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Friday, May 20, 2005

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Well, looks like Tom Friedman agrees with this. From today's Times:

The fact that the White House spokesman Scott McClellan spent part of his briefing on Tuesday excoriating Newsweek - and telling its editors that they had a responsibility to "help repair the damage" to America's standing in the Arab-Muslim world - while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to a Newsweek report, pretty much explains why we're struggling to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world today. We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it.

...The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims - and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas - is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours.

He's not always right, but he is this time. Read the whole piece.

12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I dont usually like what Tom Freidman has to say, but here he is 100% correct. You don't have to be a liberal to agree with what he says here.

8:42 AM  
Blogger Just Passing Through said...

5:25 AM?! Are you insane?!

Then another Anonymous at 5:42?? hmmmm...

9:07 AM  
Blogger orthomom said...

Nah, it was at 8:25. The time stamps are always on Pacific time, for some reason (on which I'm sure a commenter will see fit to enlighten me.) Take a look at your comeent's time stamp, JPT.
Of course, that doesn't answer the question of whether I'm insane...

9:11 AM  
Blogger Air Time said...

by definition a mother of four is insane

9:58 AM  
Blogger orthomom said...

So seriously, guys, why is my blog on Pacific time?

10:23 AM  
Blogger Air Time said...

Go to the settings tab. Click on formatting. the fourth or fifth choice down is time zone.

11:02 AM  
Blogger orthomom said...

Thanks pal. Fixed. (You'd think I would have figured that one out by now...pathetic.)

11:06 AM  
Blogger Air Time said...

To think I always admired your early morning blogging dedication.

11:34 AM  
Blogger orthomom said...

Yeah, but now you can fully appreciate my late night blogging dedication.

11:39 AM  
Blogger Just Passing Through said...

To think AirTime is now giving technical blog advice.

12:07 PM  
Blogger Air Time said...

Hey, who was the guy who told you how to add links on the side

1:25 PM  
Blogger and so it shall be... said...

I despise Tom Friedman, though I know he sometimes takes his medicine and produces something worthy of reading.

Still, I was thrilled to have read your post when on Saturday night my brother called to ask me if I read Friedman on Friday.

I only get the Times on the weekends (try the Journal and Sun, their op-ed pages don't make me apoplectic), so its nice to be well informed. Thanks.

10:21 AM  

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