TechLahore

Tom Friedman misses no opportunity to vilify muslims, Pakistanis and the middle east. He's at it again... (Image credit: Amazon.com)

I get it. There are neocons and then there are neocons. The first reference would be to the easy to identify variety; those of the Perle and Cheney ilk. Folks that don’t bother to pretend or cover their tracks. They shoot first and ask questions later. But then there’s the more insidious, surreptitious genus of war-mongers who operate in the garb of enlightened intellectuals. These camouflaged  operators are much the same on the inside but appear overtly thrilled at the prospect of the “flattening” of the world, of the developing nations coming into their own and also appear concerned with the Green revolution. Tom Friedman epitomizes this second category.

What does that have to do with us, you ask? And with entrepreneurs and technologists in Pakistan? Everything. People like Tom Friedman are pursuing an agenda of deliberate vilification and misinformation about the the muslim world in general, and Pakistan in particular. These cloak and dagger operators who masquerade as journalists and intellectuals must be answered by our pens. They must be exposed and the damage they have caused must be mitigated and reversed; damage, not only to us in this part of the world, but also to their own people, who they continue to mislead and fool, calling in the proverbial airstrike upon a mirage in the desert. They are making up an enemy that doesn’t exist, and in doing so, are filling the minds of Americans exposed to their writings in dying outlets such as the NYT, with hatred and mistrust of one fourth of humanity.

I didn’t quite realize how biased Friedman really was until, when reading his 2005 “The World is Flat”, I came across a mind boggling characterization injected by him. Never mind that he conveniently attributes it to an “Indian friend”. It’s mere inclusion speaks to the audacity with which Friedman carries out his campaign. In his book, comparing children in Pakistan with those in India, he claims that Pakistani children grow up resenting the richest residents of their neighbourhood, and harbour dreams of growing up and killing these neighbours to take over their wealth. This, in contrast to India, where children – altruistic as Indian young ‘uns are being counters to Tom Friedman’s caricatured young Pakistani devils – look upon the rich merely to forge aspirations and draw motivation for hard work.

“What complete balderdash and vomit-inducing nonsense”, I thought to myself upon reading this! Who is this man? And what the hell qualifies him to make such a mean-spirited, downright ludicrous characterization of a nation of 170 million people? Let me tell you. Tom Friedman knows NOTHING about Pakistan. NOTHING. Would Tom Friedman consider penning an article that generalizes the character of American children based on the acts of the perpetrators of Columbine? That would be ridiculous, right? But apparently it isn’t so to cast aspersions on Pakistani children even in the absence of a Pakistani Columbine. And aspersions that stand on nothing less than an interview with someone who is certainly not friendly toward Pakistan. Perhaps quite the opposite. High journalistic standards, my foot!

Based on this alone, Friedman had won the “This guy is a complete jackass” award as far as I was concerned. But this malevolent individual didn’t stop here. He had to keep on keeping on, spreading the fear, uncertainty and doubt in American society about the mysterious and dark Middle East; a region Tom claims to know so well based on his short trips there, including one under the watchful eye of the Pentagon, as an embedded reporter in Iraq.

In his most recent book (Hot, Flat and Crowded) – one which I did NOT buy, but instead chose to read a borrowed copy of for fear of funding the lunatic – Friedman makes the case for how America must once again lead the world by initiating a green revolution. Good goal, no doubt. But leave it to Friedman to inject venom even in a treatise such as this. Is this man a professional journalist or a professional character assassin of muslims and Pakistanis? The fact that the book is written in a rather arrogant tone might be dismissed as amusing. After all, here is a supposedly objective reporter making the case for the US leading in protection of the environment, an area where it is light years behind the rest of the world. Why? Just because the US is the US? How about a better argument than manifest destiny, Mr. Friedman? Considering that the USG hasn’t even ratified the Kyoto protocol, that it is one of the biggest consumers of polluting goods and has a per-capita energy consumption 7-8 times higher than much-maligned China’s, maybe the US should perhaps fix its own act or at least not impede other nations diplomatic efforts to reduce pollution before aiming to become a world leader. No?

Such arguments about divinely ordained rights to global leadership aside, the narrative that acts as the foundation for Mr. Friedman’s book includes such gems as these: First, Mr. Friedman claims that US import of Oil helps terrorists because OPEC countries are somehow using these revenues to fund Al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations. Nevermind that Saudi Arabia, more than any other country, would want Osama’s head on a platter. Nevermind that more people have died in Pakistan at the hands of Al-Qaeda than all US 9/11 and War on Terror deaths COMBINED, and that Pakistan fields a significantly greater number of soldiers against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda than all the nations in ISAF, including the US. Yes, Mr. Friedman, we must believe that the Government of Saudi Arabia uses oil revenues to fund Al-Qaeda, because without this, how will we hate those devil “moslems”? What a twisted world you live in.

