On target.
Hoping for Fear
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 14, 2006
Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that ‘politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots.’
The response from readers was furious – fury not at the politicians but at me, for suggesting that such an outrage was even possible. ‘How can I say that to my young son?’ demanded one angry correspondent.
I wonder what he says to his son these days.
We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited. The story of the latest terror plot makes the administration’s fecklessness and cynicism on terrorism clearer than ever.
Fecklessness: the administration has always pinched pennies when it comes to actually defending America against terrorist attacks. Now we learn that terrorism experts have known about the threat of liquid explosives for years, but that the Bush administration did nothing about that threat until now, and tried to divert funds from programs that might have helped protect us. ‘As the British terror plot was unfolding,’ reports The Associated Press, ‘the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology.’
Cynicism: Republicans have consistently portrayed their opponents as weak on terrorism, if not actually in sympathy with the terrorists. Remember the 2002 TV ad in which Senator Max Cleland of Georgia was pictured with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? Now we have Dick Cheney suggesting that voters in the Democratic primary in Connecticut were lending aid and comfort to ‘Al Qaeda types.’ There they go again.
More fecklessness, and maybe more cynicism, too: NBC reports that there was a dispute between the British and the Americans over when to make arrests in the latest plot. Since the alleged plotters weren’t ready to go – they hadn’t purchased airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports yet – British officials wanted to watch and wait, hoping to gather more evidence. But according to NBC, the Americans insisted on early arrests.
Suspicions that the Bush administration might have had political motives in wanting the arrests made prematurely are fed by memories of events two years ago: the Department of Homeland Security declared a terror alert just after the Democratic National Convention, shifting the spotlight away from John Kerry – and, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, blowing the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda.
But whether or not there was something fishy about the timing of the latest terror announcement, there’s the question of whether the administration’s scare tactics will work. If current polls are any indication, Republicans are on the verge of losing control of at least one house of Congress. And “on every issue other than terrorism and homeland security,â€? says Newsweek about its latest poll, ‘the Dems win.’ Can a last-minute effort to make a big splash on terror stave off electoral disaster?
Many political analysts think it will. But even on terrorism, and even after the latest news, polls give Republicans at best a slight advantage. And Democrats are finally doing what they should have done long ago: calling foul on the administration’s attempt to take partisan advantage of the terrorist threat.
It was significant both that President Bush felt obliged to defend himself against that accusation in his Saturday radio address, and that his standard defense – attacking a straw man by declaring that ‘there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face’ – came off sounding so weak.
Above all, many Americans now understand the extent to which Mr. Bush abused the trust the nation placed in him after 9/11. Americans no longer believe that he is someone who will keep them safe, as many did even in 2004; the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina and the disaster in Iraq have seen to that.
All Mr. Bush and his party can do at this point is demonize their opposition. And my guess is that the public won’t go for it, that Americans are fed up with leadership that has nothing to hope for but fear itself.
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By Ahmet
As Americans, we get the leadership and government we deserve. Despite all of the advantages of great natural resources, an almost perfect geography, a unifying language, a resonably well-developed physical and social infra-structure, our national values seem to be nothing more than superstition (ignorant adherance to religion), consumerism (those who die with the most “win”), swagger (my….fill in the blank……is more, better, bigger, faster, etc. than your…..fill in the blank) and ignorance. Bush is a perfect president for most of America. Unwilling to consider a global view of anything, utterly convinced that anything/everything American is always right, it’s not surprising that Bush is a two-termer. A mountain biker who falls off of his bike regularly, a man whose English speaking ability is on par with the “television literate” masses is the perfect leader.
For those of us with natural intellectual cuiriosity, it seems stunning to find our country in the shape it’s in, but I think it’s because we can’t see beyond out own idealistic haze. Perhaps the ideas we espouse are no more than “casitng pearls before swine.” If the average American doesn’t care about anything more than the cost of gas to fill up a gas guzzling car, or how we are going to kick some “Ayrabbb or Muzzi ass,” (As Americans, we get the leadership and government we deserve. Despite all of the advantages of great natural resources, an almost perfect geography, a unifying language, a resonably well-developed physical and social infra-structure, our national values seem to be nothing more than superstition (ignorant adherance to religion), consumerism (those who die with the most “win”), swagger (my….fill in the blank……is more, better, bigger, faster, etc. than your…..fill in the blank) and ignorance. Bush is a perfect president for most of America. Unwilling to consider a global view of anything, utterly convinced that anything/everything American is always right, it’s not surprising that Bush is a two-termer. A mountain biker who falls off of his bike regularly, a man whose English speaking ability is on par with the “television literate” masses is the perfect leader.
