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So what's the problem? Wars fought to deal with imaginary threats have real consequences. Just as war critics feared, Al Qaeda has been strengthened by the war. Iraq is in chaos, with a rising death toll among American soldiers: "We have reports of skirmishes throughout the central region," a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times.Meanwhile, the administration has just derived considerable political advantage from a war waged on false premises. At best, that sets a very bad precedent. At worst. . . . "You want to win this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this subject, you better have a war," explains Robert DeNiro's political operative in "Wag the Dog." "It's show business."
A final note: Showtime is filming a docudrama about Sept. 11. The producer is a White House insider, working in close consultation with Karl Rove. The script shows Mr. Bush as decisive and eloquent. "In this movie," The Globe and Mail reports, "Mr. Bush delivers long, stirring speeches that immediately become policy." And we can be sure that the script doesn't mention the bogus story about a threat to Air Force One that the White House floated to explain Mr. Bush's movements on the day of the attack. Hey, it's show business.
It is nice to see someone express the anger a lot of us who have been paying attention feel. Before the right wing starts to rail against the "shrill" Krugman, they may want to stop and ask themselves why a centrist (yes, I said centrist. Krugman attacked Clinton's economic polices when he thought Clinton was wrong. He is a defender of globalization, and has been rather dismissive of anti-globalization claims. In a column, he even admitted surprise at how the American Consensus that he defended was being rejected in Latin America) has become so angry at their hero.
