New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman rarely disappoints when it comes to inane, or even spurious arguments and ideas, but in his latest column, he demonstrates such a lack of understanding of not just diplomacy, his subject of the day, but also of how the world has changed (beyond its now flatness), that one has to wonder if his peripatetic lifestyle has taught him anything about the way all those foreigners he meets actually think.

Continuing to view the world through the myopia of his all t