Doubting Thomas

Educate Me.

On Thursday, Thomas Friedman wrote a column arguing that America needed an energy policy that is not dependent on Saudi Arabia reforming its educational system and ridding it of its "culture of death."
I'm not sure how easy it is to change America's habits or to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Certainly drilling in Alaska will help but that's not an option that Friedman suggests.
His sole purpose here is to excoriate the Bush administration for not doing more. He ends with these thoughts:

Well, what would you call a Bush energy policy that keeps America dependent on a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that's what I'd call naïve. I'd also call it reckless and dangerous.

If only Friedman listened to his own words. Well, he didn't so let me rewrite those thoughts a little differently:
"What would you call a Friedman peace plan that leaves Israel at the mercy of a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, where , where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that's what I'd call naïve. I'd also call it reckless and dangerous."
Let's go back to the beginning of the article, though:

Surely the most chilling aspect of the latest terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia against foreigners at the Khobar oil center was in reports from the scene about how the Saudi militants tried to kill or capture only the non-Muslims, and let Muslims and Arabs go. The Associated Press quoted a Lebanese woman, Orora Naoufal, who was taken hostage in her apartment, as saying that the gunmen released her when they learned of her nationality. They told her they were interested in harming only "infidels" and Westerners.

Now where would the terrorists have learned such intolerance and discrimination? Answer: in the Saudi public school system and religious curriculum."

I'd love Friedman to explain how he expects peace between Israel and the Palestinians when the Palestinian education system is every bit as vile.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Doubting Thomas.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 6, 2004 02:57 AM