Thanks for the comment. I read your review, excellent. I’ll have more time tonight to enjoy your site resources – looks quite interesting, good links too!
The Daily Demarche asked me to do a guest post – which motivated me to do a total rewrite on the various Friedman resources, predictions, etc. We’re still working on Blogger formatting gremlins, so I’m not sure of the permalink. Right now it is the top post Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends.
I’m much happier with the do-over, as I took time to actually type in enough of America’s Secret War for the reader to get a sense of how Friedman approaches the issues. I’m keen to know what you think!
Cheers, Steve D.

Since that is not going to happen and too much fuss would be raised by making it easier for Mexicans to cross legally expect status quo.

A realistic policy would make it easy for those wanting work to cross. In addition reducing smuggling incentives (the drug war) would help reduce the probing of the borders. Since neither policy is amenable to change expect the holes in the border to continue.

The perfect (absolute control of the borders) is the enemy of the good (keeping the bad guys out).

I repeat, if the Bush admin. wants to get tough on SA, why not get tough on SA in a much more forthright manner?

I share your question – if the Saudis have closed down the funding flows to Al Qaeda and similar it is a well-kept secret. And until there is real evidence, I assume that Saudi nationals continue to provide much of the Al Qaeda infrastructure support. The interior minister and his network are likely part of Al Qaeda-in-KSA. My problem in proposing policy is I don’t know how to turn the blowtorch higher without producing a Wahhabi takeover. I have assummed that was a worse outcome than the Saudi mess we already have (more below on whether this assumption is valid).
Steven Den Beste has been articulating a much stronger response to the Saudi threat for at least since 2003. Recently Steven has posted a number of thoughtful comments on DailyPundit urging more action, more sooner (see this on March 4, 2005 05:23 PM):

Saudi Arabia is the "Typhoid Mary" of the Arab/Muslim world. There comes a time when disease fighters have to start thinking about enforced quarantine. "Behind the scenes" and "subtle" and "diplomatic" may not be fast enough or effective enough, given the Saud penchant for meaningless gestures and playing to both sides.
The House of Saud is sordid and corrupt, and I thought we had abandoned the "…but they’re our sons-of-bitches" principle of foreign policy.

A bit later Steven wrote another comment which has me rethinking my fear of Wahhabi control of Saudi Arabia. He argues that today we’re trying to strangle the Wahhabis indirectly by working through the royals. Whereas, if we overheated the torch, thus blowing the royals off the throne – that would be a "less worse" situation. Scroll down to find this comment on March 5, 2005 06:09 PM (emphasis mine):

The idea that an invasion of Iraq would put "the fear of God" into all the neighboring countries is not a new one. It was obviously one of the reasons why Iraq was the right target for the second battle of the war. The question is whether that, and other measures, were really enough to force the House of Saud to actually start taking risks to work against the radicals inside their own borders.
The answer appears to be "yes and no", but mostly no. They finally, FINALLY, admitted that the terrorist attacks which had been happening in their borders were actually being made by al Qaeda, rather than by westerners involved in smuggling alcohol, which was what they had been blaming it on. They’ve been finding and taking out terrorist cells.
That’s all to the good, I guess, but it’s more for their benefit than for ours. And they have been and still are up to their eyeballs in formally subsidizing the export of extremism to the rest of the world. That hasn’t really changed, and that’s what’s got to stop.
They have made token gestures towards stopping a bit of the funding that was flowing out of Saudi Arabia, but then nearly everything they’ve done has been token.
Our problem is that the Sauds fear the Wahhabis more than they fear us. That’s what’s got to change, and it ain’t gonna change as long as we deal with them with velvet gloves.

