Thomas Friedman, "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way": What Is Tom Smoking?

Continuing his mindless meandering across what he terms "the post-Awakening Arab world," Thomas Friedman has penned from Dubai yet another feeble-minded New York Times op-ed entitled "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/friedman-lead-follow-or-get-out-of-the-way.html). In his latest opinion piece, Friedman decries the lack of leadership in the Muslim Middle East:

"Who will tell the people that while Islam is a great and glorious faith it is not 'the answer' for Arab development today? Math is the answer.

. . . .

Who will tell the people that, yes, the way capitalism came to the Arab world in the last 20 years was in its most crony and corrupt mutation, but that the right answer now is not to go back to Arab socialism, but better capitalism: better market-based economics, emphasizing expanded exports, but properly governed by the real rule of law and targeted safety nets.

. . . .

Who will tell the people that Arab societies have no time anymore to be consumed by these sectarian divisions, which just drive everyone into their own ghettos or out of the region altogether?"

Math is the answer? Oh really? Go find the leader who will tell this to Egypt's Muslims, of whom some 95% believe it is "good" that Islam plays a large role in politics, and of whom some 84% believe that those abandoning Islam should be executed (see: http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/). In fact, there is a strong likelihood that anyone daring to say that math, and not Islam, is the answer will soon find himself or herself dangling from a noose.

Better market-based economics emphasizing exports are going to save the Muslim Middle East? And just what might those exports be in today's hi-tech world? There is already an unbridgeable scientific gap that widens by the day, which has left such countries as Egypt, with its 34% rate of illiteracy, in the dust.

Eliminate sectarian divides? Indeed, it's high time that the Middle East's 30 million Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state, be granted independence from Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Peculiar how Friedman never seems to get around to mentioning the Kurds, who have suffered such horrific persecution at the hands of their Turkish, Arab and Persian overlords, but that would cause him to become persona non grata in many of the countries he is now visiting.

Seek leadership in the Muslim Middle East at a time when Egyptian presidential candidate Amr Moussa is telling his electorate that the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel are "dead and buried" (see: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/238970.html)? Sorry, but leadership in the Arab world died with the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the death of Jordan's King Hussein, who was the target of more than a dozen assassination attempts.

As for Friedman, he might want to check what he has been smoking of late from his Shisha (شيشة).