Hannah Arendt and Thomas Friedman

There was Hannah Arendt who analyzed tyranny, and then there is Thomas Friedman.  Here is his deep, profound analysis of dictatorial rule:  "How do dictators survive? They tell lies. Muammar Gaddafi was one of the biggest liars of all time."  I was thinking: imagine if you are a teacher and your student wrote this in an undergraduate paper.  Would you not inform the student that such analysis is so unsophisticated and so simplistic?