Mr. Friedman goes on to tell us that US funded and run (specifically, Dept. of Defense) “American schools” are the shining lights of learning and scholarship in muslim countries, which otherwise have pathetic schooling. Mr. Friedman uses the example of Qatar to illustrate how the masses in Doha wept and cried upon the threatened closing of the American school. Get an education, Mr. Friedman (pun intended). Look up the performance of Pakistani O and A Level students from Aitchison, Lahore Grammar School, Karachi Grammar School, Beaconhouse, City School and numerous other 100% Pakistani institutions. Pakistani students perform better than any in the world when it comes to international examinations such as the H.Sc. Sc. O-level and A-level. Yes, Mr. Friedman, in the world. And before you tell us that the definition of the world here extends to only the commonwealth countries, please do consider how many American high school students would be able to succesfully navigate an A’Level Physics or Math exam. Compare the syllabi and chew on that.

Do your research, Mr. Friedman, because the cute yet misleading anecdotal accounts you use to draw sweeping conclusions are nothing but a thinly veiled means of vilifying societies, nations and a people against whom you seem to hold some sort of a toxic grudge. Contrast the foreign university placement, grades, syllabi or any other measure of academic achievement between any of these Pakistani schools and the American schools in Pakistan. Better yet, ask the students of an LGS or Aitchison what the reputation of the local American schools is. You will hear the same answer everywhere. They lack academic rigour and are simply not in the same league educationally. That’s not to cast blanket aspersions on all American schools everywhere, for I don’t want to follow in your footsteps. But open your eyes. There is a world beyond what you would like your audience to limit their awareness to.

American education, american thinking, american democracy, american business, american capitalism, american XYZ are not the fix-all panacea for every problem mankind is confronted with. In fact, if you take your blinders off you might even discover that the roots of many of the Earth’s current challenges have to do with the quality of life people in America have enjoyed since 1945. Everyone else on this planet had to work for a living. We had to export desirable commodities to earn foreign exchange which could then be used to buy things we ourselves could not make. America, in the post-WW-2 scenario, positioned the Dollar as a global currency that allowed it to buy anything from anyone at any price, printing the money and exporting the inflation. How much of this is ingenuity and inherent greatness, and how much of it is the good fortune of having played the role of a weight that tipped the scales over in a war between two already bloodied and exhausted opponents?

In a recent piece published on Salon.com, Glen Greenwald examines other gems from Friedman which just further underscore his fundamental bias against a part of the world he claims to unbiasedly report on, which he claims to educate the American people on, and which he claims to be knowledgeable about. Here is a particularly interesting quote:

ROSE: Now that the war is over, and there’s some difficulty with the peace, was it worth doing?

FRIEDMAN: I think it was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about . . . . What we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I’m afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble. . . .

And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand? You don’t think we care about our open society? . . . . Well, Suck. On. This. That, Charlie, was what this war was about.

We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.

Here is a link to the Salon.com piece.

If you are visited by disbelief, know that you have company. If you are wondering how an ass like this can sell so many books, realize that vilification, drama and rabble rousing are the stuff of best sellers. And if you are appalled, as am I, please be sure not to buy Friedman’s books, or let your friends buy them. Borrow a library copy, buy from a used book store, read an extract online or borrow them from someone who has – sadly – already funded this man’s myopic crusade. Don’t fatten him any further, please.

Greenwald does do a pretty good job of exposing Tom Friedman for what he is; a right-wing nutcase masquerading as a tree hugging intellectual. Someone who continues to support a war waged under false pretenses which led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people making the goody-goody case for a “Green revolution”… about as credible as a pig with wings, to be honest. It just doesn’t add up.

Before I conclude this post, let me ask one thing of you. If you agree with any of the above, please do yourself a favour and don’t keep your views bottled up. Express them; counter Friedman and his propaganda. Whether by educating friends and family who might still think of him as an innocuous character, or by countering his agenda on your blogs, in comment sections, on online publications and in your schools, universities and any other fora you have access to. It is time that we Pakistanis take a stand and tell our side of the story. Tom Friedman can stick his biased and hateful views about us where the sun don’t shine. We will not take this vilification lying down. His lies must be countered and a balanced view of reality must be presented to anyone willing to know the truth.

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