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Brazil and Iran: Thomas Friedman’s Ugliness

A few weeks ago emerging powers Brazil and Turkey reached an agreement with Iran concerning their enrichment of uranium. Although Brazil and President Lula were previously often held up as an example of the “good left” in Latin America by the US media and politicians, Lula quickly lost favor with both crowds. Hillary Clinton criticized the deal and the governments, despite the leaking of a letter from Obama to Lula that showed White House support for all the major provisions of the agreement. In addition to criticism from politicians, leading media figures began to take aim at Lula, one example being New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who plays question and answer with himself, asking:

Is there anything uglier than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table?

No, that’s about as ugly as it gets.

Excerpted below are two comebacks to Friedman’s diatribe against the agreement and Brazil, one from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the other from Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy.

FAIR:

Friedman quotes a source complaining that Iran had just executed “political prisoners who were tortured into confessions,” but Lula “didn’t mention a word about human rights.”  Friedman presumably is aware that the U.S., too, has prisoners that it has tortured into confessions, and that it maintains the right to execute such captives.  Should Lula have said a word about those human rights issues as well, or would that just be an attempt to “tweak the U.S.”?

Naiman:

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is on the warpath. Not only against his “Great Satan” of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but also against Brazil’s President Lula and Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan, because they had the temerity to succeed in negotiating an agreement with Iran to try to de-escalate the confrontation between the United States and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program without the subsequent approval of Washington. [Apparently Brazil and Turkey had White House approval to try - a week before the effort, but it seems that they did not have White House approval to succeed.]

In response to Friedman’s contention that Lula was “coddling dictators”, Naiman writes:

Was it “coddling dictators” when the Obama Administration proposed and supported the fuel swap deal with Iran in October? Is it “coddling dictators” when the U.S. engages in diplomacy with China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Israel? Why would it be “coddling dictators” only to engage in diplomacy with Iran, and only when someone does it successfully without U.S. approval of the result?

Friedman also criticizes Lula for being supportive of Venezuela president Chávez, while condemning the recent agreement between the US and the US’ principle ally, Colombia, which allowed US access to military bases. Friedman refers to Colombia as “one of the great democratic success stories”, prompting FAIR to write:

Funny, most “democratic success stories” don’t involve quite so much murdering of civilians. But then, most of them don’t star a president whose brother helped organize death squads, as reported in the Washington Post on Monday (5/24/10).

So, to summarize Friedman, Lula should criticize the torture of prisoners by Iran–but presumably not by his fellow democrats in the United States. And he should promote democracy by praising  a government that continues to murder hundreds of civilians a year as a democratic success story.

No, it doesn’t get much uglier than that.

For the rest of the FAIR report, click here. To read the rest of Naiman’s comments, click here.