March 14, 2003

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE:

George W. Queeg: Many people don't just question the competence of President Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America's leadership has lost touch with reality. (PAUL KRUGMAN, 3/14/03, NY Times)
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.


The David Koresh analogy is especially apt because it raises the question of whether Mr. Krugman is serious about supporting the President when he replays that scenario and annihilates Kim Jong-il and N. Korea, unfortunately killing many innocents in the process, rather than negotiating with a dangerous madman. If Mr. Krugman and Ted Kennedy and the rest of the griping Left are going to bail out as soon as the inevitable confrontation begins, then they should have the decency to not pretend to be hawks now, while it's easy. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2003 9:05 AM
Comments

What in the name of God is going on with the NYT editorialists? Are they living on Mars, or I guess Venus would be more appropriate?



It is THIS adminsitration that they accuse of "childishly" not facing up to problems? Of failing in North Korea by their refusal to... do exactly what their predecessors did that got us to where we are right now? Not to mention how our arrogant unilateralism is so awful around the world... oh, uh, except in Asia where our arrogant insistance on multilateralism is an appalling catastrophe, etc. etc.



I do worry about the GOP turning really insufferable over the next few years. That tends to happen when our ideological opponents, whom we need to keep us honest if nothing else, so joyously hurl themselves into the abyss of absolute and complete incoherence.

Posted by: Andrew X at March 14, 2003 11:34 AM

This is an asinine article and has been ripped apart at other sites.

Andrew has an interesting point - if the left continues to live on Venus then the proper checks on the GOP may not be there to prevent them from overstepping.

Posted by: AWW at March 14, 2003 11:42 AM

The David Koresh scenario has been so consistently "cited" among the "have-it-both-ways" Democratic opposition not to warrant some "fisking". Of course, the analogy (whether Hussaina and Iraq or Kim Jong-Il and NK) is tragically dishonest. Regardless of what you may think of the Waco "wackos", how could one ever consider them the threat Hussain, Jong-Il, and the Islamofascists that they have and would support are? But, it does not matter, when the self-slaughtering starts it will be: "You see, this is the wreckage that Bush wrought. It could have been avoided."

Posted by: MG at March 14, 2003 12:53 PM

Journalists have a nasty habit of interviewing each other, with dire results. The current voice of the Times in N.Y. is amazingly similar to the voice of the Times in London during the Dawson years -- completely divorced from the real world, and intruders shot on sight.



It started well before Raines, though. I date it from at least as early as 1978.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 14, 2003 2:40 PM
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