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Thomas Friedman's writing on the Middle East is condescending and often misleading.

  Of course, not only did the United States fund, train and equip the mujahidin to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Pentagon was also instrumental in transporting thousands of Islamic fighters to Bosnia in the 1990s to aid the Bosnian Muslims in the war against the Serbs, once again sanctioning the notion of intercontinental jihad. However, Friedman's rare acknowledgement that al-Qaeda and similar phenomena might have logical and readily detectable foundations in US foreign policy choices is decisively overwhelmed by his predilection for identifying endemic Arab/ Muslim deficiencies.