Tom Friedman is probably the only columnist worth reading in the New York Times, now that William Safire has departed from the op-ed page. Maureen Dowd essentially is a one-trick pony whose sole specialty is to recycle the same old belittling jokes about Bush. Krugman is a garden-variety hysteric of little note. Herbert is trite. Brooks, while being the sole conservative of the lot, isn't particularly interesting either. But Friedman is always intriguing, even when he is frustratingly utopian. (I seem to recall him writing a column about the feasibility of the Saudis joining NATO, or some such foolish idea.) Both Moses and I have come to the conclusion that when Friedman is right, he's capable of tremendous insight; but when he's wrong, he seems slightly barmy (at best). Mind you, columns that Moses thinks are insightful I think are ridiculous (and vice-versa), however there are times when we both agree that Friedman has nailed a particular concept or story. To my mind at least, I think Friedman is dead on with his column today. It is columns like this that draw the best out of Friedman, tapping his reservoir of experiences he accrued whilst reporting on the Lebanese civil war of the 70's and 80's that ripped apart that country and essentially levelled Beirut. (Once considered "the Paris of the Middle East".)
Spitfire
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