I criticize the NYT when it deserves it but I give praise when praise is due.

Tom Friedman today has quite a good column on Lebanon, Syria and the broader picture.

Key excerpt: Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon’s opposition: “You want to play here, you’d better be ready to play by Hama Rules – and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you’d better be able to put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You’d better be ready to go all the way – because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you Lebanese don’t have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean croissant but you’ve got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let’s see what you’ve got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby.”

Me: The MSM, including the NYT, needs to discuss and debate this in a way they have not. We have Sen. Ted Kennedy and NYT columnist Dick Clarke and so many others on the left telling the administration what it can’t do – e.g. “no stress and duress for terror suspects, no tight T-shirts on women interrogators, no knocking down buildings in Fallujah, no …” but the truth is we at war with an enemy who we will not be able to defeat with one hand tied behind our back and the other wearing a kid glove.

P.S. Hama is the Syrian city that the Assad pere leveled in 1982, killing up to 20,000 people, including radical Islamists and whoever else happened to be in the neighborhood.