The Shortest Distance Between Two Analogies

Thomas Friedman, December 19, 2004:

I have long believed that any American general or senior diplomat who wants to work in Iraq should have to pass a test. It would be a very simple test. It would consist of only one question: "Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?"

If you answered "Yes," you would not be allowed to work in Iraq. You could go to Korea, Japan or Germany - but not Iraq. Only those who understand that in the Middle East the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line should be allowed to carry out U.S. policy there. . . .

A sophisticated U.S. approach that uses both sticks and carrots with Syria, Iran and America's Arab allies could still shape a decent election in Iraq, but we have to get in gear right now, and be smart. Does this administration have anyone who knows how to play this game? Attention: Iraq is having an election. Elections are rare in this part of the world, so when they happen, everyone in the neighborhood tries to vote. We need to make sure our friends do as well.

And then again on December 20, 2006:

For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I’d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they’ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq. . . .

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer yes, you can’t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany — not Iraq.

Query: What does this mean? In neither column do I understand what point Friedman is trying to make with this straight line business. Two years ago the Friedman Theory of Short Distances supported optimism about Iraq, today it supports pessimism. But what is the theory? I can't even tell what metaphorical claim Friedman is trying to make here. Is it that a straight line is never the shortest distance between two points (in some sense) and this fact has a special significance in the Arab world that it lacks in Japan, Korea, or Germany? Or is that in Japan, Korea, and Germany (and, presumably, here in the USA) a straight line is the shortest distance between two points but this is not the case in the Middle East? And either way what idea is he trying to express? And why is he trying to express it this way?

Comments

You're on your own when you venture into the deep weeds of Friedman's (phantasma-)metaphorical landscapes. Decontstruction of them proves nearly impossible and entirely fruitless.

Hmmm...sounds like an enterprising(/good BS'er) student could turn his stuff into a topic for a lit crit/linguistics term paper. On the other hand...yikes!

Posted by DMonteith | December 20, 2006 12:40 AM

I think I'm projecting heavily, based on my experience working in Afghanistan, but I read it as Friedman saying that someone going into Iraq with the expectation that he can operate the same way as he would in the developed world with predictable results is courting frustration and failure.

I found that the people who are most successful in such contexts are usually the ones who stay relaxed, keep a sense of humor, and look for creative (and often indirect) ways of solving problems, rather than repeatedly trying to implement best practices or following standard operating procedure or whatever corporate jargon you prefer.

I have no idea if that's really what Friedman meant--as you point out, his writing is muddled at best--but that's how I read it.

Posted by joe | December 20, 2006 12:46 AM

Also, it goes without saying, but even if I correctly divined Friedman's meaning above, that test would be a complete fucking failure if he actually tried to use it to identify the people he's looking for.

Posted by joe | December 20, 2006 12:54 AM

Now, of course the shortest distance between two points in euclidean geometry is a line. The shortest distance between two points on earth is a curve, if you assume that you cannot move subterraneanly.

So what is his point? That only idiots should go to Iraq? I don't think so. His point is "I'm an idiot, help me!"

Posted by Chad Okere | December 20, 2006 12:58 AM

friedman has always used lazy declaritive analogies and flat, dramatic statements as a substitute for thinking and rational discussion. "The world is flat!". It means nothing, but it sounds good. Friedman is chiefly a manufacturer of pseudointellectual soundbites. They sound great and they are less filling. They are as empty as a whiffle ball. "No two countries that have a McDonalds in them have ever gone to war with each other!". Wow, Tom what a marvelous insight! It is cocktail party chatter simulating profundity.

He is a self-impressed charlatan. He is a symptom of how impoverished the intellectual discussion in this country has become. Attention, Tom Friedman - you were wrong about everything. See, Tom, "The map is not the territory."

Posted by mick | December 20, 2006 1:01 AM

Or is that in Japan, Korea, and Germany (and, presumably, here in the USA) a straight line is the shortest distance between two points but this is not the case in the Middle East?

