"White Man's Burden," 2004 version

Tom Friedman, who supported the Iraq War while wringing his hands and pretending to be "liberal" about it all, has just given us a present-day statement of what the British imperialists of a century ago called the "white man's burden": Postcards from Iraq New York Times 11/21/04.  Describing a briefing he attended by Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the Marines in Fallujah, he says:

General Sattler was explaining how well the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy Seabees had worked together in Falluja as a combined task force. As General Sattler was speaking, I looked around at the assembled soldiers in the room. It was a Noah's Ark of Americans: African-Americans and whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians, and men and women I am sure of every faith. The fact that we can take for granted the trust among so many different ethnic groups, united by the idea of America - and that the biggest rivalry between our Army and Navy is a football game - is the miracle of America. That miracle, and its importance, hits you in the face in Iraq when someone tells you that the "new" Iraqi police unit in a village near Falluja is staffed by one Iraqi tribe and the "new" National Guard unit is staffed by another tribe and they are constantly clashing.

... [W]e are trying to plant the seeds of decent, consensual government in some very harsh soil. We are not doing nation building in Iraq. That presumes that there was already a coherent nation there and all that is needed is a little time and security for it to be rebuilt. We are actually doing nation creating. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another. Despite all the mistakes made, that is an incredibly noble thing. But for Iraqis to produce such a social contract, such a constitution, requires a minimum of tolerance and respect for majority rights and minority rights - and neither of those is the cultural norm here. They are not in the drinking water.

It's this kind of arrogance that led the United States to the disaster known as the Vietnam War.  And it's this kind of willful blindness and partly-cynical, partly-genuine missionary zealotry that is keeping us in an obviously untenable situation in Iraq.

The first part is the kind of celebration of cultural and racial diversity that war-lovers like to trot out when we need minorities to go kill and die in war.  And he uses it to make the point that, unlike us civilized Americans, the benighted, backward natives in Iraq have ethnic tensions and divisions.  (Lesser peoples have "tribes"; we civilized Americans have "ethnic groups.")

It's hard to believe that a guy who is not only a Big Pundit, but is sometimes called the leading columnist in the US, can write stuff like this:

Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq. I will be guided by the U.S. Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical - so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. When a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go out and fix the sewers in Sadr City or teach democracy at a local school, then you can stick a fork in this one. But so far, we ain't there yet. The troops are still pretty positive. [my emphasis]

Yeah, Tom's just a regular guy.  And he's depending on what the ordinary grunts on the ground say about what's happening, not a bunch of swells in suits and uniforms with stars and stuff.  And just as soon as "a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives" in this fiasco, Tom will turn against it, too.

In other words, when opposition to the war becomes so widespread that it becomes thoroughly "respectable," then Tom Friedman will be against it, too.  Doubtless with lots of deep consideration and thought.  Because he's got his fingers on the pulse of what the "grunts on the ground are thinking."  But, when he hears them say that they "are unsure it will work," he doesn't take that as any kind of criticism of the war that is actually being fought.

Is this guy serious?  Answer: The sad part is, he is serious.