I read Paul Krugman’s column once in awhile, and I always come away feeling abused. Yesterday when I read his column, my first thought was that “if I had a subscription, I’d cancel it”. Apparently I wasn’t the only one.
This could be the start of something big:
Click image for the story
I see this as a candidate for going viral on FB and Twitter.
Here’s the Krugman article: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/
Don Rumsfeld is hardly an impartial observer. This blog has not said much about what Krugman actually wrote. The timing of his article might be inappropriate since at this anniversary it is right and proper to focus on the victims of the atrocity.
However Krugman does have a point in criticising the response to 9/11. Iraq seems to have had nothing to do with that attack but how many tens of thousands of innocent people (some estimates say hundreds of thousand) have been killed there since the invasion that was justified by lies about weapons of mass destruction? Can anyone seriously claim that the aftermath of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan was handled well?
Furthermore Krugman’s views on economics, and the criticisms made of them, have no connection with his views on 9/11 and this whole subject has nothing to do with climate change.
Some of the comments on this subject just give ammunition to those who claim that CAGW sceptics are just a bunch of xenophobic right wing cranks.
I expect Krugman’s column was in response to Tom Engelhardt’s far more aggressive treatment, though PK doesn’t say so. Search “Let’s Cancel 9/11” if you’re interested.
well, since I can’t read krugman’s article, I can’t comment on whatever he said.
but i am inspired to comment that i won’t have any feeling about it on the basis of hearsay.
also, i don’t like to have people tell me what i should like or not – because i consider demagoguery offensive and insulting.
also, i am pretty sick of political animals of all stripes cashing in on a tragedy for a snide agenda.
also, attacking iraq as a response was actually criminal since they didn’t do it.
also, if you remember, the wmd that were as elusive as the signature of AWG – well, don’t expect me to choose that side – it was, indeed, shameful.
i’m also quite fearful of jingoism. mobs are stupid, ugly and dangerous.
so i won’t be mobbing with y’all. i’ll be holding my nose.
this article stank.
REPLY: apparently you aren’t good at following links, so here it is for you:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/
– Anthony
Bush-Cheney over-reacted and got us into two unfunded wars (one of which was totally unnecessary) which have driven our country to near bankruptcy. They lied, tortured, and trampled on our civil rights. 10 years later, we are a diminished country. Many of you righties are too busy blaming “obama-care” to take a good long look in the mirror.
>> Roy says:
September 12, 2011 at 3:40 pm
However Krugman does have a point in criticising the response to 9/11. Iraq seems to have had nothing to do with that attack but how many tens of thousands of innocent people (some estimates say hundreds of thousand) have been killed there since the invasion that was justified by lies about weapons of mass destruction? <<
Krugman has no point. The word 'lie' is a red flag pointing out the glaring exaggeration of the left. A lie is when you say something that you know isn't true. No one 'lied' about Iraq having WMDs. The CIA had poor intelligence, but George Tenet told what he thought was the truth. There were clearly mistakes made, but I don't remember any politician claiming Iraq was directly linked to the 9/11 attacks.
The body count in Iraq is a great example of misuse of 'science', but that's a topic for another thread.
Back to the original point. Rather than remember the heroes and victims of the 9/11 attack, Krugman used the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack as a backdrop for his partisan diatribe, essentially doing what he accused others of doing, but in a much more offensive manner. And the NYT chose to publish it.
I have half a mind to subscibe to the NYT just so I can cancel my subscription.
C’mon, everyone knows that Krugman is the NY Times leading [snip].
What did he actually do to be called a brilliant economist? I mean other than marrying a fabulously wealthy idiot women who actually married a prize winner, not a man of any worth that I can glean.
REPLY: Maybe it’s time to raise the level of discourse a bit? REP
I don’t know enough about what went on in US political circles in the aftermath of 9/11 to comment on Krugman’s blog post. But one thing stands out a mile. His timing sucked.
Me thinks many readers need to spend more time thinking about what is being said. I can’t say I disagree with Krugman. Looking southeast from Calgary it is painfully obvious that Mistakes Were Made but not by any of the politicians of the day. Maybe it is just me but I see a host of short sighted and downright stupid resulting reactions which are shameful.
Good for Krugman! I’ve asked and never heard a Republican gee a cogent moral justification for the second Iraq war. Krugman is simply pointing that immorality out. Are we shocked that Rumsfeld does not want to hear the criticism?
touche. thanks for the link, Anthony.
I don’t find krugman’s statements offensive in the slightest.
i do find exploitation of the tragedy to be vulgar and crass, just as he does.
and sure, it’s cruel for him to point this out when demagogues are using it to incite an orgy of parochial jingoism – sort of like going to church and announcing that the bible stories are meant to fool you – cruel (meaning without sympathy) and also true.
