Tom Friedman. It’s Tom FRIEDMAN, everybody. Tom Fucking Friedman.

After first allowing for the delight of applauding corpses, Tom will launch into a disquisition on Iraq. Because it looks like he just can’t get it off his mind. What with Syria going crazy, it looks like he’s gonna talk about it (oh please no). So next up, don’t vomit on that dial, Tom Friedman will advise us something something Iraq. Back in a moment, but: SAY, friends. After a pundit runs over your nephew with his tank, does he annoy you with his thoughtless editorials? Yuck. Bleh. I’d say you could use a little Pennington’s Extra-Strength Shut Up You Lousy Warmonger:

The right reason for this war, as I argued before it started was to oust Saddam’s regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report’s prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world.

He’s lying right from the top. That was not Tom’s plan for Arab Human Development. Conquests don’t promote that, and bayonets won’t buss your sister. Tom’s flesh-n-blood plan for Iraq was this: “You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.” Not that they had anything to do at all with blowing up Tom’s precious open society. Not that that was even possible.

The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification.

He still swears there was a justification for killing thousands of people. Probably because his original plan played to perfection, but it didn’t win him any Pulitzers: “This is a rough neighborhood, and sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message.”

But we can play along. Good Ole’ Tom, he held high hopes for peace and fledgling democracy (IT’S LUMBER TIME). And he couldn’t abide the humiliation of peaceful people (EAT A MISSILE SAND SCRAPPER). But though Friedman Human Development did spread out across the land, with radar-guided precision, chaos won out. Darn: “Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, democracy is not emerging in Iraq, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.”

So Iraq remains an annex of hell, on Earth, and terrorists still scratch at the locks. And Tom no longer assumes that punching people’s faces will make them play nice. Sigh. Well, folks, you can’t say he didn’t try. (Cadavers: “@#$%!”). There were lessons to be learned here, from his mistakes. Oh, I’m kidding. No point engaging in such shallow thinking, ever again. I’m joking:

Syria is a lot like Iraq. Indeed, Syria is Iraq’s twin — a multisectarian, minority-ruled dictatorship that was held together by an iron fist under Baathist ideology.

. . and you know what this means. Tom has this one.

. . the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America.

Remember when the Army pointed cannons at Iraq’s birth canal and pulled something from a dead philosopher? Me neither. I don’t know what Tom is trying to say. But I looked up the Hobbes thing, and by the “war of all against all” this is what he meant:

. . no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Hobbes meant anarchy. I guess that’s what Tom is worrying about, that Syria could end up well short of pastoral Switzerland. Think how that would disillusion everybody, particularly the rebels. But a “well-armed external” force, inspiring fear and trust, could bomb their way through Damascus. And that’s how big-hearted conquerors could deliver Syria from Arab strife. Suck on that, deja vu. There was a time when Iraq was just Iraq, but that was long before IRAQ. Tom’s got a handle on this one.