I think that is accurate. That’s why Friedman’s assertion re US Iraq strategy made sense to me on first reading. Still, I’m looking for a no regrets policy that we can implement with a good probability of a better outcome. More from Steven…

Kissing off Assad and the Syrians was a cheap gesture for the Sauds. It didn’t really cost them anything, and in fact none of the "cooperation" they’ve given us has actually cost them anything significant. They’re making token gestures in hopes of reducing the heat and pressure being applied to them from outside without being forced to start applying heat and pressure to the real source of this war, the Wahhabis inside Saudi Arabia. The Sauds are acting like a layer of insulation between us and the Wahhabis.
Arguably the Sauds are to the Wahhabis what the Taliban were to al Qaeda: a semi-legitimate government which is covering for and protecting the organizational core of an international extremist terrorist movement. Part of the point of the destruction of the Taliban was to establish the precedent that we would not tolerate that kind of thing from any (semi)legitimate government. So why are we tolerating it in Saudi Arabia?
If we increased the pressure and the Sauds were deposed, and a new extremist government took over, that would be an improvement because there would no longer be any insulation. It would become possible for us to apply heat and pressure directly to the extremists, and it would remove a diplomatic fiction which is binding our hands in the war.
That’s why we need more stick, less carrot; more pressure, less diplomacy and encouragement, more demands and fewer requests, and above all less tolerance for empty or cheap gestures. The House of Saud is a luxury we can no longer afford as long as it continues to act like insulation and continues to protect the Wahhabis.
And I’m not really too concerned about the economic side effects of major disruption of oil sales, mostly because even a new extremist government of Saudi Arabia would need to sell oil because the nation has no other significant source of revenue. Since oil is fungible, it wouldn’t matter if they refused to sell it to us.

I’m also not concerned about oil disruption – the Saudis need all their current income (unless they were to really implement the medieval lifestyle the Wahhabis promote) so cutting production is an unhappy option. We are indifferent who contracts Saudi oil.
But, very specifically what is the tactical worklist to apply more stick, less carrot; more pressure? We cannot be considering an outright military invasion of Arabia. I think US policy w/r/t Iraq has been unilateral only in the eyes of the left. A Saudi invasion would be real unilateralism, where the coalition of the willing might be one. And I’m not ready to engage the doctrine of defensive jihad globally against every devout muslim.
Joe Katzman has suggestions on the worklist – for a separate comment.
David, what’s your take – what do you prescribe for the worklist?
Cheers, Steve

My question is,. how the eff does Prof. Friedman know that to be the true conclusion of the US national security team post 9/11? Are we supposed to assume that he is blessed with uncany, almost onmniscient wisdom, or that he is passing along The Word from some unnamed source in Washington?

David, thanks heaps for taking the time to think and comment on this topic! To affirm or negate the Friedman assertions is my motivation for this post on America’s Secret War. As I wrote in the post-intro "In this book that assertion is not padded with two pages of justification. But is it true?" This is typical of Stratfor reports, which I’ve been reading for a couple of years. I can’t recall ever seeing in one of these reports either source attribution, or footnote references.

If the thrust of what he writes is true, that puts our policy-choosing in a new light. If it is false – in what way is it false? Does it mean that the consensus we read in the legacy media is accurate? Or better, if false, then what is true?

I assume the latter. But why should anyone trust unnamed sources? Unnamed sources told New York Times reporter Judith Miller that the CIA was sure that Iraq had WMD’s.

That’s probably not the best example of the "unnamed sources" problem. My understanding is that all of the western intelligence agencies had arrived at the same conclusion. Many ME academics saying much the same. As did Clinton, his advisors, and John Kerry. Consider Ken Pollack’s "The Threatening Storm". Ex-spook Pollack had arguably the best access to the top spooks of anyone other than the administration. He laid out the case very thoroughly – certainly I confess I found it compelling. We all wish the CIA, MI6 had known exactly was going on – but I can cut them some slack when I consider that Saddam’s generals also thought Iraq had chemical weapons and was quite ready to use them.

It’s also very important not to tar the Bush administration with the "intelligence failure" brush – the policies that are responsible for the unfortunate condition of US intelligence came primarily from Clinton’s watch, but also go back as far as Carter’s watch.