Perhaps his worst mistake was not having his article made into a script for southpark – ‘pigbearman’, for instance, might have been more engaging and got the message across via humor?
so i won’t subscribe to this 5-minute-hate session. there are lots of worthy targets of loathing.
krugman doesn’t make the short list today; it’s a very long line of very serious worthies, some of whom gave speeches this day.
>> Utah says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Good for Krugman! I’ve asked and never heard a Republican gee a cogent moral justification for the second Iraq war. Krugman is simply pointing that immorality out. Are we shocked that Rumsfeld does not want to hear the criticism? <<
Iraq fired on US aircraft enforcing the 1991 cease fire conditions. That ended the cease fire. No other justification was necessary.
In actuality, several other justifications were made, WMD's being only one of them, and 9/11 NOT being one of them. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, no one with any significant standing claimed it did, and Krugman must know that.
Rumsfeld said he would cancel a subscription he already didn’t have.
Poetry, sheer poetry.
I’ve been getting pretty frustrated with the NY Times and considering cancelling my subscription to it almost weekly lately, but if Rumsfeld is against it I’ll go buy a second subscription!
p.s. I don’t understand what makes this story appropriate for WUWT.
[REPLY: think of it in the context of retractions and resignations. -REP mod]
Re: scarletmacaw says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:38 pm
“In actuality, several other justifications were made, WMD’s being only one of them, and 9/11 NOT being one of them. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, no one with any significant standing claimed it did, and Krugman must know that.”
Mr Smart Aleck,
Mr Krugman didn’t say Iraq had “something” to do with 9/11. You have problems with understanding what you read.
BTW. In 2 minutes I’ve found two hyperlinks:
1. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/feingold1.html
Why I Oppose Bush’s Iraq War Resolution, by Sen. Russ Feingold:
“But the relentless attempt to link 9-11 and the issue of Iraq has been disappointing to me for months, culminating in the President’s singularly unpersuasive attempt in Cincinnati to interweave 9-11 and Iraq, to make the American people believe that there are no important differences between the perpetrators of 9-11 and Iraq.”
2. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat
Remarks by the President on Iraq
Cincinnati Museum Center – Cincinnati Union Terminal
Cincinnati, Ohio
“We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.”
Regards
Utah says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:08 pm
WMD were found. A summary.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_2004_May_11/ai_n6145019/
Further confirmation…
Some Iraqi chemical weapons went to Syria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/4691464/Syria-rebuilding-chemical-weapons-capability.html
Some chemical weapons stayed in Iraq.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=060622055545.07o4imol&show_article=1
Hundreds of tons of yellowcake uranium were found and removed from Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/secret-us-mission-hauls-uranium-iraq/
Bioweapons were made, and could be reproduced.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/839413/posts
West Nile Virus reasonably originated as Iraqi revenge weapon.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/10/24/180937.shtml
There are articles in peer-reviewed literature that report extremely similar DNA sequences in strains isolated from Israel, Saudi Arabia (I think I remember it, but I can’t find it now), and Queens, NY. Very unlikely to occur naturally. WNV mutates rapidly, which is one reason it isn’t a good bioweapon.
ftp://statgen.ncsu.edu/pub/thorne/viralreadings/lanciotti02.pdf
The point is, we could have been attacked, and we weren’t going to wait for a better weapon to be used against us.
Also, bin Laden allied with Saddam after 9/11.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2751019.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
There were many good reasons for removing Saddam from power. Maybe one is enough: to save several hundred thousand people from being murdered every year under the Baath party, formed in Berlin during WW II as an extension of the Nazi party.
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/saddam_en.html
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/20061129.aspx
“During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year.”
I cancelled during the Athens Olympics, when I caught them politicizing the Games. In the Sports Pages, no less. It was the final straw.
I no longer get p***ed off at breakfast every morning.
Roy says:
September 12, 2011 at 3:40 pm
How easily we forget the situation in and around Iraq at that time–how Sadam was still fighting Desert Storm in his own way, how he was constantly shooting at our jets that were patrolling the No Fly Zone, how he was butchering his own people and threatening his neighbor-states.
Is it just convenient partial amnesia that makes you say what you do, Roy? I suppose one of Saddam’s big mistakes was an attempted assassination on GW’s father–or didn’t you know about that? That should piss off every patriotic American, but unfortunately, there were actually depraved individuals who were cheering for the enemy!
Please dig into the history books for a full picture of what was going on during that time–telling just half the story makes you look half informed.
