So the big story this week seems to be that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has come out with a tell-all memoir that says stuff that anyone who's been paying attention already knows: Bush decieved about Iraq, Cheney and Rove were in on outing Plame, and that generally the Administration is a bunch of thieving hoodwinkers who don't give enough of a damn to tell the truth to their own electorate about anything.

I think the reaction on all sides of the political aisle is pretty hilarious. On the Republican side, you have Karl Rove comparing McClellan a left wing blogger and Bob Dole calling the former Press Secretary "a miserable creature." Democrats have siezed on McClellan's break with the President, with the Huffington Post even proudly putting forth his comments that he finds Presidential nominee Barack Obama "intriguing" -- and Nancy Pelosi took the opportunity to do her favorite thing in the whole world, bash Bush then do little to nothing to hold the Administration accountable or stop its policies (of course, this is the woman who was briefed on waterboarding, a war crime, in 2002 and had no problem with it). 

 So, let's get this all straight. McClellan for years knows all this, stands there and acts as Bush's straight man -- constantly attacking the war's critics with smears, claiming that Senate Democrats were being held hostage by the all-powerful interest group the ACLU when they offered mild lip service protest to the President's illegal wiretapping, and all around acting like a prick -- and then when it's too damn late to actually doing anything significant about Bush (well, we could impeach him for that whole illegal war, wiretapping, and torture thing, but asking Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to care about accountability or rule of law is like inviting a PETA Meetup group to Steak Night) he comes out with a book to cover his own ass and say, "Yeah, all the people I demeaned and belittled for questioning the President's policies were actually right. Sorry about that. I'm invited to the Moveon Christmas Party, right?"

The most intelligent comment I have found for McClellan's cashing in with a too-late mea culpa comes from the poster Ricardo on the left webboard Democratic Underground. In a reply titled Bull Fucking Shit to a post comparing McClellan to Nixon-era whistleblower John Dean, he writes:

 "John Dean revealed the Nixon/Watergate cancer WHILE HE WAS STILL IN THE WHITE HOUSE. He TESTIFIED under OATH against the most powerful people in the free world. He followed his conscience when it made a difference and at great personal sacrifice.

Scott McClellan is a political hack weasel who tattled like a school kid from the safety of the principal's office, after the vandals got away. He's not fit to lick the bottom of John Dean's shoes.

For Christ's sake."

The shrewd little former White House Press Secretary, in seeing that Bush's approval ratings were approaching that of other historical losers, like President Herbert Hoover or Indiana Jones 4, decided that he'd jump ship, say a bunch of stuff that most people already believe about Bush, and get welcomed as some kind of martyr by the country's left.

Well, Scotty, I don't buy it. You behaved as a lying scumbag propogandanik for the administration for years, smearing all of the President's critics with that dumb grin on your face (including a particularly asinine attack against one of the last true journalists left in DC, Helen Thomas), and coming out when it's too late to do anything about it is not at all helpful. You're at best a spineless coward who didn't speak out when the time was right, and at worst a shrill political opportunist, epitomizing the vicious spirit of cynicism that pervades American politics from top to bottom (directly resulting in the worst voter turnout of any industrialized democracy). 

Some have said that 'ol Scotty couldn't have possibly come out earlier with his information (Daniel Ellsberg, who risked life imprisonment to help stop the Vietnam War with his whistleblowing, doesn't agree), that this would've led to his firing and political retribution.

Cry me a river. There are people across the planet fighting against dictatorships, risking their lives for freedom in their country, and this guy can't even face the leader of a democratic country because he's afraid of not getting invited to nice dinner parties anymore?

Mr. McClellan epitomizes and symbolizes the culture of political cowardice -- of not taking any chances at all, of playing it safe, of adhering to a narrow, cynical incentive structure in your politics -- in this country. He is a pathetic little man, and I'm not going to forgive him for not speaking our earlier, for not acting against the tide of monstrous policies when he could've. 

Maybe if he drags himself to some public square somewhere and lets every widow of every American soldier lost in Iraq throw a punch at him, lets every mother of every Iraqi child killed by a cluster munition or rendered braindead by depleted uranium kick him in the groin, then maybe he'll deserve something less than a public flogging.

Otherwise, the way I see it, we still have an out-of-control executive raping the rule of law and a supine Congress laying there taking it. Nothing much has changed with this pathetic book by this cowardly little man.

Apparently having been wrong about free trade deals (admitting that he doesn't even read them), invading Iraq, and every other relevant policy issue in the past two decades, Friedman still doesn't find himself to be less relevant. And I'm sure that the adoring Washington Press corps, the reverse-meritocracy that it is, will continue to adore him and fawn over everything he writes, no matter how ridiculously wrong it continues to be.

His newest declaration is that we are approaching a "New Cold War" -- with Iran:

"That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”

For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?

The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran."

"Team America" is facing off with the evil Persians (who apparently have a crescent that stretches across the region in evil conspiracy)? Really, Friedman? 

Iran is "smart and ruthless"; America is "dumb and weak"; and the Sunni world is "feckless and divided." Of course, the US is the country with hundreds of thousands of troops occupying the Middle East in several countries with the most advanced army that ever existed, and Iran provides support to small guerilla forces in Lebanon. And yet Friedman finds it appropriate to cast Iran as a great evil, decontextualizing why Hezbollah may actually be doing what it is doing (because in Lebanon the Shi'a are stripped of power by an electoral system that discriminates against them). And then he assures us that Hezbollah is both:

1) Religious fundamentalist and cracking down on "progressive news sources" 2)Doing Syria's dirty work

A rational person might ask why a secular national socialist Syrian Ba'ath Party might find it advantageous to spread Islamism in Lebanon, but why stop and ask questions? Friedman's on a roll of pointless analogies and catch-phrases designed around turning the entire situation into one of good vs evil (and now the Sunni Arabs are on our side? Before the Iraq war Friedman was telling us that Saddam and his Sunni cohorts in Al Qaeda were threatening our very existence). 

Of course, Friedman finds some harsh words for the Sunnis:

"The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both."

So the stupid Arabs can't see the threat right in front of their nose, and for trying to make peace instead of militarily confronting Iran, they just don't understand their own interests. That should be dictated by American pundits like Friedman who have been so right in the past.

Friedman, I have a solution to your repeated "Earth is Flatism"  problem of repeatedly destroying any chance of substantive discussion on global issues. You have nothing to add but decontextualized simplistic summations of the situation which repeatedly cast Muslims as evil and nefarious or simplistic and stupid (with American and Israelis at worst being too weak despite the overwhelming firepower they've used in the region) and avoid the kind of nuance, respect, and understanding that is required for such a complex situation. You could try using that noggin at the top of your head, or you could stop writing. 

Please just don't continue as you have, because for some reason, the elite class of pundits and intellectuals in America find you insightful. You inspire their policies. And if it's one thing we don't need anymore serving as the intellectual base for our policies, it's the idea that the world is black and white, that we can only be tough or tougher, that our enemies are absolute evil and our worst sin would be to not be standoffish and hawkish enough against them. That might not seem like a problem to you sitting in an air-conditioned Manhattan skyrise office, but to the people who will die on the ground if we continue these hawkish policies -- especially talk of a new "Cold War" with a country that has less than 10% our military spending -- your idiocy has real consequences.