tom friedman's dumb logic

saturday c-span2 replayed their may '05 in-depth interview of tom friedman originally aired as part of their monthly series of 3-hour interviews.

right in the first 5 or 10 minutes is a perfect example of the trouble with friedman's logic.

he told of research that compared student achievement in several countries, including the US. he said the study found that at 4th grade, american students were a little ahead of everybody else, at 8th grade they were about even, and at 12th grade they were behind.

he then said that meant that the longer US kids are in school, the dumber they get.

gee, tom, are you sure it doesn't mean the more you appear on tv, the dumber you sound?

all—and i do mean ALL—those stats tell us is that after 4th grade, kids in other countries are learning faster than our kids.

they don't tell us why. they certainly don't tell us our kids are getting dumber.

maybe they are getting dumber. maybe they're not. we can't tell from that research.

but what can you expect from a guy who said we were right to invade iraq, but our reasons were wrong?

i mean, he had that one exactly backwards: we actually had good reasons, but it was still wrong to invade, because 1) our facts were wrong, and we didn't take the time or make the effort to verify them, 2) our most solemn treaty obligations require us to get UN security council authorization for war, except to defend against an actual attack [folk who claim we had that authorization didn't read the UN resolution carefully enough], and 3) it is just plain WRONG to go to war to bring a handful of bad guys to justice when you KNOW you will kill thousands of innocent people, maim thousands more, and make many others suffer in other ways!