It is clearly the latter, and goes along with the trendy, new wave Friedmanian view of the inherent barbarism and illogicality of Arabs and Muslims. On Meet the Press this week, he called the region a "freak show". He presents himself now as chastened by hard experience into recognizing that the failure of Iraqis to get themselves Americanized in a reasonable number of Friedman units is clear evidence of, not the idiocy of Friedman, but the baffling stupidity of Iraqs.

The man is an asshole, and a tireless emitter of empty wind. No accumulation of error is enough to get him to stop talking, and making a larger ass of himself.

Posted by Dan Kervick | December 20, 2006 1:08 AM

Ok, someone else brought it up, so I'm going to ask . . . What was his point with the World is flat, anyway? Was it about modern refusals to embrace empiricism (I don't think that's what he meant)? Was it about the World being small (that book cover makes the world look like a dime)? What was his point?

Oh yeah, and I take the straight line to be - you can only achieve your goals indirectly, or alternatively, the goal is hard and you have to be prepared to go around obstacles. Is that it? I'm truly lost here.

Posted by MDtoMN | December 20, 2006 1:09 AM

My comment may have been eaten by the moderation, but I think Chad is onto the correct answer. Friedman is talking about physics, not foreign relations. He is saying that while spacetime around Korea, Japan, and Germany is relatively flat, there are a set of wormholes in the middle east that allow for the construction of closed timelike curves, whose total path length is negative (they are typically referred to as "time machines" in physics). Why Freidman supposes the existence of either naked singularities or negative energy densities (one or noth are required to allow for CTC's) I don't really know, since he doesn't cite any references in the mathematical physics literature. I can only conclude he knows equal amounts of quantum physics and foreign relations.

Posted by jfaberuiuc | December 20, 2006 1:17 AM

If you don't get what Friedman is trying to say, you're clearly not qualified to participate in public discourse. You should just read the Times Op-Ed section like the rest of us.

Posted by Sam L. | December 20, 2006 1:24 AM

What he probably meant is that in Iraq you have to use indirection. Rather than let your purpose be known, and rather than letting people know whether you're their friend or their enemy, you should schmooze everyone, manipulate the situation until it's possible to spring the trap, and then betray and destroy the suckers who guessed wrong and trusted you, pay off your new friends who double-crossed their own friends, and win.

Of course, indirection is also recommended in Japan, and is used in courthouse politics all through the world including the US. Friedman was probably just verbalizing.

Posted by John Emerson | December 20, 2006 1:30 AM

This may be old hat, but Matt Taibbi gave the definitive (not to mention hilarious) takedown of Friedman and Friedmanese in his New York Press review of The World Is Flat:

http://www.buffalobeast.com/73/feature4.htm

Posted by George | December 20, 2006 1:47 AM

Ah, I see the method to Friedman's madness.

Since we're on the surface of the Earth, the shortest distance between two points is actually a circular arc (approximating the Earth as a sphere, naturally), not a straight line. Friedman is obviously using this test to weed out generals who are bad at geometry! Otherwise, they might try to get our army from point to point by digging straight through the Earth!!

Tom Friedman, you sly devil, you've outwitted us all again.

Posted by Mr. Noah | December 20, 2006 1:50 AM

Ah, I should have seen that Chad was one step ahead of me already with the "tunneling through the Earth" snark.

And by "one step," I of course mean RE*2arcsin(0.5*"one step"/RE), where RE is the radius of the Earth...if you get my drift...

Posted by Mr. Noah | December 20, 2006 1:56 AM

I think what Friedman is saying is startling, in an "eerie moment of self-clarity" sort of way.

Think about it. Would you have invaded the country of a secular dictator (one that your father and your VP helped put in power) as a way of defeating religious-fundamentalist terrorists that were operating openly in another country? Or would you have taken the straight line and figured that APPREHENDING OSAMA BIN LADEN would have, I dunno, been a big step towards solving the problem?

