BRILLLLIANT ARTICLE BY DR THOMAS FRIEDMAN OF NYTIMES

From: Admirer (Anonymous-Remailer_at_See.Comment.Header)
Date: 03/30/04 

Date: 30 Mar 2004 06:27:38 +0100

BRILLLLIANT ARTICLE BY DR THOMAS FRIEDMAN OF NYTIMES

He is twice pullitzer winner

>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/opinion/28FRIE.html
> OP-ED COLUMNIST
> Awaking to a Dream
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> Published: March 28, 2004
>
> Columnist Page: Thomas L. Friedman
>
> I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The
> New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings
> and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not
> one story.
>
> Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up
> my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of
> intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect
> intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked ?
> for the very best of reasons ? people with evil enough imaginations to
> put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to
> hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols
> and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason
> at all.
>
> Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that
> the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad
> guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says,
> "That is the characteristic of our time ? all the imagination is in the
> hands of the evildoers."
>
> I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a
> politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It
> has been so long. It's been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out
> his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know,
> Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old
> warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar
> tissue, and imagined something different. It's been a long time.
>
> I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 a.m., fire up my
> computer, call up AOL's news page and then hold my breath to see what
> outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq
> or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames
> in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq?
>
> I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news ? by
> someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something
> different and thrusts out a hand.
>
> I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a
> real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global
> warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers
> marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters
> never again be recruited for suicide bombings. I want to wake up and
> read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to
> his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan and
> Mr. Sharon responded by freezing Israeli settlements as a good-will
> gesture.
>
> I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no
> longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to
> replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car
> that gets over 40 miles to the gallon.
>
> I want to wake up and read that *** Cheney has apologized to the
> U.N. and all our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, but then
> appealed to our allies to join with the U.S. in an even more important
> project ? helping Iraqis build some kind of democratic framework. I want
> to wake up and read that Tom DeLay called for a tax hike on the rich in
> order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and
> to finance all our underfunded education programs.
>
> I want to wake up and read that Justice Antonin Scalia has recused
> himself from ruling on the case involving Mr. Cheney's energy task force
> when it comes before the Supreme Court ? not because Mr. Scalia did
> anything illegal in duck hunting with the V.P., but because our Supreme
> Court is so sacred, so vital to what makes our society special ? its
> rule of law ? that he wouldn't want to do anything that might have even
> a whiff of impropriety.
>
> I want to wake up and read that Mr. Bush has announced a Manhattan
> Project to develop renewable energies that will end America's addiction
> to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just
> announced that his next film will be called "Moses" and all the profits
> will be donated to the Holocaust Museum.
>
> Most of all, I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John
> McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends
> not to waste his four years avoiding America's hardest problems ? health
> care, deficits, energy, education ? but to tackle them, and that can
> only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.
>
>

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