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Krugman: Fearing Fear Itself
 In Americas darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror. But that was then.
Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.
| So tell us Paul, what exactly is 'reasoned, justified terror' the French Revolution? |
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran as soon as it is logistically possible.
| Norm's a smart guy, and he understands that stopping Iran is of paramount importance to our own security. Now maybe bombing today is right or maybe it's wrong we at the Burg have dffering opinions on that. But the Chicken Littles who think that Short Round is just misguided are deluding themselves. |
Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11. The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes. Indeed, Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.
| Eurabia is a stretch modestly but the rest of us is a reasonable set of conclusions given the data at hand. You'd hope Paul would put forth a reasoned counter-argument. You'd be wrong. Keep reading. |
Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?
For one thing, there isnt actually any such thing as Islamofascism its not an ideology; its a figment of the neocon imagination.
| Krugman displays his idiot gene. The islamicists are clearly Islamic, and they're just as clearly fascist in their ideology. State control of all enterprises, a non-democratic form of government led by a select few, total loss of personal freedoms, glorification of the State (Caliphate) and the denigration of an underclass (the infidels, especially the Jooooz) are the very hallmarks of fascism. I think I'm batting 1.000 here. And Paul isn't. |
The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didnt.
| Now who's conflating the two? Most intelligent people understood that Osama attacked us, whereas Saddam a) attacked an ally (Kuwait), b) wanted to attack the Saudis, c) canoodled with various terrorist groups d) worked on WMD and e) wanted death to Israel, so long as he didn't get slapped doing it. One attacked us directly, the other was poised to do great damage to us. We didn't wise up to Osama until it was too late. We would have been foolish to wait around for Saddam to take his chance against us. |
And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
| Sorta, for a while, until it became better policy for them to fund and supply the Taliban. The Iranians were scared to death in early 2002 they saw American rage and worried that it would be directed against them, not Saddam. And perhaps we should have done that differently. But Iran has been our enemy since 1979. They've been killing Americans, and funding groups that kill Americans, and killing Europeans from that day forward. Krugman forgets that. We don't. |
Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous.
| Global domination today? Ludicrous. But the neo-cons aren't claiming that. Iran wants regional domination. To do that they need to shove us out of the Middle East, destroy Israel, and cow the various Arab regimes in the region. Global domination will wait til they've achieved the first big step in their plan. |
Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, ...
... and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons.
| Why is that, Paul? What's the big deal? If they aren't evil, then Iran having nuclear weapons is no worse than the French having them. But if they are evil, then letting them acquire nukes is idiocy on our part. You can't have it both ways. |
But lets have some perspective, please: were talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Swedens.
| What technology has done the past sixty years is precisely our worst fear: in the 1940s only the wealthiest nation-states could afford to discover, design and build nuclear weapons. In the 2000s states of relatively modest means can do so. Look at Pakistan, even more a basket-case in economic terms compared to Iran, and they (with a lot of help from nefarious other states) have the bomb. Notice that Iran is getting help from the same nefarious types. You don't need a top-ten GDP to build a bomb. The technology and theory is widely-understood. The needed help is around. All that remains are straight-forward issues of engineering and construction. That's the point. |
Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees and bombing is the only option, since weve run out of troops is pure wishful thinking.
That's perhaps true, and that's a debate here. I'd prefer Uncle Sam to be the Great Satan and institute a reign of terror against the Mad Mullahs. Whack them. Blow stuff up without getting caught. Encourage insurrection. Arm rebels. Speak out and protect dissidents. Use propaganda. Let's do all those things and see if we can bring the Mullahs down, because down they must go.
And if that doesn't work, bomb the beJeebus out of them. |
Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead.
| Only because we in the West restrained their hand at the end ... |
Theres every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.
| From which the Iranians would not benefit. And we're not going to be so dumb as to bomb the Iranian population, nor will we invade. If we whack the nuclear sites we could well destabilize the Mad Mullahs. That's not a sure thing and that's part of the debate. But by no means will we drive the Iranian people to the Mullahs, unless we target the people. |
Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretzs rants are, if anything, saner than some of what weve been hearing from some of Mr. Giulianis rivals.
| Yes, if you want sanity and coherence in a presidential campaign just go visit the Breck Boy ... |
Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us.
| Which is essentially correct. |
He doesnt say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably hes referring to Al Qaeda an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.
| And why is that? Why is it that al-Qaeda has been neutered in so many ways, Paul? Who did that? How did that happen? |
And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, Im not sure well have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this countrys ever faced in Islamofascism. Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power which arent even allies pose a greater danger than Hitlers panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.
| Because FDR, the president you quoted at the beginning, had a spine, even though he had polio. He understood the dangers of fascism and communism and faced up to them. It isn't entirely clear that Hillary would, nor is it clear that she would rally support if she tried to. She's pretty much an amoral person, and you generally don't look to amoral people for leadership. |
All of this would be funny if it werent so serious.
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction.
| Because we pretty much were. It's easy in retrospect to laugh off al-Qaeda. But in late 2001 al-Qaeda had a national base of operations (Afghanistan), several ten thousand trained military and paramilitary personnel, and operating cells in most Western countries. It seems obvious today that we could get into their heads, roll up operations, toss them from Afghanistan, and go after them in places from Iraq to Somalia to Paraguay. But it sure wasn't obvious on 9/12. |
Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administrations rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the bases older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.
| The racist canard. How despicable you are, Professor Krugman. |
And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.
| The 'base' is looking for someone with a spine, with a heart, and with hope for the future. None of the Dhimmicrats have all three. |
Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program.
| Then why write this piece? Norman Podhoretz is right by your admission. What Paul really wants to do is set the stage for Hillary: yes, Iran is bad, yes, Iran having nukes is bad, and we'll start to do something (who knows what) about it in January, 2009, when the 'sensible' Hillary comes forth to negotiate without preconditions and all that rot. Doesn't help Hilary at all if the Mad Mullahs are taken down before the election. |
But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself the unreasoning fear that has taken over one of Americas two great political parties.
And it's the Dhimmicrats who are in fear that Americans will wake up and recognize their responsibilities. They'd rather we all hit the snooze button and go back to the 1990s so that they can engineer our society to their liking. National health insurance. College for everyone. Fluffy bunnies in every garage. They are, to borrow Bill Whittle's analogy, pink, and they want a completely pink society.
The world is gray right now. Rudy sees it, as do Mitt, Fred, Huck and Johnny Mac. Krugman, and Hillary, and Breck Boy, and Obama do not. There's your choice in the election, folks. |
Posted by: Delphi 2007-10-31 |