If you think in those kinds of straight lines, you do not belong in the Bush Administration, the military-industrial complex, or at any of Friedman's dinner parties. Shoo, filthy hippie!

Posted by DataShade | December 20, 2006 2:21 AM

It's easy! In the real world, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In Tom Friedman's world, invading Iraq was going to lead to an Arab-Israeli reapproachment and democracy and McDonalds spreading across the Middle East. Ta-da.

Posted by aleks | December 20, 2006 2:30 AM

PS

"Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq"

Does President Bush really get to decide which reporters can enter Iraq?

Posted by aleks | December 20, 2006 2:33 AM

Damn, leave your post unfinished and DataShade beats you to it.

Posted by aleks | December 20, 2006 2:37 AM

Mr. Noah: "Since we're on the surface of the Earth, the shortest distance between two points is actually a circular arc (approximating the Earth as a sphere, naturally), not a straight line. Friedman is obviously using this test to weed out generals who are bad at geometry!"

No, no, no. You're forgetting that, in Friedman-Analogy Land, the world is flat. So the geometry works out the same.

Posted by andrew levine | December 20, 2006 4:24 AM

As George mentions above, Matt Taibbi has already explained this. The relevant part:

Thomas Friedman does not get [metaphors] right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

My take: Friedman is trying to say that things in the Middle East are complicated.

Posted by josephdietrich | December 20, 2006 4:56 AM

Friedman has apparently never been to Asia since a 'yes' isn't really a 'yes' and you will almost never be told 'no.'
Maybe Thom could have saved us all time by writing 'you will need to grease the wheels with cash and favors and rely on elders to get things done.

Posted by Democracy: now with more bribes | December 20, 2006 5:15 AM

OK, you've had your snark. Friedman is quoting the British strategic thinker Basil Liddell-Hart, who remarked that in war the shortest route between two points is the least expected.

Why he doesn't bother to cash in the erudition points he's owed for having heard of Liddell-Hart by attributing it is none of my concern. I do hope he's not trying to piratise the idea.

Posted by Alex | December 20, 2006 5:44 AM

Maybe it has something to do with snorting coke?

That would explain a lot of things...

Posted by alphie | December 20, 2006 5:57 AM

It's because in Iraq the shortest distance between any two points has an IED in the middle.

Posted by Drew Miller | December 20, 2006 6:22 AM

Friedman is saying that the playing field is becoming so flat that parallel lines cross if you extend them far enough from the shortest distance.

Posted by grytpype | December 20, 2006 7:29 AM

Matt needs the Moustache of Understanding:

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/moustache_of_understanding.html

Posted by AlanC9 | December 20, 2006 7:32 AM

Definitely agree with those claiming Friedman's mouthings have astonishingly little to do with any reality one might possibly encounter.

Friedman's mad that he's been wrong about pretty much everything in Iraq. Consequently, Iraq is presumed irrational, as is the whole Middle East.

It's always amusing when somebody claims to have read a Tom Friedman column and gained some insight on the world from it. Me, I just offer my condolences. How much can you learn from a guy who gets everything wrong, except how to be wrong yourself? Not a particularly useful attitude.

Posted by faux facsimile | December 20, 2006 7:50 AM

May I suggest, Mr. Friedman, that there are too many Americans who think that immutable laws don't apply to them, in Iraq?

Posted by neil | December 20, 2006 8:25 AM

Frankly I don't see how taking a bad metaphor and interpreting it literally enhances one's own cleverness.

The point about Friedman's straight line trope isn't that it's metaphorically off; yes, yes, we need unconventional thinking and a patient, finessed approach to problem-solving in Iraq. Straight line = wrong-headed military operations; crooked line = clever counterinsurgency info-war.

