In a recent dispatch, I mentioned that the other day, as if in a dream, I watched George Bush on television claiming Iraqi “ships” off our coast might release unmanned drones that, in turn, could penetrate hundreds of miles inland to spray anthrax on unsuspecting Americans. Of this bizarre delusion, I saw not a word reported anywhere. After a while, I wondered whether the delusion was mine.
Now, a reader of these dispatches, who did a google search, informs me that he found a single passing reference to this statement in a column on nightmare scenarios and an Iraq war by Paul Koring in (naturally) a Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail. To read Koring click here Does no one find it strange that when our President makes such a delusional statement in all seriousness no American journalist thought it worth the bother to follow up? This oversight, by the way, occurred at a moment when American charges of every sort about Iraq are being reported in endless detail. Could there be an urge not to turn our strong, decisive president into something a good deal less impressive?
With that in mind, I include below “Wimps of War,” a column by the remarkable Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times. (“Viewed from the outside, Mr. Bush’s America does not look like a regime whose promises you can trust.”)
And here’s another subject on which coverage in our press has been dreadful to nonexistent: Has anyone noticed that, for all the pages of reportage on war mobilization, diplomacy, the UN, battle scenarios, postwar plans, squabbles with the Europeans, dealings with Turkey and scores of other subjects, oil has once again disappeared from the pages of our major papers? Writing about the Middle East without oil is like writing about the Pacific Ocean without water.
Perhaps the most amusing of the rare mentions of oil that I’ve noted lately appeared in New Yorker editor David Remnick’s apologia for the next war, “Making a Case” in the February 3 issue of that magazine. ( Art Spiegelman, in resigning well before that issue, proved prescient indeed.) Remnick wrote: “What is most unfortunate about the President’s lack of public engagement in the argument for force is that the objections to it are answerable. There are, of course, some who oppose an invasion of Iraq on the ground that, say, peace is better than war, or that the ‘real issue’ is a conspiracy of oil interests, or that the President is an avenging cowboy and all his advisers a posse. Far more seriously, there are questions of why now and why Iraq” And so on. It’s that “far more seriously” that I loved. Obviously, unlike SUVs, unlike the global economy, real men don’t need oil (or peace or cowboys). Tom
The Wimps of War
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times
February 11, 2003George W. Bush’s admirers often describe his stand against Saddam Hussein as “Churchillian.” Yet his speeches about Iraq — and for that matter about everything else — have been notably lacking in promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat. Has there ever before been a leader who combined so much martial rhetoric with so few calls for sacrifice?
Or to put it a bit differently: Is Mr. Bush, for all his tough talk, unwilling to admit that going to war involves some hard choices? Unfortunately, that would be all too consistent with his governing style. And though you don’t hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush’s staying power — a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won’t do what is needed to rebuild Iraq — is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States.
George W. Bush’s admirers often describe his stand against Saddam Hussein as “Churchillian.” Yet his speeches about Iraq — and for that matter about everything else — have been notably lacking in promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat. Has there ever before been a leader who combined so much martial rhetoric with so few calls for sacrifice?
Or to put it a bit differently: Is Mr. Bush, for all his tough talk, unwilling to admit that going to war involves some hard choices? Unfortunately, that would be all too consistent with his governing style. And though you don’t hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush’s staying power — a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won’t do what is needed to rebuild Iraq — is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States.