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Bombs, Binaries, and Blinders: Thomas Friedman’s Forever War Fantasy [1]

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Date: 2025-06-23

How a liberal hawk recycles failed U.S. interventions as 'inclusion'—and tries to crown Trump a peacemaker in the Middle East.

Thomas L. Friedman’s latest piece, “How the Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle,” is yet another stunning display of intellectual sleight-of-hand, hawkish nostalgia, and geopolitical gaslighting. While he deserves some credit for trying to trace a larger arc in today’s volatile conflicts, Friedman clings—yet again—to a dangerously simplistic binary: the so-called “forces of inclusion” versus “the forces of resistance.” This tidy, reductive framework may soothe the conscience of Western interventionists, but it distorts the truth and whitewashes decades of U.S. and Israeli aggression.

Friedman has long been an enthusiastic hawk on U.S. policy in the region, famously cheerleading the Iraq War with that now-infamous metaphor about “sucking the oxygen” out of the Middle East to make room for democracy. That same logic has returned—repackaged and recycled—to support another escalation, this time against Iran, under the absurd pretense that Donald Trump, of all people, is a defender of liberal internationalism.

But what’s most galling is Friedman’s attempt to rehabilitate Trump as a potential peacemaker. Let’s not forget: this is the same Trump who unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, emboldened Netanyahu at every turn, and promoted a so-called “peace plan” that effectively erased Palestinians from their future. The idea that Trump will now deliver a two-state solution—while backing an Israeli leader under investigation for war crimes and bent on annexation—is laughable.

Friedman seems unable or unwilling to confront the deeper contradiction: how can he praise Trump’s strikes on Iran as part of a struggle for “inclusion” while ignoring Trump’s partnership with Netanyahu, a leader who has shredded Israel’s democratic institutions, deepened Palestinian suffering, and governed through division?

While Friedman rightly criticizes Iran’s repressive regime and regional meddling, he glosses over how U.S. and Israeli policies have long fueled the cycle of instability. He makes no mention of the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran or the devastating effects of sanctions and collective punishment—policies that have only hardened nationalist sentiment. “Inclusion” by force isn’t inclusion at all; it’s coercion. And history tells us that coercion always comes with a cost.

Even if Iran’s nuclear capacity is temporarily reduced, that outcome won’t bring lasting peace. What will linger instead is the perception across the Muslim world of a Jewish and Christian nuclear power—Israel and the United States—striking a Muslim country to prevent it from acquiring the same weapons they already possess. That hypocrisy won’t go unnoticed. For many in the Global South and non-nuclear nations, this episode will only reinforce the view that nuclear deterrence is a necessity, not a privilege of the West. The result? A more unstable, not safer, world.

In the end, Friedman’s final paragraph reads as pure fantasy: Trump as an architect of peace? A builder of Palestinian statehood? A defender of democratic norms abroad while dismantling them at home? The contradictions collapse under their weight. If this is the best case the liberal hawks can make, no wonder we’re locked in perpetual war.

Friedman never disappoints—at least not in terms of predictability. I always know exactly where he stands.

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