Krugman's advice for JK: Go After Bush on National Defense. Awesome.

[frank frankly]

This is one for the ages. Email this beauty far and wide...

Krugman is magnificent.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/opinion/14krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

Taking On the Myth
By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Sunday, a celebrating crowd gathered around a burning U.S. armored vehicle. Then a helicopter opened fire; a child and a journalist for an Arabic TV news channel were among those killed. Later, the channel repeatedly showed the journalist doubling over and screaming, "I'm dying; I'm dying."

Such scenes, which enlarge the ranks of our enemies by making America look both weak and brutal, are inevitable in the guerrilla war President Bush got us into. Osama bin Laden must be smiling.

U.S. news organizations are under constant pressure to report good news from Iraq. In fact, as a Newsweek headline puts it, "It's worse than you think." Attacks on coalition forces are intensifying and getting more effective; no-go zones, which the military prefers to call "insurgent enclaves," are spreading - even in Baghdad. We're losing ground.

And the losses aren't only in Iraq. Al Qaeda has regrouped. The invasion of Iraq, intended to demonstrate American power, has done just the opposite: nasty regimes around the world feel empowered now that our forces are bogged down. When a Times reporter asked Mr. Bush about North Korea's ongoing nuclear program, "he opened his palms and shrugged."

Yet many voters still believe that Mr. Bush is doing a good job protecting America.

[bagnana]

1. wow. Says it all.

I agree completely. If people are willing to vote for Bush because they think he will make them safer, they are wrong, and Kerry needs to point that out. Simply. Just like Paul Krugman. He is awesome!

[Poiuyt]

11. It doesn't say it all...there is so much more

Bush is really weak on homeland security. There are many, many examples of Bush has cutting budgets of different security departments, made wrong decisions based more on politics rather than safety of America, ignored intelligence warnings, as well as starting and botching a war that wasn't necessary for anything but his political power.

How he can go around claiming to be strong on terror is beyond me. I think this is the single best topic to attack Bush...go right at his (perceived) strength.

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. Before Sept. 11, 2001 those same people

that think he's doing such a great job also could never imagine it could happen to us. Bush has "taken the fight to the enemy" and allowed the cognitive dissonance to continue with only a tiny break. As long as they are "over there", they believe it ain't gonna happen here. :eyes:

[frank frankly]

5. it's so fucked up to hear Iraq described AS the war on terrorism.

:puke:

[althecat]

3. Yip.... JFK should take this and run with it....

What is the point of avoiding the one subject over which half the world is terrified and which has led to the largest mobilisations of political thought inside the us since vietnam.

[frank frankly]

6. hell yeah. lets get down to the BIG ISSUES. the HUGE SCARY FUCKED UP MESS.

c'mon, JK!

[iwantmycountryback]

4. But the NYT is liberal garbage

*rolls eyes* Some people need a reality check.

[wishlist]

7. And how can 9/11 be Shrub's shining moment when he failed to prevent it

I think Kerry is making some good headway and getting strong media coverage in the past several days about N Korea and the Assault Weapons Ban and Iraq (the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons). Maybe he will succeed by adopting Bushco's favorite tactic of knocking down your opponent's strongest issue.

[shockingelk]

8. This is great too

"Some pundits are demanding that Mr. Kerry produce a specific plan for Iraq - a demand they never make of Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry should turn the tables, and demand to know what - aside from pretending that things are going fine - Mr. Bush intends to do about the spiraling disaster"

[countmyvote4real]

9. Krugman kicks ass.

He's so right.

And for gamers... if this were a strategy game, a local "build school" could never counter the global affect of a "helicopter gun ship kills civillians."

I respect the "we broke it, we pay for it" line of thinking. I just don't think we have to pay for it by occupying the country with our troops which cost us lives and money.

Idealy, I would hope that offering up the * regime and corporate sponsors to war crimes trials would get us off the hook, but we know that won't happen.

We can only buy our way out of this and leave sooner rather than later. Either way, we will not leave with a nation in our image, but the sooner we leave, the better.

[no name no slogan]

10. Especially since Clinton had all but opened up N. Korea

One of his last actions in office was to dispatch Madeline Albright to the Korean Penninsula for further negotiations. Reportedly, Kim Jong Il was very close to entering reunification talks with the south, as well as abandoning his weapons programs.

But then Shrub came in, and he cut off ALL talks with the North. To get Dubya's attention (and more US aid to feed its starving citizens), the North went to some fairly extreme measures to get our attention. And all along Dubya insisted on SIX-way negotiations, or none at all.

So, after 2+ years of ignoring the possible threat in the North, all Dubya can do is shrug. If Gore had been president, it is completely possible that the border between the two Koreas may well be open by now, and we may be seeing the formation of ONE Korea.

Instead, we get a possible nuclear test, chillier relationships between ALL nations in the region, and yet another "terror threat" from the "axis of evil".

If nothing else, the debacle with North Korea is a lost golden opportunity-- quite like the situation in Reykjavic, Iceland, in the late 1980s when Gorbachev and Reagan ALMOST negotiated nuclear weapons out of existence.

If Dubya had continued Clinton's work, we wouldn't have an "Axis of Evil". Kerry needs to nail Bush's sorry ass TO THE WALL on this-- especially since the "suspicious blast" occurred. He's in the right spot, and has nothing to lose by getting aggressive on this.

