Too Funny--Thomas L. Friedman's Latest

It has all the earmarks of a classic Friedman piece--dashed off in some exotic locale; full of platitudes masquerading as profound insight; written in the blandest of prose devoid of those elements (wit, panache, compelling use of language) that might keep one plowing through to the bitter end. (This time I managed to get through half of it before nodding off and giving up.) As a bonus, it sounds as though Tom may be pitching to become Barack's ghost writer once he vacates the White House and gets around to tackling his official post-presidential memoirs:

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — When President Obama sits down to write his foreign policy memoir he may be tempted to use as his book title the four words he reportedly uses privately to summarize the Obama doctrine: “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” (with “stuff” sometimes defined more spicily). 

Up to now, that approach has not served the country badly — fight where you must, fix what you can, work with allies wherever possible but never forget that using force is not the sole criteria for seriousness, considering, as Obama noted in a speech last week, that the wars that costs us the most were those we leapt into without proper preparation or allies and “without leveling with the American people about the sacrifice required.”

So “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” would certainly work as a book title today. But sitting here in Kurdistan — a true island of decency near the epicenter of what is now the biggest civil war on the planet, between Sunnis and Shiites, stretching from Iran across Iraq and Syria into Lebanon — I think Obama may eventually opt for a different book title: “Present at the Disintegration.”...

Actually, I think "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" is just about a perfect title for Obama's ad hoc, making-things-up-on-the-fly foreign policy. I would, however, suggest one small but crucial change that would capture the Obama gang's brash jejunosity. To wit: "Don't Do Stupid Stuff, Dude."

Update: After reading this, I can think of another appropriate title: "Indecent Interval."

Update: Bob Woodward's advice to Obama--sometimes the best thing to do is to shut the hell up.