That's the only way I can explain this latest ode to appeasement from the Times columnist, and this fresh off Sunday's appeal to raise the gas tax.

Now that Syria is nervous, and Iran is paying attention, Friedman believes it's time to ease up on all of them and appeal to their better natures. In the hope that bringing them into the fold will turn them into sheep, Friedman advocates using the nervous feelings Arafat, the Syrians and Iranians must have now to get them to start helping us with the stabilization of Iraq and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yeah, and monkeys might fly outa my butt. We all do understand that none of the afformentioned entities have any interest whatsoever in a stable, democratic Iraq, right? That it's in their natures to double-deal?

Friedman seems to imply from his article that we are doing nothing but sabre-rattling toward the axis of Middle-East evil, but there's little doubt that action is already going on behind the scenes. What does Friedman think, that we're on the verge of a Syria/Iran invasion? If only.

Friedman's suggestions are pregnant with Oslo-era wishful thinking and straw-man creations of a simplistic Bush foreign policy, not to mention a silly cheap shot against Sharon's military policies, which Charles Johnson correctly points out are, in fact, working. Friedman never actually tells us how we're supposed to get the bad guys to do what we want, merely that we should try, as if it hasn't all been tried before. Wonderful.

This column, with its simple "tell us what we don't already know" logic is simple fluff, and when you add in the Oslo redux subtext it's dangerous fluff at that.