SNN: Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Friedman: I am Tom Freidman from the New York Times. I am the foreign affairs columnist.

SNN: I recently downloaded a speech that you gave back in 1999 and you were speaking about a person named Osama Bin Laden at a time when he wasn’t on the radar for most of us. Did you ever imagine…?

Friedman: I never imagined, but I wasn’t at all surprised. I not only spoke about him, I wrote about him. Not only did I write about him--not just in passing--but I wrote about him as my symbol of a new kind of threat in the modern world, what I called the “super-empowered angry man”. Actually I wrote about two people and spoke about two people. I spoke about Osama Bin Laden and Ramsey Usef. Ramsey Usef was the guy who tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time around, you know, so these guys have been on my mind for a long time.

SNN: He was on your radar, what about our Intel community, do you think they dropped the ball?

Friedman: Well, did they drop the ball? I’ve always felt that September 11 was about a failure of imagination more than intelligence in that I think you could have seen all the dots and not have connected them. To connect them you needed a really warped mind, a mind that just doesn’t come easily to the average American, so I have always seen it as a failure of imagination rather than intelligence.

SNN: In your book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, you argued that globalization is becoming the central organizing principle of the post-cold war era and that the United States would be the biggest beneficiary of globalization and yet events of September 11 have been attributed to backwash against that. If that is the scenario how can the United States continue to be the biggest beneficiary?

Friedman: Well, that is a good question and as I said in the book, we are indisputably the biggest beneficiary of globalization. After all, it is our ideas, our products, our movies, our clothes, our fast food, our values that to a large extent that are being globalized more than anybody else’s, so for good and for bad, it depends on how you feel about McDonald’s and other things. We have been a huge beneficiary—but the key, if we are such a beneficiary, is making sure that globalization remains sustainable because you know if you want to benefit from it, you want to sustain it. Well, to sustain it is a complicated thing and to sustain it you need three things. You need the hidden hand, the market, we need free markets; you need the hidden fist, because somebody has to stabilize this world and beat back the bad guys so we keep the world integrated and integrating; and lastly you need an open hand, a hand up and a hand out for people who aren’t in the system. And so, while we are the biggest beneficiaries we need to do everything we can to make sure it remains sustainable and that means being on duty and generous and all those things.

SNN: In Beirut to Jerusalem you dedicate most of a chapter to the coping skills learned by the people of Beirut after sustaining years of day to day violence. Are you seeing any of these same skills in post-9/11 America or is there really any comparison?

Friedman: Oh, there is a comparison and as I said in Beirut to Jerusalem there are two kinds of people in Beirut, there are thrivers and survivors. Survivors are people who really took in too much information and didn’t learn how to view their environment selectively and because of that, they are worried about everything, every threat, every guy that looks at them funny in an airport line, you know and in any other respect. Thrivers are people who learned how to view their environment very selectively, don’t take in too much information, don’t worry about things you can’t control, don’t worry about that guy in the line that you might think might be a hijacker. Ninety-nine out of one hundred times it is not true. The key to surviving in this kind of environment is learning how to view your environment selectively, not being worried or panicked about every thing you seen and not hiding in your basement but going out and going to a ball game, going to a concert and leading your life. It is Osama Bin Laden we want living in a cave, not you.

SNN: Let’s talk current events. Has Arafat’s popularity benefited from his continued isolation?

Friedman: Oh, only in the short run. You know, in the short run Palestinians will rally to him as they always do, but in the long run he has hurt himself enormously with Palestinian’s for three reasons. This time his policies have led to the estruction of Palestinian cities, not Arab ones, not Amman and Beirut but Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem and Hebron. Secondly, he has destroyed the Israeli peace camp and thirdly he has completely destroyed Palestinian-American relations. Those are three big losses that, deep down, Palestinians know and understand and regret. Because of that, while they may rally to him in the short run, I think he has lost something major this time by his actions.

SNN: You grew up in the Midwest, but were fortunate enough to travel to Israel at the age of 15 where you discovered, as you say in your book, that you were “more middle east than Minnesota.” For those of us in the Midwest who have not had that travel experience, what is our single most compelling reason to raise our awareness of the politics of that region?

Friedman: Well, the most important thing, whether it is in the Middle East or anywhere else is to understand this, we live in a really integrated world now and if you don’t visit a bad neighborhood there is a chance it may visit you. We can’t make everywhere as nice as Southwestern Nebraska, frankly, but we want to make sure that we are inviting people into our future and we want to make sure that we are there with a hand up, not just a hand out when we can; with the iron fist when we need to be and with the hidden hand—or the market—when we need to be. But, you know the real lesson is in this integrated world you can’t be indifferent in a corner of it anymore and expect to be safe.

SNN: We appreciate your having taken a few minutes to speak with us. Is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?

Friedman: No, just bless their hearts. Thanks for reading.

Editors Note: Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for international reporting and a winner of the National Book Award, is one of America’s foremost commentators on the Middle East, terrorism and globalization. One of America’s leading interpreters of world affairs, Friedman was born in Minneapolis in 1953, was educated at Brandeis University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

His first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, won the National Book Award in 1988. Mr. Friedman has also won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting for The New York Times as bureau chief in Beirut and in Jerusalem. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Ann, and their daughters, Orly and Natalie.