...Kristol didn't they? IMO, that signaled the end of competent journalism from the NYTs. I mean Kristol? No credibility whatsoever; he's a bad joke. LOL, not!
Asia Times, Aljazeera, The Real News, WorldMeets.US, Mosaic at link tv, and yes, the Agonist. These are worthy sites to stay informed about the greater world. Oh, and I would be an idiot to not include Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. One of the very best; so last, but far from least. Amy has earned her stripes: She deserves serious recognition in the world of true journalists. That's my list of journalism worth noting. Bravo all!

...so bear with me, but the defining characteristics of the term superpower as employed (at least that I've seen) centred/center around the notion of global power projection and power across multiple domains (e.g., diplomatic, military, economic). Given the greatly increased ability of even quite minor powers to act inter-regionally and even globally across a number of domains [with obvious limitations of scale] it's not terribly surprising to see the term get tortured a bit. Important thing is not to get caught up in the specific terminology used (until something better comes down the pipe), but to instead see the described behind the descriptor.

As to Friedman's second construct, the important bit is the modifier modern Arab world, as in the post-Ottoman Arab world - take that modifier seriously and the statement's not so much with the stupid, particularly if one contextualizes against the regional development of state loyalties. If one wants to find something to poke at as missing the point, I'd instead suggest looking to the sentence following it:

But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia."

My view - this ain't that new. Trajectory that I see Iran following in this regard is very much a renewal of that established under the Shah. Big differences now are that Saudi is much more powerful than it was, Egypt is much less so, the minor Arab powers have shaken out, and Iran is no longer viewed as the indispensible proxy, nor does it have an established, not infrequently co-operative, relationship with Israel - additionally, secular pan-Arabism is dead and Islam is currently the most viable unifying alternative. Drawing specific parallels between present Iranian actions and those during the reign of the Shah is useful, MHO - rather than learning all this anew, take the shortcut and look back through the years for the lessons. Lots of bad ones to be sure, but some gems as well.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

It's important to have read a good deal of Friedman to be able to jump into his column and understand his perspective. He has spent a great deal of time in Lebanon and Israel and knows the people of the region very well. He should be viewed as a "local" in the Middle East and has an idea how to approach the various people living in the various "neighborhoods" -- regions, nations -- and understands their motivations.

His talk of superpower means the big power in the region. One should pause to recall that the Iranians are Aryans with a history of empire, not Arabs, and so the struggle there is, for them, about control in the region. The Arabs are bargainers and resort to violence only if a bargain cannot be struck. The Egyptians have their own sense of history and destiny in Africa and are seeking stability.

I believe that Friedman is right in that this is an Iran/Hamas push to try to capitalize on the hatred of GW by Muslims prior to the installation of Obama as President. It has been in the oil companies' perceived interest to maintain unrest in the region since that gives the US a reason to be there with military force and have some control over oil. That has not worked out so well and the US is recognizing what we on this blog already knew, that the elite of Iraq have been feeding at the US trough while the masses have suffered and we're leaving, finally (and, of course, never should have been there). We're still in Afghanistan, which is an entirely different environment, and we may be able to extricate ourselves from there by working through Pakistan and there are signs of that in recent military action by the Pakistanis. With the US out of Iraq and things settling down there, and Afghanistan being somewhat separated from the oil nations, Ahmadinejad needs fresh conflict to keep his nation in turmoil since an Iran at peace has no need for him and moderates will take over. So this is kind of a last ditch effort to make the most of GW's legacy of imperialism based on his "axis of evil" mentality.

All of this is within the large body of Friedman's accumulated work as a veteran Middle East insider. I find him to be quite credible. Is he always right on target? Well, who is? His insights are quite useful, in my view, and when I don't agree with him it is not a reason for me to condemn his entire body of work.

So let's be fair to Tom Friedman. He's a good guy and we could have a great conversation with him down at Starbuck's.

Channing
Ventura CA USA

Salon.com, By Glen Greenwald, January 14

Tom Friedman, one of the nation's leading propagandists for the Iraq War and a vigorous supporter of all of Israel's wars, has a column today in The New York Times explaining and praising the Israeli attack on Gaza. For the sake of robust and diverse debate (for which our Liberal Media is so well known), Friedman's column today appears alongside an Op-Ed from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the nation's leading (and most deceitful) propagandists for the Iraq War and a vigorous supporter of all of Israel's wars, who explains that Hamas is incorrigibly hateful and radical and cannot be negotiated with. One can hardly imagine a more compelling exhibit demonstrating the complete lack of accountability in the "journalism" profession -- at least for those who are loyal establishment spokespeople who reflexively cheer on wars -- than a leading Op-Ed page presenting these two war advocates, of all people, as experts, of all things, on the joys and glories of the latest Middle East war.

In any event, Friedman's column today is uncharacteristically and refreshingly honest. He explains that the 2006 Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon was, contrary to conventional wisdom, a great success. To make this case, Friedman acknowledges that the deaths of innocent Lebanese civilians was not an unfortunate and undesirable by-product of that war, but rather, was a vital aspect of the Israeli strategy -- the centerpiece, actually, of teaching Lebanese civilians a lesson they would not soon forget:

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future...

[...]

The war strategy which Friedman is heralding -- what he explicitly describes with euphemism-free candor as "exacting enough pain on civilians" in order to teach them a lesson -- is about as definitive of a war crime as it gets. It also happens to be the classic, textbook definition of "terrorism..."