[lit-ideas] Krugman today, NYT select
- From: Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:50:01 -0700
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 21, 2006
Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was
president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its
liking with a series of splendid little wars - people like Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld - were known within the administration as "the crazies."
Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy.
But in 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the White House to a man who,
although he may be 60, doesn't act like a grown-up. The second President
Bush obviously confuses swagger with strength, and prefers tough talkers
like the crazies to people who actually think things through. He got the
chance to implement the crazies' vision after 9/11, which created a climate
in which few people in Congress or the news media dared to ask hard
questions. And the result is the bloody mess we're now in.
This isn't a case of 20-20 hindsight. It was clear from the beginning that
the United States didn't have remotely enough troops to carry out the
crazies' agenda - and Mr. Bush never asked for a bigger army.
As I wrote back in January 2003, this meant that the "Bush doctrine" of
preventive war was, in practice, a plan to "talk trash and carry a small
stick." It was obvious even then that the administration was preparing to
invade Iraq not because it posed a real threat, but because it looked like a
soft target.
The message to North Korea, which really did have an active nuclear program,
was clear: "The Bush administration," I wrote, putting myself in Kim Jong Il's
shoes, "says you're evil. It won't offer you aid, even if you cancel your
nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won't even promise
not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil
regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for
all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only
regimes that are militarily weak." So "the best self-preservation strategy
... is to be dangerous."
With a few modifications, the same logic applies to Iran. And it's easier
than ever for Iran to be dangerous, now that U.S. forces are bogged down in
Iraq.
Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if
the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism,
rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies' agenda? Nobody
knows. But it's clear that the United States would have more options, more
ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn't squandered both the
nation's credibility and its military might on his war of choice.
So what happens next?
Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were
wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous
pronouncements about Iraq - his declaration before the invasion that we
would be "greeted as liberators" and his assertion a year ago that the
insurgency was in its "last throes" - were "basically accurate."
But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so
badly?
The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of
omnipotence. The only problem, they assert, is a lack of will.
Thus William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, has called for a
military strike - an airstrike, since we don't have any spare ground
troops - against Iran.
"Yes, there would be repercussions," he wrote in his magazine, "and they
would be healthy ones." What would these healthy repercussions be? On Fox
News he argued that "the right use of targeted military force" could cause
the Iranian people "to reconsider whether they really want to have this
regime in power." Oh, boy.
Mr. Kristol is, of course, a pundit rather than a policymaker. But there's
every reason to suspect that what Mr. Kristol says in public is what Mr.
Cheney says in private.
And what about The Decider himself?
For years the self-proclaimed "war president" basked in the adulation of the
crazies. Now they're accusing him of being a wimp. "We have been too weak,"
writes Mr. Kristol, "and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak."
Does Mr. Bush have the maturity to stand up to this kind of pressure? I
report, you decide.
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