How Do NeoCons Think?

Here's a good example.

The evil begins with the first two paragraphs:

A recent story in the New York Times documented the steady proliferation of Halal food pushcarts in Midtown Manhattan, which I can attest to in my capacity as a sidewalk gourmet. These Muslim street food vendors -- mostly Middle Eastern men who can be seen praying on mats beside their carts -- are now nearly as ubiquitous, and popular, as New York's iconic hot dog stands. They deserve their success: the food is very good and it's priced right. Still, one might wonder whether this New York Jew living in a post-9/11 world finds the Big Apple's epicurean Islamicization a worrisome trend. No, honestly, I'm not nervous about it. Here's why.

When I belly up for my chicken on pita, these men invariably greet me with cheerful deference, often referring to me as "boss." That polite gratuity is a clear sign they understand their standing the melting pot can only be maintained through good citizenship and proper behavior. To put it bluntly, their instincts tell them the Muslim community isn't on top in polyglot America.

This sounds like George Wallace saying that he doesn't mind blacks, so long as they don't "get uppity." So long as Muslims are on the bottom looking up, bowing and scraping to their "betters", Mr. Friedman likes them just fine. Just don't let them pretend to be equals or to have (gasp) rights.

Friedman then goes on to recap how Bush has failed in Iraq. Friedman believes the fundamental cause of failure was this: Bush did not commit to a permanent American hegemony. Friedman believes it was a mistake to try to give Iraq back to the Iraqis; instead, a heavier military presence and martial law, he claims, would have kept things secure for as long as was required. In short, Friedman regards humanity as weakness; we should have kept an iron hand on Iraq until we had a puppet government in place to take over.

Not to worry, though: Friedman has a one-shot cure to reclaim Iraq and end the insurgency there.

Bomb Iran.

Will Iran invade Iraq or close the Persian Gulf in retaliation? Stuff and nonsense, says Friedman.

Next, the Iranians would do nothing -- bupkes. They don't attack Israel, they don't choke off the world's oil supply, they do not send hit squads to the United States, there is no "war" in the conventional sense of attack counterattack. Iran already has its hands full without inviting more trouble. Its leaders would be reeling from the initial US attack and they would know our forces are in position to strike again if Iran provokes us or our allies. They would stand before mankind with their pants around their ankles, dazed, bleeding, crying, reduced to bloviating from mosques in Teheran and pounding their fists on desks at the UN. The lifelines they throw to the Iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah and Syria would begin to dry up, as would the lifelines the double-dealing Europeans have been throwing to Iran. Maybe the Mullahs would lose control.

Um... first off, this presumes the Iranians act rationally, which they might not. Second, it ignores the fact that the theocratic government of Iran cannot afford to let an attack go unchallenged. Third and foremost, it ignores the very basic fact that, in every single case without exception, bombing another nation has always RALLIED that nation to its government. Bombing Iran's nuclear sites would guarantee a ground war with Iran- whose ground forces outnumber ours in Iraq and Afghanistan combined by as much as six to one.

But in Friedman's happy shiny bomby world, Iran and all the other fundamentalist Muslims, rather than become more dedicated to their jihad, will cower in fear, and the Democrats will dry up and blow away, and Iraq's leaders will quit their civil war and behave, allowing the United States to:

From that point on, with our arms free of the quicksand, we can fight the war on terror the way it should have been fought in the first place. Using our enormous edge in weapons, intelligence and technology, and building on it, we launch quick, lethal, ad hoc strikes wherever in the world we determine terrorists are working to harm us, shooting first and asking for permission later.

In other words, the United States will become the largest terrorist organization on Earth. You'll never know where we're going to strike; we won't allow anyone to stop us; and we'll crush anyone who dares get in our way.

Do I even need to explain why I find this mode of thought unacceptable for people in power?