[lit-ideas] Paul Krugman on, well, on things
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 10:57:56 -0700
America's Lost Respect
By PAUL KRUGMAN
October 1, 2004
"As a result of the American military," President Bush
declared last week, "the Taliban is no longer in
existence."
It's unclear whether Mr. Bush misspoke, or whether he
really is that clueless. But his claim was in keeping with
his re-election strategy, demonstrated once again in last
night's debate: a president who has done immense damage to
America's position in the world hopes to brazen it out by
claiming that failure is success.
Three years ago, the United States was both feared and
respected: feared because of its military supremacy,
respected because of its traditional commitment to
democracy and the rule of law.
Since then, Iraq has demonstrated the limits of American
military power, and has tied up much of that power in a
grinding guerrilla war. This has emboldened regimes that
pose a real threat. Three years ago, would North Korea have
felt so free to trumpet its conversion of fuel rods into
bombs?
But even more important is the loss of respect. After the
official rationales for the Iraq war proved false, and
after America failed to make good on its promise to foster
democracy in either Afghanistan or Iraq - and, not least,
after Abu Ghraib - the world no longer believes that we are
the good guys.
Let's talk for a minute about Afghanistan, which
administration officials tout as a success story. They rely
on the public's ignorance: voters, they believe, don't know
that even though the United States promised to provide
Afghanistan with both security and aid during its
transition to democracy, it broke those promises. It has
allowed the country to slide back into warlordism - and
allowed the Taliban to make a comeback.
These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials
often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have
registered to vote in this month's election, citing the
figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all.
They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not
to mention, that the number of people registered
considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible
population. What they call evidence of democracy on the
march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.
It's the same story in Iraq: the January election has
become the rationale for everything we're doing, yet it's
hard to find anyone not beholden to the administration who
believes that the election, if it happens at all, will be
anything more than a sham.
Yet Mr. Bush and his Congressional allies seem to have
learned nothing from their failures. If Mr. Bush is
returned to office, there's every reason to think that they
will continue along the same disastrous path.
We can already see one example of this when we look at the
question of torture. Abu Ghraib has largely vanished from
U.S. political discussion, largely because the
administration and its Congressional allies have been so
effective at covering up high-level involvement. But both
the revelations and the cover-up did terrible damage to
America's moral authority. To much of the world, America
looks like a place where top officials condone and possibly
order the torture of innocent people, and suffer no
consequences.
What we need is an effort to regain our good name. What
we're getting instead is a provision, inserted by
Congressional Republicans in the intelligence reform bill,
to legalize "extraordinary rendition" - a euphemism for
sending terrorism suspects to countries that use torture
for interrogation. This would institutionalize a Kafkaesque
system under which suspects can be sent, at the
government's whim, to Egypt or Syria or Jordan - and to
fight such a move, it's up to the suspect to prove that
he'll be tortured on arrival. Just what we need to convince
other countries of our commitment to the rule of law.
Most Americans aren't aware of all this. The sheer scale of
Mr. Bush's foreign policy failures insulates him from its
political consequences: voters aren't ready to believe how
badly the war in Iraq is going, let alone how badly
America's moral position in the world has deteriorated.
But the rest of the world has already lost faith in us. In
fact, let me make a prediction: if Mr. Bush gets a second
term, we will soon have no democracies left among our
allies - no, not even Tony Blair's Britain. Mr. Bush will
be left with the support of regimes that don't worry about
the legalities - regimes like Vladimir Putin's Russia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/opinion/01krugman.html?ex=1097611928&ei=1&en=bbcc11a22f0d29c9
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