Re: [A-List] FW: George W. Queeg - there will be a heavy price to pay - Paul K rugman March 14, 2003

["annewilliamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

For a host of reasons, I can not abide Paul Krugman - yet I hung on every
word of this
article in hopes that for once the author was speaking on the basis of
facts.  If what Krugman reports, that the US foreign policy establishment,
as malodorous as it is, is in despair, then just think where the US is going
to be in a month's time should Bush proceed.  America is about to slam in to
a brick wall, and the man leading the charge hasn't a clue.  Thanks for the
post, Jim. -A.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "*FORUM at Clark College" <forum@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <psn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 3:50 PM
Subject: [A-List] FW: George W. Queeg - there will be a heavy price to pay -
Paul K rugman March 14, 2003


>
> New York Times
> March 14, 2003
> George W. Queeg
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
> Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that
> finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with the captain.
Is
> foreign policy George W. Bush's quart of strawberries?
>
> Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There's
a
> long list of pundits who previously supported Bush's policy on Iraq but
have
> publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who
> wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally
> realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people
than
> you would think - including a fair number of people in the Treasury
> Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon - don't just
> question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe
that
> America's leadership has lost touch with reality.
>
> If that sounds harsh, consider the debacle of recent diplomacy - a debacle
> brought on by awesome arrogance and a vastly inflated sense of
> self-importance.
>
> Mr. Bush's inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on
> journalists and Democrats don't work on the rest of the world. They've
made
> promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don't trust their
word.
> They've made threats. They've done the aura-of-inevitability thing - how
> many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the
> necessary votes in the Security Council? They've warned other countries
that
> if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet
still
> the world balks.
>
> Wasn't someone at the State Department allowed to point out that in
matters
> nonmilitary, the U.S. isn't all that dominant - that Russia and Turkey
need
> the European market more than they need ours, that Europe gives more than
> twice as much foreign aid as we do and that in much of the world public
> opinion matters? Apparently not.
>
> And to what end has Mr. Bush alienated all our most valuable allies? (And
I
> mean all: Tony Blair may be with us, but British public opinion is now
> virulently anti-Bush.) The original reasons given for making Iraq an
> immediate priority have collapsed. No evidence has ever surfaced of the
> supposed link with Al Qaeda, or of an active nuclear program. And the
> administration's eagerness to believe that an Iraqi nuclear program does
> exist has led to a series of embarrassing debacles, capped by the case of
> the forged Niger papers, which supposedly supported that claim. At this
> point it is clear that deposing Saddam has become an obsession, detached
> from any real rationale.
>
> What really has the insiders panicked, however, is the irresponsibility of
> Mr. Bush and his team, their almost childish unwillingness to face up to
> problems that they don't feel like dealing with right now.
>
> I've talked in this column about the administration's eerie passivity in
the
> face of a stalling economy and an exploding budget deficit: reality isn't
> allowed to intrude on the obsession with long-run tax cuts. That same
"don't
> bother me, I'm busy" attitude is driving foreign policy experts, inside
and
> outside the government, to despair.
>
> Need I point out that North Korea, not Iraq, is the clear and present
> danger? Kim Jong Il's nuclear program isn't a rumor or a forgery; it's an
> incipient bomb assembly line. Yet the administration insists that it's a
> mere "regional" crisis, and refuses even to talk to Mr. Kim.
>
> The Nelson Report, an influential foreign policy newsletter, says: "It
would
> be difficult to exaggerate the growing mixture of anger, despair, disgust
> and fear actuating the foreign policy community in Washington as the
attack
> on Iraq moves closer, and the North Korea crisis festers with no coherent
> U.S. policy. . . . We are at the point now where foreign policy generally,
> and Korea policy specifically, may become George Bush's `Waco.' . . . This
> time, it's Kim Jong Il (and Saddam) playing David Koresh. . . . Sober
minds
> wrestle with how to break into the mind of George Bush."
>
> We all hope that the war with Iraq is a swift victory, with a minimum of
> civilian casualties. But more and more people now realize that even if all
> goes well at first, it will have been the wrong war, fought for the wrong
> reasons - and there will be a heavy price to pay.
>
> Alas, the epiphanies of the pundits have almost surely come too late. The
> odds are that by the time you read my next column, the war will already
have
> started.
>
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