NYT Op-Ed: 'Taking on the Myth' (9/14)

[Chicago1871]

Taking on the Myth: Paul Krugman (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/opinion/14krugman.html?)


Some pundits are demanding that Mr. Kerry produce a specific plan for Iraq - a demand they never make of Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry should turn the tables, and demand to know what - aside from pretending that things are going fine - Mr. Bush intends to do about the spiraling disaster. And Mr. Kerry can ask why anyone should trust a leader who refuses to replace the people who created that disaster because he thinks it's bad politics to admit a mistake.


Before the Reeps jump all over this, I just want to say that I posted it because it raises some interesting points; things Kerry should be doing. Remember, it's just an opinion column, I'm not using it to prove anything, just provoke [somewhat intelligent] conversation.

[Claymore]

It's an excellent point, and one I'm sure which will be buried under any number of completely unrelated anti-Kerry rants.

That, or just ignored altogether.

[Quaker]

If Senator John Kerry really has advisers telling him not to attack Mr. Bush on national security, he should dump them.

Boy, I really hope Kerry listens to this guy. Krugman is so far out there, he's dangerous--to liberals!

[Nogra Rover]

Another good Krugman piece.

Here's hoping that someone with pull is saying Kerry needs ads that draw on Shinsheki, the loss of territory in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failures in Tora Bora and Fallujah, on and on. You have to be careful, as the Bush attack machine will say things like "Kerry's undermining the troops."

[Matt in the Hat]

Krugman is on Al Franken right now.

[mozilla]

Kerry camp should hire Krugman - there must be room for another major major strategist.

[superdave]

Boy, I really hope Kerry listens to this guy. Krugman is so far out there, he's dangerous--to liberals!
When various storms broke over the last 1 1/2 years...Plame, Abu Ghraib, "bring it on," etc., alot of people on the left were freaking that none of these dented Bush's numbers on foreign policy and terrorism. But the thing is, they had a very serious impact on Bush's generic "trust" or "competence" type numbers. Now, I'm not saying Krugman's right, necessarily. But think of this set of issues as the away leg in a 2 leg playoff. You don't have to win. A non-scoreless draw is a very good result. Even a 3-2 loss isn't so bad; all you have to do is win your home leg and not have the game be a shootout.

Getting away from a tenuous soccer analogy and back to real life politics, it becomes a question of how much effort Kerry should put into this.

Possibly the defining problem of the Kerry campaign is that they've acted like a glutton at a buffet. There are so many areas in which Bush has failed, in which he has demonstrated his incompetence, that they can't seem to focus. That's a question of Kerry's ability as a campaigner, not as a president, and I hate that that's so important. But there you have it.

[IntheNet]

quoted Paul Krugman's article.

The problem I have with Paul Krugman's thesis in his column is that he refers to Iraq as "a mistake" which I contest, as do most Americans. Given an identical situation, after 09/11/01, a similar president, given similiar intelligence, would have made a similar assessment on Iraq and gone to war. In the early going of the Iraq War, when Army moved rapidly into Baghdad, Kerry and the Dems were quiet as churchmice.... not a squeak of dissent on Iraq was heard... now that war has taken a hard turn and insurgents make the peace in the nation hard to achieve, Kerry and company make critique after critique and criticize the fight!

Does the Presdient have a plan for Iraq? Yes. Does the Army have a plan for Irag? Yes. The successes realized to date have been many... however... there are real and oftentimes tragic delays on the path to peace for the nation!

Kerry has suggested bringing more nations into help with Iraq but he has not said how! I want to know how he plans to do this?

President Bush put together a multi-national coalition to help with Iraq and we have stood the test of time... real successes have been achieved in the nation. If Kerry wants detail on Bush's plan for Iraq, I suggest that Kerry detail his own plan, as suggested above...

IntheNet

[Chris M.]

President Bush put together a multi-national coalition to help with Iraq and we have stood the test of time... real successes have been achieved in the nation. If Kerry wants detail on Bush's plan for Iraq, I suggest that Kerry detail his own plan, as suggested above...

IntheNet

As a voter, I suggest that both of them lay out some more specifics so that I know what the hell I am voting for. If Bush's plan is to follow the slow steady road we are on right now, then I don't even need to see Kerry's plan as what we are doing now is a disaster.

[Chris M.]

Getting away from a tenuous soccer analogy and back to real life politics, it becomes a question of how much effort Kerry should put into this.



When his campaign heard Dubya mutter the words "we may have miscalculated . . ." STOP RIGHT THERE.

If that is not an invitation to attack from a political perspective, I don't know what is. The material presented by Bush is just too good to be true:

Slam Dunk
Showered with Roses
A couple billion and then Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction
"The torture and rape rooms are now closed"

Seriously, the republicans have sheepishly admitted many mistakes in the post-war period and Kerry should be mopping the floor with them.

[NER_MCFC]

Does the Presdient have a plan for Iraq? Yes.
Stop the presses! This is a sentence in an ItN post that is factually correct! Except for the spelling anyway.

The problem is that the plan (composed by the State Department in 2002, I believe) was never used because it was insufficiently optimistic and because it came from State and not Defense.