One Strike, Two Errors

Iran’s failed strike on Israel  — April 13 involving around 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles — helped expose Tucker Carlson and Thomas Friedman shortcomings. Each occupies opposing corners of our political arena. Each slip is worth a closer look.


Tucker Carlson

My last post ended with a lengthy, and favorable, excerpt of Carlson’s thinking. I liked his professed commitment to being “virtuous,” and to “natural rights that distinguish the citizen from the slave.”

I did call Carlson “controversial.” But after reading Free Press columnist Eli Lake’s critique of Carlson’s departure from reality since he left FOX News, I think calling Tucker “controversial” may understate what’s happened.

Lake is appalled by Carlson’s “descent into moral relativism, his muddying of the line between good and evil.” Lake points to

• Tucker’s saying America is no better than its enemies;

•  His trip to Moscow, where he praised the city’s “gleaming subways and orderly fast-food restaurants”;

•  His interviewing “world-champion liar” Vladimir Putin, taking in Putin’s “slanted” story of Russian dominion over Ukraine, and his failure to mention Alexei Navalny, whom Putin liquidated ten days after the interview.

• Tucker’s interview of Munther Isaac, a self-described evangelical Christian pastor living in Bethlehem, whom Carlson introduced this way:

How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the West, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. [Listen to] the view of a pastor from Bethlehem.

Lake calls Issac an extremist who praised the “strength” of those who invaded Israel on October 7(!)  As to Bethlehem, Lake says the historic town has not been administered by Israel since late 1995 when the Palestinian Authority took over (Israel does conduct area counter-terrorism operations), adding that before 1995, Bethlehem Christians were a strong majority; since then, Christians have dwindled to less than 20%.  

The Christian population decline reflects a broader trend in Gaza and the West Bank. Today, Christians make up only 1% of the population in the Palestinian territories, many having fled to Israel, where half of Christian students there go on to college.

Tucker never challenged Isaac’s assertions, instead attacking American evangelical leaders who support Israel, saying, “If you wake up in the morning and decide your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you’ve lost the thread.”  

Lake believes it’s Tucker who’s lost the thread. Carlson stayed silent after Iran’s strike against Israel.  Lake quotes author Abigail Shrier’s comment: “If you call yourself ‘America First’ and have nothing to say about [Iran’s attack], you are a fraud.”

 

Thomas Friedman

Unlike Carlson, Friedman has a lot to say about Iran’s missile strike on Israel. But mostly, Friedman wants us to bring Middle East policy in line with his own views. A three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Friedman holds an exalted position as chief columnist writing weekly on world affairs from the nation’s capital for the New York Times, America’s leading newspaper.

Friedman is well-qualified. Less appreciated are the financial underpinning he enjoys. Friedman’s wealth stems from General Growth Properties (GGP), a past major owner of American shopping malls owned by the Bucksbaum family. Friedman at age 25 in 1978 married the founder’s daughter Ann Bucksbaum. In 2018, GGP was acquired by Brookfield Properties for $9 billion in cash.

Friedman’s influence on world affairs does have to be measured against that of his predecessor, Timesman and two-time Pulitzer winner James “Scotty” Reston. Scotty reported, or wrote a top world affairs column, from Washington for most years from 1945 to 1987.

In 1961, President Kennedy unburdened himself in “incredibly frank language about his frightening meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna” to Reston “minutes after the session ended, before he'd even briefed any of his top aides and advisors.”

The Chinese invited Reston to visit Peking at the same time of Henry Kissinger’s super-secret July 1971 trip to China. While there, Reston underwent an emergency appondectomy. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, fearing Reston would die there, gave Scotty to lift his spirits an interview that lasted five hours. The Times later splashed Reston’s historic interview across its front page.

Reston had a “particularly close” relationship with Kissinger. Reston even knew Kissinger was privy to Nixon’s December 1972 decision to bomb Hanoi. But he helped spare Kissinger by writing the national security advisor "undoubtedly opposes" the bombing, sought to explain Kissinger's compulsions, and even spiked a Times Pentagon reporter's story linking Kissinger to advance knowledge of the bombing.

These events and others looped Reston into policy creation. They convey a level of influence greater than Friedman's. In contrast, Wikipedia records a Friedman highlight from 2011, when President Obama "sounded out" Friedman’s views on Middle East issues.

The family wealth and Reston’s success could lie behind Friedman’s chutzpah, in the aftermath of Iran’s strike on Israel, to tell the leaders of Iran, the Palestine Authority, and Israel how best to settle their mutual conflict. Friedman wrote that the attack “was a game-changing escalation that requires some game-changing rethinking,” and offered his own “three-state solution.”

For Iran:  Friedman paraphrased former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ wisdom about prospects for change in that theocracy: “the good news is there is light at the end of that tunnel. The bad news is .   .   .  there is no tunnel.” (More on Iran below.)

For Palestinians: “contribute to [] transformation of the Palestinian Authority into a professionally led, noncorrupt, accountable-to-donors, effective governing institution.” Friedman is unhappy that Palestinian Authority President Abbas appointed a “new” government led by “a longtime crony as prime minister.   .   . not the government of change that many Palestinians (and Friedman!) were hoping for.”

For Israel: Friedman wants leadership change there too. Netanyahu invaded Gaza with “no exit strategy, no plan for the morning after and no Palestinian partner that can govern Gaza.” Netanyahu’s “far-right Jewish supremacist/settler parties” won’t allow the Palestinian Authority to become effective because “that would mean .    .   .  a two-state solution [forcing] Israel to relinquish all or part of the West Bank.”

Friedman’s dream is “a freeze on new settlements, a willingness to transfer more governing and security responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza [with Saudi Arabia funding] the Palestinian Authority[’s] institutions.”

Concludes Friedman: “‘Oh my God,’ the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hamas would say, ‘that is a disaster.   .   .’” Likely for Friedman, however, that ending would be Islam’s heaven of “beautiful gardens filled with everything that the eye has never seen.”