It's never that straightforward. Unfortunately however, taking a black and white view of the world makes it easy to write eye-grabbing headlines and project the idea that you have the answer to every problem. Economist/New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat) drives me crazy with his black and white view of the world. In his famous book, Friedman argued that technology has made the world a fair arena of competition for everyone. He claimed that since it's easier to communicate and share information, the world must be completely fair.
Um, Tom, let's not forget about the fact that economic inequality has increased almost exponentially since the industrial revolution, and the skewed plane on which people compete has only become tilted further in favor of those with the goods since the dot-com explosion of the 1990s. The rich keep getting richer much faster than everyone else. How does that make for a flat world?
More recently, Friedman took the opportunity to espouse more black and white nonsense. Only this time it's worse: he's lecturing the world on a topic in which he doesn't even have expertise -- U.S. diplomacy. Friedman says the pirates in Somali waters are likely to cooperate with al-Qaeda, and the U.S. should employ a surge of military power to gain control of the pirates.
From John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies:
The lumping together of Islamists and pirates obscures the only real solution to Somalia's manifold problems. Piracy is not going to end through the greater exercise of outside force, no matter what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman may think. . . Indeed, the sniper killing of three pirates by three U.S. Navy Seals has, to date, merely spurred more ship seizures and hostage-taking.
Read the whole article here.