[frank frankly]

12. yup. good post

:kick:

[allemand]

14. O'Neill agrees with you

"Lunch was preceded by a short press conference in the Oval Office. Bush officially snubbed Kim, saying that he wouldn't continue the Clinton administration's policy of using carrot-stick negotiations to stop North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il from building nuclear weapons. Kim Dae Jung, a former political prisoner, had a "sunshine" policy of opening to the North, including economic trade, and had managed a historic meeting with Kim Jong Il the previous June. In large measure, those policies - upon which he'd staked his legacy - were predicated on U.S. support for the idea of engaging the dictator.

<...>

O'Neill had watched the give-and-take on Korea unfold during the past month in what was becoming a familiar pattern. As with his recommendation for "smart" sanctions against Iraq, Powell was, again, on the side of hard-nosed internationalism, saying as recently as the day before, March 6, that the Bush White House intended "to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off" in negotiations with North Korea to curb its production and sale of ballistic missiles. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the Vice President were quietly pressing the idea that we'd been appeasing a tyrant in North Korea's Kim Jong Il, that we were enabling him by supporting his teetering economy.

In his statements before lunch, the President noted of North Korea that "we're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements." It was widely known that there was only one agreement with North Korea - the 1994 accord that froze its plutonium processing - and almost immediately the White House was offering explanations of how the President understood that but inadvertently employed the plural.

O'Neill, meanwhile, sensed the consequences of haste - activity forced by South Korean president Kim's imminent arrival, in which the President had to digest unfamiliar facts, balance complex competing claims with little context, and make a snap decision. At lunch in the White House, O 'Neill <...> engaged the dispirited Kim. He mentioned to Bush as lunch was served that "South Korea has among the highest literacy rates in the world, which demonstrates that all our children, here in the U.S., can succeed as well." Bush registered surprise. O'Neill, meanwhile, was thinking about the process of decision making in the White House. Ten years of delicately stitched U.S. policy toward North Korea - a sick man of Asia's economy (especially if its woes were to overwhelm South Korea) and, possibly, a rogue nuclear power in the making - had been torn up in what might have been less than a day. How, otherwise, could Powell have been out of the loop as recently as the day before?"
Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p.114-115

[Eurotrash]

15. Chilling Stuff!

"The President had to digest unfamiliar facts, balance complex competing claims with little context, and make a snap decision."

Sounds like his whole fucking pResidency on just about EVERY issue.

And this is the moron that a majority of Americans believe is going to keep the country safe? If people are not willing to do their homework and inform themselves, they will have no one but themselves to blame if W "wins" again in 2004.

[Karenina]

13. Kick!

:kick:

[liberal_in_GA]

16. Kick again

We should make copies of this piece and pass them out...

[allemand]

17. How about Kerry simply attacking Bush over the "reconstruction" of Iraq?

Iraq is becoming a failed state because of the way the supposed reconstruction was mismanaged by the Bush administration.
Even those voters who were in favor of the war can't be happy about the way this administration is losing the peace (at the cost of American lives).

[allemand]

19. Brad DeLong quotes a "shrill" Francis Fukuyama, doing just that

"The Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for Iraq's postwar reconstruction was a big failure of policy, one that will greatly limit future US policy choices. The recent escalation in violence, with US deaths passing the 1,000 mark, underlines just how insecure the country is.... The long-term plan laid out by the Bush administration since the June handover of sovereignty in Iraq is straightforward.... Anyone who thinks this scenario will materialise is living in fantasyland....

Allawi's government faces dual insurgencies... Moqtada al-Sadr... Fallujah, now a base for religious extremists, seems but one of a number of areas where coalition forces cannot go. The US has, in other words, permitted the establishment of a new terrorist haven in central Iraq....

Equally serious is the lack of state capacity on the part of the new government.... If elections are postponed, leaving de facto power in the hands of militias, the next US president will face a critical choice: continue pressing for a unified Iraqi state, or seek a power-sharing arrangement based on agreement by the Kurdish and Shia communities, in which stability rather than democracy is the goal....

<...>

The Republican convention outrageously lumped the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war into a single, seamless war on terrorism - as if the soldiers fighting Mr Sadr were avenging the destroyers of the twin towers... mismanagement of the war has created a new Afghanistan inside Iraq.... The Bush administration has made any number of foreign policy errors, particularly over Iraq.... But if Mr Bush is returned... the administration will have got away a Big Lie about the war on terrorism and will have little incentive to engage in serious review...."

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000184.html

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1bae5896-05b2-11d9-bff2-00000e2511c8.html

See also:

"Francis Fukuyama Is Our New Grand Heresiarch"
http://shrillblog.blogspot.com/

[dansolo]

24. Or what about all the free women in Afghanastan

I'd like to see someone ask Laura how the women in Afghanastan are doing now, since she was such a strong advocate for them. And while he's at it, why doesn't Kerry ask Bush why Kuwait isn't a Democratic state. Didn't Kuwait promise reforms after the first Gulf War in exchange for our assistance in expelling Saddam?

[democracy eh]

18. incompetent chimp

Kerry, please read and repeat.

Shatter the myth

[frank frankly]

20. kick

:kick:

[WI_DEM]

21. Kerry must go after Bush on national security/terrorism/ Iraq

Why did Bush cut and run out of Afghanistan with Bin Ladden on the run to go into Iraq? Why did Bush say capturing Bin Ladden is "not a top priority."

[rndmprsn]

22. Krugman is the man...

i hope kerry reads krugman's articles.

[frank frankly]

23. me, too!

:kick:

[Raya]

25. Dead on target: I support the lobby for Kerry War Summit. This will help

Kerry has access to great advice in private. He has to go
public with a War Cabinet that attacks Bush fulltime. I wish
campaign would listen to a lot of folk who are telling him
he can't avoid the Iraq and War on Terror issues.