by publius
One concept that first-year law students learn is the so-called “reasonable man” standard. The point is that negligence depends on objective — not subjective — criteria. For instance, if Eagles songs cause you to have painful seizures, you can’t — sadly — sue someone for singing Desperado. Singing that song is not — sadly — an unreasonable thing to do. Juggling chainsaws in crowded areas — well, that’s a different story. The reasonable man doesn’t do that sort of thing, so you could be sued for it.
The reasonable man standard gets tricky though when you start trying to define baselines. For example, medical malpractice depends not on a what reasonable person would do, but on what a reasonable doctor would do. The implication is that doctors — being medically trained — should be held to a higher objective standard than, say, a random waiter who performs CPR at a restaurant. Same deal with lawyers. A state-certified “Esquire” (i.e., someone who passed the bar) is held to a higher standard than someone representing themselves. (Though I’m not sure if it’s metaphysically possible to sue yourself for malpractice).
The point of all this is to illustrate just how atrocious — how wretchedly horrible — Tom Friedman’s latest op-ed is. Yes, it’s already been sharply criticized (see also Hilzoy). But even Greenwald — not one to pull punches — fails to recognize the sheer level of wretchedness here. That’s because you can’t hold Friedman to a “reasonable man” standard. He must be held to a much higher standard. He’s a Middle East expert. Unlike the various people you see on Fox News, he’s actually lived there for many years. He even wrote a fantastic book once.
VADER
So, you have accepted the truth.
LUKE
I’ve accepted the truth that you were once
Anakin Friedman, author of From Beirut to Jerusalem.
VADER (turning to face him)That name no longer has any meaning for me.
We must expect more from Friedman. Krauthammer — well, he’s like Grandpa Simpson. Even assuming you understand what he says, who cares? But Friedman, well, there was good in him once.
Snark aside, there are two aspects of Friedman’s op-ed that are simply baffling given his experience and expertise. The first is the casual lumping together of diverse Muslim groups as “Iran’s chess pieces”:
There is a cold war in the Middle East today between America and Iran, and until and unless it gets resolved, I see Iran using its proxies, its chess pieces — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and the Shiite militias in Iraq — to stymie America and its allies across the region.
Using the term “Shiite militias” in this context is idiotic in and of itself. Maybe Friedman can explain why the pawns are killing each other and don’t seem to realize they’re all on Team Iran. For what it’s worth, this is exactly the type of error that Anakin Friedman rightly criticized Israel for making circa 1982 in a really great book:
Not only did the Israelis enter Lebanon with a myth about their allies . . . but also with one about their enemies, the Palestinians. . . . They saw the Palestinians as part of an undifferentiated Arab mass stretching from Morocco to Iraq. . . . Myths are precisely what give people the faith to undertake projects which rational calculation or common sense would reject.