Thursday, November 18, 2004

There is no person who is more unprincipled than Bill Clinton, who has just opened a $165 million monument to his person today. Only Clinton can claim to like both Bush and Kerry. But then again, this is a man who was for welfare and against it, for affirmative action and against it, for the 1991 Gulf war and against it, etc. Thomas Friedman reminds of Clinton in his wishy washy columns. You know that I detest this columnist (I cannot believe that I once shared a panel with him which allowed him to refer to me as "my friend As`ad"). This is somebody who thinks that he is witty and is not, who thinks that he is funny and is not, who thinks that he is insightful and is not, and who thinks that he is wise, and is not. Like Clinton, he stands for the thing and its opposite, to use the Hegelian framework. (It is an insult to the composition of the brain to use "Hegel" and "Thomas Friedman" in the same sentence). Read this passage from his column today: typical. He has been for the Iraq war but also with the critics: "I'd say the score is still 4 to 4. We can still emerge with a decent outcome. And the whole thing could still end very badly. There's only one thing one can say for sure today: you won't need to wait much longer for the tipping point. Either the elections for a new governing body happen by the end of January, as scheduled, and the rout of Saddam loyalists in Falluja is consolidated and extended throughout the Sunni triangle, or not. If it's the former, there are still myriad challenges ahead, but you can be somewhat hopeful. If it's the latter, we've got a total fiasco on our hands." Look at this brilliant analysis here: he is saying that it is either going to succeed or fail. In the same vein, Thomas Friedman predicts that it will either rain tomorrow or it will not. He also expects the stock market to either go up, or...(brace yourselves) down. Wow. And this guy gets paid for this.