone, somewhere in Europe must be happy about this - but it's not obvious.

Why are Europeans so blue over George Bush's re-election? Because Europe is the world's biggest "blue state." This whole region is a rhapsody in blue. These days, even the small group of anti-anti-Americans in the European Union is uncomfortable being associated with Mr. Bush. There are Euro-conservatives, but, aside from, maybe, the ruling party in Italy, there is nothing here that quite corresponds to the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-national-health-care, anti-Kyoto, openly religious, pro-Iraq-war Bush Republican Party.

If you took all three major parties in Britain - Labor, Liberals and Conservatives - "their views on God, guns, gays, the death penalty, national health care and the environment would all fit somewhere inside the Democratic Party," said James Rubin, the Clinton State Department spokesman, who works in London. "That's why I get along with all three parties here. They're all Democrats!"

Funnily enough, the one country on this side of the ocean that would have elected Mr. Bush is not in Europe, but the Middle East: it's Iran, where many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq.

An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were "loving anything their government hates," such as Mr. Bush, "and hating anything their government loves." Tehran is festooned in "Down With America" graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt.

Iran, he said, is the ultimate "red state." Go figure.

[marmar]

1. Europe, Canada ...

What is it that our fellow first-world nations can see that the morons in this country can't?

[Bob3]

2. oh god

Now Tom is pushing the young Iranians will greet us with flowers.

Piss off Tom.

And you must not have been at the bar in New York where the NY Red Sox fans (and there are more than you think you stuffy little insider prick) gathered to watch the dream come true.

And one more time tom

Piss off - good kids are dead and maimed and men women and children in countless numbers have been killed wounded and crippled in part thanks to your enabling gibberish and you god damn sit there in a bistro eating potato fritters and Brie and drinking a really nice white wine and make these stupid insider comments.

May your damned tongue turn to sand.

[democratic]

3. ..

That's not his point. I'm Iranian myself. I visit Iran about 5 times a year. Most Iranians inside Iran are very pro-US and most love President Bush because he's been more hard-line with the Iranian government. To most Iranians anything and everything is better than an Islamic Republic. But while some do support invasion most merely want US moral support.

Friedman is a brilliant Democrat. Why don't you want to face reality?

[JAbuchan08]

4. Friedman is the type of Democrat who hopes against hope

and against evidence that Bush will go against the demagaugery of the Republican party and actually do some good in spite of himself. He's not really that different from Bush in that he's convinced that somehow high ideals can be victorious at the point of a gun. HELLO! If your ideas have such value why does it take heavy weaponry to enforce them abroad and intense psychological warfare to get people to adopt them at home?

[ElectroPrincess]

5. Wow, that must be expensive? (Visiting Iran 5x/year)

I envy your paycheck. No joke, my dear father who is the most precious person in the world to me is in the final stages of Alzheimer's. However, I can only afford to visit him (from Virginia to Arizona) twice a year AT MOST. Yes, I'd genuinely be much happier with life as a USA Citizen than in the Middle East also given your apparent situation.

[yurbud]

8. what would Iranians do if we invade?

Unite behind the mullahs, or half welcome us?

How long would it take for the kids to figure out that Bush ISN'T just there to bring MTV and McDonalds?

[Cocoa]

10. are you Tom Friedman?

two of Friedman's main themes are that he's brilliant and also that he's a liberal, neither of which is remotely true.

[shrike]

13. Are they going to throw flowers when we invade?

Do tell!

[The Zanti Regent]

6. Wonder if he would change his mind if his only child died...

...Thanks to liars like Toady Tom, my only child was killed in Iraq.

Toady Tom got all the kids I have. I can't start again at 50, and I won't.

[patdem]

7. I am with you...to sacrafice children for some lofty ideal of putting

McDonalds on every corner..and making oil cheap to the US...NOT ONE SINGLE DAMN SON/DAUGHTER!

[drdtroit]

9. Please Tom, how much of our tax money

have YOU pocketed?

[MISSDem]

11. Another good one from Tom.

He always makes a lot of sense.

[agincourt]

12. I don't think they'll stay,

an Islamic "red state" very long if we bomb them. BTW, was Friedman for or against operation desert Bushfurher? I thought he was against it.