And as a follow-up Roy, my daughter dated a Special Forces guy that was in Iraq days before “official” fighting began in this last war in which we finally eliminated Sadam, and he tells a completely different story about WMD–in fact, he corroborates much of what Hoser says above (6:39 pm.) I don’t really care what the “official” party-line is for WMD in Iraq–it’s as bogus as the “official” time when fighting began–and trust me, I believe the boys on the ground far more than some political spokesman for our “State Department”, many of whom I consider to be treasonous cowards.
By the way, Iraq was never attached in response to 9-11; you deflect to serve your argumentative purposes. Iraq was, however, a serious threat to stability in the Middle East, just as several other countries–Egypt and Iran in particular, are the fomenters of current instability.
The best way to deal with ignorant idiots like Krugman is to ignore them…after, of course, you cancel your subscription to the NY Times (if you have one…I don’t – never will).
RockyRoad –
there are alternative explanations for the iraq invasion. one can name many small justifications, but for going to war, something more serious has been america’s rationale.
at the time, there were continuously updated contingency plans for the invasion of iraq and north.korea. ready to go.
now, if there is a legitimate purpose of a government, it’s to protect the citizens from attack by foreign powers.
when a dozen fanatics from saudi arabia proved that the government was incapable of fulfilling its unique responsibility, something had to be done to totally distract from the lesson. (meanwhile, their wahabi sponsors are quickly escorted back home from the bush ranch, )
iraq was handy; they’d already been there, done that recently.
it was so urgent to make a show of doing something – anything – that a new doctrine of ‘pre-emptive invasion’ was instituted for the occasion.
this new doctrine instantly made the usa a credible threat to any other nation, because the justification can be any pretext desired – it only takes an protestation of fear.
iraq was handy; they’d already been there, done that recently.
Hoser says:
September 12, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Utah says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:08 pm
My score: Utah – 1, Hoser – 0. Why?
I submit to WUWT readers only two texts to read:
1. http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/
The United Nations, International Law, and the War with Iraq (it’s a must in the post comments’ context).
2. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/iraq-s27.shtml
German court declares Iraq war violated international law (also “a must” to get black-on-white proof of US Empire wrong doing)
Regards
[Snip: this portion is really intemperate. You might want to make your point in a less inflammatory way and resubmit. REP, mod]
RockyRoad says:
September 12, 2011 at 7:21 pm
“By the way, Iraq was never attached in response to 9-11; you deflect to serve your argumentative purposes. Iraq was, however, a serious threat to stability in the Middle East, just as several other countries–Egypt and Iran in particular, are the fomenters of current instability.”
You forget to add the Saudi Arabia who financed Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. I wonder why? – “to serve your argumentative purposes?”
Regards
BTW. The U.S. is (quote) “a serious threat to stability” for the whole World. What the World should do with your (…)[auto-censorship] country and the people like you? Why you, too? You killed several hundred thousand people from Afghanistan and Iraq, to say the least. Not only the countries’ “hated” leaders.
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
September 12, 2011 at 7:47 pm
[Snip: this portion is really intemperate. You might want to make your point in a less inflammatory way and resubmit. REP, mod]
What for?
If you don’t want the American readers read what other guys of the World think about the US Empire let it be. After all, “freedom of expression” is a thing of the forgotten past in the US nowadays.
Regards
[Reply: you can make your points without being personally abusive to fellow commenters or engaging in incendiary rhetoric. REP, mod]
Rumsfield is a liar and a war criminal. “Iraq was never attached in response to 9-11” – true, but Rumsfield, Bush and Cheney all claimed Iraq was involved in the September 11th massacre, a deliberate lie. Hundreds of thousands have died as a result. Iraqis are terrorized by Sunni extremists: they weren’t before 2003. Why is this useful site dragging itself into the gutter with this disgusting article?
I wasn’t a fan of the war in Iraq, but it was not a neo-cons-alone maneuver. Democrats tend to like to forget that the Congress voted on the action…. and approved it. Additionally as has been pointed out above WMD were not the main reason for the invasion, nor were they an invented excuse. The best information available suggested that they were real and that Iraq was ready to use them. Part of the reason for this is that Saddam, like North Korea, liked to exaggerate his strength. The decision of -the majority of the elected representatives of the nation was that we should not wait for another attack by our enemies – we should
However, my real reason for posting is to comment on Krugman and to say whether or not one agrees with his statements, he used the 10 year anniversary of a national tragedy – one NOT caused by the people he dislikes so much – to take a cheap shot. He made no attempt to honor those brave Firemen and Policemen who sacrificed their lives to help the people in the towers.
It seems that he doesn’t give a damn about them, nor the innocent victims who had done nothing to deserve death. Politics are more important to remember than humans.