Post hoc, ergo . . .?

NY Times - 9.23.05:
Quoted from Thomas L. Friedman’s OpEd, "Rooting for Bibi"

"There is something about the international climate today (Italics, mine) - the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the pressures of globalization, rising middle classes who want stability and the passing of a generation of charismatic leaders - that is blowing apart many of the stale political arrangements that have long governed Arab-Israeli politics. Syria has been forced out of Lebanon. Israel has unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. Egypt has held its first quasi-multiparty election. The Palestinian Authority has imploded with the death of Yasir Arafat, and the Baathists have been blown up by the Bushes. The laws of gravity are finally forcing some reality politics on the Middle East . . ."

{} Reacting to the above, I composed and sent the following letter to the Editor. Like has happened to all of my previous correspondence, it will find the black hole in his desk and disappear.

T.L. Friedman is one of your more impassioned columnists, often prescient but sometimes 180 degrees off the mark. In his paragraph that starts with "There is something about the international climate today" he is his sharply focused self. But let’s not delude ourselves. What is happening in the Middle East is not the result of random spontaneous political combustion. A case can be made that it all started when we put boots in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Krushchev had it right many years ago, when he reminded us that you cannot make an omelette without cracking the egg!