Thats like the easiest challenge in the world Pardalis, so I can only assume your use of the word "can't" was a mistake, and perhaps that sentence should have started with "why won't you", since critiquing friedman is something my 6-year old niece could do.
Friedman asserts the following:
Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.
Then, a few paragraphs following, says this:
Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.
So tell me, what "different kind of politics" is being created? The Afghan population is alienated from a thuggish government of selfish, nepotistic parasites, there's torture perpetrated by both Afghan and
Iraqi authorities. Iraq censors its press for news stories critical of the regime and
sues journalists that cross the line. Women in Afghanistan are
no better off than they were under the Taliban. Sounds real "different" to me.
Plus there's the matter that the first quote doesn't jive with the second. Friedman is holding two incongruous ideas in his head at the same time: America the benighted has based its foreign policy on "helping muslims", also we "punched a fist into the Arab world".
There is little recognition that the "punching" of the "fist" is what feeds the narrative he's talking about.
As Johann Hari documented recently in The Independent:
To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy -- which was real, and burning -- emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. . . .
But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community -- they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 -- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think -- anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?"
But the converse was -- they stressed -- also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya.
...
He started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster."
...
Maajid's Islamist convictions were about to be challenged from two unexpected directions -- the men who murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Amnesty International.
HT [the Islamic group which he had headed] abandoned Maajid as a "fallen soldier" and barely spoke of him or his case. But when his family were finally allowed to see him, they told him he had a new defender. Although they abhorred his political views, Amnesty International said he had a right to free speech and to peacefully express his views, and publicised his case.
"I was just amazed," Maajid says. "We'd always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously ... it was the beginning of my serious doubts."
Friedman is essentially saying: "why aren't the muslims more grateful for US foreign policy?" and while there is no doubt that a CT-based irrationality feeds the jihadist mindset, there is no question that American policy has
exacerbated that. Friedman's listing off of help after natural disasters in muslim countries is not enough to offset that. And he breezily asserts that muslims should see America's two foreign occupations as bringing positive change, of "changing their politics" for the better.
Isn't it obvious how dumb that is??
