Thomas Friedman, "The Man With Pink Hair": Nectarines and Baldness

Shuffling down Schifflaube Street on a mission to buy nectarines, Thomas Friedman, tells us how he encountered a cashier with neon pink hair. So begins Friedman's latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Man With Pink Hair" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/opinion/friedman-the-man-with-pink-hair.html). Yup, this is almost as fascinating as what's atop Friedman's own pate.

Friedman goes on to tell us:

"Everyone is focusing on Obama’s unimpressive leadership in this crisis, but for my money the two main players who shaped the outcome — in ways that would not have been predicted but will have huge long-term implications — were Putin and the American people. Obama got blindsided by both."

That's right: Don't blame Obama for the degradation of American credibility and stature around the globe - Putin and the American populace are to blame.

But wait, Friedman also acknowledges that Obama had just a little something to do with this chaos:

"I also think the public picked up on Obama’s ambivalence — his Churchillian, this-must-not-stand rhetoric, clashed with his 'On second thought, I’m going to ask Congress’s permission before I make a stand, and I won’t call lawmakers back from vacation to do so.' The bombing was going to be bigger than a 'pinprick' but also 'unbelievably small.' It just did not add up."

It didn't "add up"? Oh really? Consider Peter Wehner's piece in Commentary entitled "The Obama Mythology Has Been Shattered" (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/09/16/the-obama-mythology-has-been-shattered/#more-833252), which lists a "few" other contradictions which go missing from Friedman's op-ed:

"Taking in new information is fine; pursuing a policy characterized by head-snapping shifts, ambivalence, ineptness, and bipolarity is not.

Let’s see if we can help [White House press secretary Jay Carney] out by summarizing for him some (but hardly all) of his boss’s epic incompetence, starting with declaring that Bashar al-Assad must leave–and now taking steps that secure Assad’s grip on power. Then there’s the president warning the Syrian regime not to cross the 'red line' of using chemical weapons–and doing nothing when it did (on several different occasions).

But there’s more, including President Obama promising to arm rebels attempting to overthrow Assad–and delaying doing so for many crucial months; indicating he’d by-pass Congress when it came to seeking a use-of-force resolution–and then shocking everyone, including his entire staff, by reversing direction; putting British Prime Minister Cameron in a position where he needed to go to Parliament for a vote in order to approve an imminent strike–and then pulling back from the strike, leaving Mr. Cameron hung out to dry; insisting that Assad must be militarily punished for using chemical weapons–and now pursuing a fruitless diplomatic strategy in which Assad will not be on the receiving end of a military strike. And let’s not forget Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, who framed the conflict with Syria as (a) a 'Munich moment' before (b) assuring people that a strike against our modern-day Hitler would be 'incredibly small' followed by (c) engaging in negotiations destined to fail with the man he called 'thug' and 'murderer' who is guilty of committing a 'moral obscenity.'"

But heck, let's not hold the president accountable for this farce. After all, if we don't support the president's absurd pact with Putin, Friedman concludes that "Obama’s hair will not just be turned gray by the Middle East these next three years, he’ll go bald."

And so, a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary is born . . .