It's that you can't fucking give people a metaphorical pop quiz before you "let them into" Iraq already. Something about horses, a barn, and the ever-growing (straight, curved, whichever) distance between them.

Posted by Bill | December 20, 2006 8:45 AM

Friedman sounds like Bush. In 2001, whenever all the criteria for Bush's proffered tax cut disappeared, the tax cut became the solution for the new economic conditions. Similarly for Friedman, no matter what the situation in Iraq is, it is never a place where the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It may be so in Korea. But not in Iraq.

Friedman's view of Iraq was obviously influenced by the Yes album: Tales from Topographic Oceans where the shortest distance between two lines is noodling.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 20, 2006 9:02 AM

"OK, you've had your snark. Friedman is quoting the British strategic thinker Basil Liddell-Hart, who remarked that in war the shortest route between two points is the least expected.

Why he doesn't bother to cash in the erudition points he's owed for having heard of Liddell-Hart by attributing it is none of my concern. I do hope he's not trying to piratise the idea."

thats a plausible explanation (and definitely the most generous). but even so, friedman specifically says that this is not true for most wars, its only in the middle east.

i vote for the explanation that friedman is saying approximately nothing, but saying it in an annoyingly self-important way.

Posted by ,, | December 20, 2006 9:23 AM

Friedman is very wealthy, so people who are used to deferring to wealth will smile and nod as he speaks.

And, as usual, the Rich Guy is blathering on in metaphors he half-understands, and embellishes them with mismatching imagery and symbols until it becomes such a hideous, mongrel affair, that it can only survive in the most oppressive places in the world, like boardrooms and news studios.

Happily, in the case of Friedman himself, a catchphrase for this exists: The Moustache of Understanding. AlanC posted the link above, and it was the cover of the NY Press the week the Taibbi article ran.

Nothing has changed since then, save the general public opinion about what Friedman usually defends. The Moustache and Atrios' Friedman Units completely define this sad excuse for a opinion-maker. Effort spent on any new essays about how Friedman makes no sense... is better spent elsewhere.

Posted by Yamara | December 20, 2006 9:26 AM

Matt - Friedman wrote a book about how interconnected the world has become and called it "The World Is Flat." Just think about that for a moment. If the world were flat (and one side of the world were far from the other), wouldn't that imply a lot less closeness and connectivity than there is in a round world (where travel in any direction returns you to where you started)?

Is it any surprise that someone who completely mangles the metaphor in the title/central theme of his book makes this kind of mistake in his columns?

Posted by Liberal Chris | December 20, 2006 9:54 AM

My interpretation is simpler. There's a textbook anti-oriental racism here. "Straight lines" don't work in the inscrutable, mysterious east, where the natives are, you know, inscrutable. We Westerners must think ourselves in corkscrews, abandoning reason and logic in order to follow the labyrinthian twists of the peculiar and (did I mention?) inscrutable Arab mind.

Posted by jp | December 20, 2006 10:00 AM

It's because in Iraq the shortest distance between any two points has an IED in the middle.

Drew Miller wins the door prize!

I suppose he's actually trying to say that you shouldn't be looking for shortcuts when trying to build a stable liberal democracy from scratch, but this should be blindingly obvious to anyone with a functioning frontal lobe. Come to think of it, the same could be said for nearly every observation Friedman makes about the world. Thus, he shrouds his conventional wisdom in metaphorical obscurity and fleshes it out with hotel bar anecdotes from Tunis in order to sell books.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 20, 2006 10:13 AM

I bet that all of this Friedman coulis has a common antecedent: Mark Twain's autopsy of James Fennimore Cooper. We all read that hysterical essay at 15 or 16, and it shaped our idea of literary criticism forever.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 20, 2006 10:19 AM

I got it, Thomas Friedman is Mynheer Peeperkorn -
now how do I cash in those erudition points?