For those of us with natural intellectual cuiriosity, it seems stunning to find our country in the shape it’s in, but I think it’s because we can’t see beyond out own idealistic haze. Perhaps the ideas we espouse are no more than “casitng pearls before swine.” If the average American doesn’t care about anything more than the cost of gas to fill up a gas guzzling car, or how we are going to kick some “Ayrabbb or Muzzi ass,” (<------insert the ethnic slur of your choice here, they are all equally disgusting), or what's on big time wrestling or NASCAR this weekend, all of the intelligent arguments in the world, treatises filled with indisputable facts are not going to offset their close minded ignorance. Sooo.....what's the answer? Claw, scratch, work, lie, cheat, steal.....do whatever it takes to get to a position of power and create of world of own liking? Revolution? Work within the system? Suicide? Can you sense my frustration? And this is the USA we are talking about here. I don't even want to get started on China. Thanks for letting me vent.
August 14, 2006 @ 10:03 am | Comment
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By ArabianNights
Ahmet,
Ah. One enlightened point. Why is Bush a two-termer? “Bush is a perfect president for most of America… utterly convinced that anything/everything American is always right, it’s not surprising that Bush is a two-termer” (Ahmet wrote).
But you missed one thing, the left (donkey Democrats) quite increasingly are also convinced of their own superiority.
August 14, 2006 @ 3:26 pm | Comment
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By D. Rumfeld
Bush , Cheney and company are chicken-hawks. They sent others to do the dirty works, they use scare tactics, if Americans just think why there are still terrors around us, we thought when we fight the Iraq war, we will fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here. This is all a big lie!
August 14, 2006 @ 7:29 pm | Comment
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By Joe Craine
While I wish Mr. Krugman would examine the real problem; what actually happened 9/11, he hit some important nails on their heads. Belief that the incumbant has protected America is right up there with putting creationism into the science classroom. The best evidence contradicts the position – the position can only be supported by fanatical adherence to ignorance.
Please consider this metaphor in opposition to the rediculous adherence to the red idea that a man who fails once (actually twice) will do better next time:
You hire a security company. Shortly after hiring the company, your home is robbed and a child is killed, how would you react?
You discover in your limited investigation that the security company had turned off the existing security systems that would have prevented the robbery and the murder in the first place and that senior executives of the company actually watched the breakin happen, doing nothing.
The president of the company destroys the evidence needed to determine how it really happened, who did it and to catch those who did it. This act was a violation of the contract, incidentally. The president tells you you can’t have any other evidence because then your house would be robbed again and maybe more children killed. We can’t have that.
The president does tell you who he, the president, claims did it, but never catches the person – actually never makes any attempt to catch the person.
On top of that, the president uses your money to try to secure a different neighbor’s house rather than catch, try and punish the guy he says did it. And, surprise, that neighbor doesn’t want him.
Would you keep that security company? Would you sing phrases such as “we ain’t been broken into since then!” ignoring, of course, we were – the mailed anthrax that everyone seems to have forgotten.
Not in a million years.
Mr. Krugman, please help your readers, your fans, demand a full, impartial investigation of 911?
The reds are like reconstruction (the US South after the Civil War) lynch mobs; the real criminal is above the law, so let’s go out and hang a minority guy so we feel better.
Is any bad guy enough to satisfy the lust for vengeance? Worse, are innocent lives worth the quest?
Not for me! I neither want the guilty to go free nor the innocent to be condemned. I want the guys who did it to be caught and punished.
Blaming the innocent creates hatred (I just realized this is sort of cool – hatred almost equals hate red). Think of the continuing fallout in our own country of the innocents murdered after the Civil War. The guilty that died free.
Neither the 911 commission, in its report, nor the FBI, in its publicly available statements, believes that OBL did it. The guy the 911 commission says did it has been in Guatanamo bay for a long time, tortured and has not confessed.
And, yeh, according to the 8/13 NYT editorial – “Our Porous Air Defenses on 9/11,” the facts confirm that a 757 carrying passengers and hijackers hit the pentagon and there was no missile involved…but, gosh, the frames released by the FBI (or whoever released them) clearly show two frames (before the hit and at the hit) with contrails streaming from whatever flying object is headed toward the pentagon wall.
But, no commercial flying passenger object of any kind produces contrails at 5 feet off the ground in Washington, DC; watch commercial jets taking off and landing.
Oh, but the 911 commission says it was flight 77. Yeh. Um hum, sure. We don’t need no thorough investigation. We know who the bad guys are and we are going to get even – we don’t need no trial! I see reconstruction Georgia in comments like that.
I believe that those of us who are victims of 911 deserve closure, especially for my brothers and sisters who have lost their lives or become permanently disabled in a war absolutely unrelated to the crime of 911. Closure means we get to see the suspects caught, tried, found guilty and, for my taste, hung.
Mr. Krugman, go after the source of the president’s power – help find the real culprits; the criminals of September 11, 2001.
August 14, 2006 @ 8:23 pm | Comment