<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML xmlns:o = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.17063" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=484451703-05122010>Very clever!! Lee/Mom</SPAN></FONT></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> Professor Schwartz' symposium on the Iraq
war [mailto:IRAQVIEWS-L@lists.sunysb.edu] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Michael
Schwartz<BR><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, December 04, 2010 7:12 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
IRAQVIEWS-L@LISTS.SUNYSB.EDU<BR><B>Subject:</B> Amazing--a useful op ed by Tom
Friedman<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB">I guess every dog has his day, though he
has spent many years baying at the moon before he finally wrote something
actually worth reading. You don't even have to hold you nose to read this
one. He provides a nice sense of what the Chinese might be
saying behind closed doors about recent American foreign
policy:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoFootnoteText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p><FONT
size=2></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Arial>New York
Times</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Arial>November 30,
2010<SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<H1 style="MARGIN: auto 0in"><FONT face="Times New Roman">From
WikiChina</FONT></H1>
<H6><FONT face="Times New Roman">By </FONT><A
title="More Articles by Thomas L. Friedman"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><FONT
face="Times New Roman" color=#800080>THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN</FONT></A></H6>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman"><EM>While secrets from WikiLeaks were splashed
all over the American newspapers, I couldn’t help but wonder: What if China had
a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about
America? I suspect the cable would read like this:</EM> </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Washington Embassy, People’s Republic of China,
to Ministry of Foreign Affairs Beijing, TOP SECRET/Subject: America today.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Things are going well here for China. America
remains a deeply politically polarized country, which is certainly helpful for
our goal of overtaking the U.S. as the world’s most powerful economy and nation.
But we’re particularly optimistic because the Americans are polarized over all
the wrong things. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">There is a willful self-destructiveness in the
air here as if America has all the time and money in the world for petty
politics. They fight over things like — we are not making this up — how and
where an airport security officer can touch them. They are fighting — we are
happy to report — over the latest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. It
seems as if the Republicans are so interested in weakening President Obama that
they are going to scuttle a treaty that would have fostered closer U.S.-Russian
cooperation on issues like Iran. And since anything that brings Russia and
America closer could end up isolating us, we are grateful to Senator Jon Kyl of
Arizona for putting our interests ahead of America’s and blocking Senate
ratification of the treaty. The ambassador has invited Senator Kyl and his wife
for dinner at Mr. Kao’s Chinese restaurant to praise him for his steadfastness
in protecting America’s (read: our) interests. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Americans just had what they call an “election.”
Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than
the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could
tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could
do it to him. This leaves us relieved. It means America will do nothing serious
to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational
performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">The ambassador recently took what the Americans
call a fast train — the Acela — from Washington to New York City. Our bullet
train from Beijing to Tianjin would have made the trip in 90 minutes. His took
three hours — and it was on time! Along the way the ambassador used his
cellphone to call his embassy office, and in one hour he experienced 12 dropped
calls — again, we are not making this up. We have a joke in the embassy: “When
someone calls you from China today it sounds like they are next door. And when
someone calls you from next door in America, it sounds like they are calling
from China!” Those of us who worked in China’s embassy in Zambia often note that
Africa’s cellphone service was better than America’s. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">But the Americans are oblivious. They travel
abroad so rarely that they don’t see how far they are falling behind. Which is
why we at the embassy find it funny that Americans are now fighting over how
“exceptional” they are. Once again, we are not making this up. On the front page
of The Washington Post on Monday there was an article noting that Republicans
Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are denouncing Obama for denying “American
exceptionalism.” The Americans have replaced working to be exceptional with
talking about how exceptional they still are. They don’t seem to understand that
you can’t declare yourself “exceptional,” only others can bestow that adjective
upon you. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">In foreign policy, we see no chance of Obama
extricating U.S. forces from Afghanistan. He knows the Republicans will call him
a wimp if he does, so America will keep hemorrhaging $190 million a day there.
Therefore, America will lack the military means to challenge us anywhere else,
particularly on North Korea, where our lunatic friends continue to yank
America’s chain every six months so that the Americans have to come and beg us
to calm things down. By the time the Americans do get out of Afghanistan, the
Afghans will surely hate them so much that China’s mining companies already
operating there should be able to buy up the rest of Afghanistan’s rare
minerals. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Most of the Republicans just elected to Congress
do not believe what their scientists tell them about man-made climate change.
America’s politicians are mostly lawyers — not engineers or scientists like ours
— so they’ll just say crazy things about science and nobody calls them on it.
It’s good. It means they will not support any bill to spur clean energy
innovation, which is central to our next five-year plan. And this ensures that
our efforts to dominate the wind, solar, nuclear and electric car industries
will not be challenged by America. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Finally, record numbers of U.S. high school
students are now studying Chinese, which should guarantee us a steady supply of
cheap labor that speaks our language here, as we use our $2.3 trillion in
reserves to quietly buy up U.S. factories. In sum, things are going well for
China in America. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Thank goodness the Americans can’t read
<EM>our</EM> diplomatic cables. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Embassy Washington. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Arial> </FONT></o:p></P></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB">MS<BR>Professor and Chair, Department of
Sociology<BR>University at Stony Brook<BR>Stony Brook NY 11794<BR>Phone: (cell)
516 356-4078</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB"></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>