Friedman’s been wrong before. Back in 1999, he was predicting a "stalemate" in Kosovo — that was his word, “a stalemate” — shortly before Milososonovabitch capitulated.

Surely Stratfor/Friedman will be wrong again (the Stratfor Dec 31 Report "Facing Realities in Iraq" is a real worry – I very much hope he is wrong in that one. A post on that is forthcoming soon). Stratfor seems to be in the business of making risky forecasts – shouldn’t we expect some "oops" in their output (more below on the risky bit). A fair number of the ex-CIA spooks who are now punditing believe one of the biggest unsolved CIA problems is the culture of risk-advoidance (Reuel Marc Gerecht, Robert Baer, and of course George Friedman come to mind). It is very easy to end up on the sharp end of a Congressional committee.
As to the "stalemate" in Kosovo, if you could point me to that background I would really appreciate it. I’ve been searching for almost an hour without success. The most relevant I’ve found is a Mar 30, 1999 Salon interview with Friedman. I know little of Kosovo so I can’t comment on the interview content.

My opinion of Prof. Friedman is that he’s just another NeoCon .

I’m curious why you categorize Friedman as a NeoCon? I would have put him more in the Realist foreign policy camp – more a Kisinger than a Wolfowitz?

Not at all great and powerful.

I doubt anyone in the intelligence business would feel "all great and powerful". Who said "if it were fact it wouldn’t be intelligence"? Stratfor has a business model based upon publishing "risky" analyses and forecasts that companies find useful enough to pay their fees. I stress "risky" because that is how I interpret what I read. They stick their neck out – I suspect much further than a CIA analyst would be willing to go. I doubt they would have many Fortune 500 subscribers left if their reports mirrored CIA reports. I know Starbucks subscribes to Stratfor, and those guys definitely don’t throw money around.

And how convenient to say that Homeland Defense is impossible if part of one’s Neocon agenda is to promote war in Iraq

Isn’t the Homeland Defense challenge is "impossible" on the face of it? We have to stop 100%, while maintaining the timely, free flow of commerce that makes "just in time" work, so we can keep growing productivity – and thereby fueling the world economy. AQ has to succeed only occasionally.
It’s useful to remember that, but for some courageous passengers on UA 93, Al Qaeda would have succeeded in decapitating the US government on their last attempt. We probably won’t see the next one coming either. I’m glad I don’t live in DC anymore

That’s not at all the same as saying "there’s no point in investing to reduce the risks". My understanding is that much can be done, and likely could have already been done if it was politically feasible. E.g., a lot (too lazy to look it up) has been invested in airline safety. Other than requiring secure cockpit doors, I’m not persuaded there is much ROI on all the rest. But politically, perhaps it was required – to encourage people to start flying again.

while finding an excuse to keep the Mex border open so cheap labor can keep on swarming in to the US.

Is there evidence that it is US policy to promote entry of illegal aliens? That’s pretty devious.

My politics? I voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004, because he was the evil of two lessers, as George Jr. might say, compared to Commodore Kerry or Handsome Prince Albert. I suppose it’s too late too quit now in Iraq. I am very disappointed that no WMD’s have been found there.

I agree, politically it would have been convenient to find stockpiles of WMD, especially for Blair. I doubt that Bush, Powell, Rice et al thought there was much risk in using the WMD argument in the Security Council (I mean risk of being wrong). Personally, I never thought WMD were important to the logic for regime change. Does anyone question that Saddam would have created a destabilizing WMD capability as quickly as possible after he was let out of his box? If they do, I would recommend they read the ISG reports, both under David Kay, and under Charles Deulfer.

Cheers, Steve

We xenophobes might reply that the Islamist threat to the West is directly due to accepting a swarm of imported humans, including Wahhabis or Wahabbits or whatever you call ‘em.

I prepeat, if the Bush admin. wants to get tough on SA, why not get tough on SA in a much more forthright manner?