Posted by novakant | December 20, 2006 10:27 AM

"My interpretation is simpler. There's a textbook anti-oriental racism here. "Straight lines" don't work in the inscrutable, mysterious east, where the natives are, you know, inscrutable. We Westerners must think ourselves in corkscrews, abandoning reason and logic in order to follow the labyrinthian twists of the peculiar and (did I mention?) inscrutable Arab mind."

You forgot to say "Byzantine."

Posted by Bill | December 20, 2006 10:43 AM

He's trying to say: exterminate the brutes.

Posted by brendan | December 20, 2006 10:59 AM

Forgive my vanity for posting this, but I had a personal encounter with Friedman a couple months ago.

Standing at a light, I saw Tom Friedman next to me. My heart in my throat for fear of botching this fantasy rencontre, I looked him in the face and said, "Nice job with that war." He kind of half-smiled and said "Thank you", either because he's so insulated he didn't detect any negative implication, or because he was hoping that would be the end of it. So I looked disdainfully at him and said, "It's amazing that you people show your face in public."

His response was a very revealing "Who the fuck are you?!", to which this peon responded, "A citizen. And a taxpayer". "Fuck you!" he shot back, to which I said, not very wittily,
"Yeah, enjoy the war, as long as it lasts".

As he stalked away from me down the street I jeered, "Hey everybody, it's Tom Friedman, celebrity pundit!"

I wasn't scintillating, but the outcome satisfied me. Friedman, surprisingly, has a vestigial conscience and it bothers him.

Posted by brendan | December 20, 2006 11:05 AM

It's an aesthetic comment. The Middle East isn't a place for lovers of efficiency. It's a land of complicated twists and turns—Iverson-esque, if you will.

Posted by Zak | December 20, 2006 11:14 AM

Clearly, Matt is not wearing the mustache of understanding

Posted by djLicious | December 20, 2006 11:44 AM

I was so glad when the NYT introduced "Times Select", so that I had a financial incentive for not reading Friedman any more.

Posted by Aslan365 | December 20, 2006 2:01 PM

Friedman's hidden meaning: Muslims is the craziest people!

Posted by comatose | December 20, 2006 2:01 PM

Forget the "shortest distance not being a line" analogy. Friedman's "World is Flat" also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's as it he decided to write a book about a field that's actually well studied (i.e. economic geography) YET didn't bother to read anything in the field.

Honestly, I wonder why anyone ascribes any wisdom or knowledge to this guy and his silly meaningless opinions.

Posted by AfghanAmerican | December 20, 2006 6:09 PM

I'm guessing he means you can't reach a solution in Iraq with Western rationalism. But who knows. He's an idiot.

Posted by Paul | December 20, 2006 7:20 PM

I think it means that the way from A to B is via detours to C, D, E, F, G, etc, that do not lie on the straight line from A to B.

Posted by Arun | December 20, 2006 8:27 PM

Dear Sir:
When I was in boot camp at Parris Island in 1952. My drill instructor told us,"don't believe what your told by your political leaders." You have to worry about what they are not saying.Yes,it was like Viet Nam, we wound go throuh target areas and return bace to base camp. Then we would have to go back out an retake the same positions. Those that head these wars don't seem to have brains.
When the slaves were freed wead did they go? Did they set up armies, did they form governments, and where did they find jobs and food to eat? You apply that to Iraq and what do you have? Senator Clinton stated that we have interest in the area also. That interest is Israli and that is what the government refuses to talk about. It was the 2nd or 3rd month of the Iraq war when the missle and rocket busters were brought in and they said by accident thatthe rockers and missles can not reach Israli. It is more then just oil. They tried to find oil in Viet Nam but they couldn"t. The People in Viet Nam were very mad about their last two elections because the canidates never came out of the safe areas to get those peoples votes.
Well thank you for letting me give you my thoughts.

Thomas J. O'Brien
Ret. USMC

Posted by Thomas J. O'brien, Ret Usmc | January 24, 2007 2:45 PM