Today’s Charlotte Observer Op-Ed page reprints Paul Krugman’s “Public’s ahead of news media on Iraq war — No way out of the quagmire until we face up to how we got in.”
“Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn’t turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won’t be able to get out of that quagmire until we face the reality of how we got in.”
The Observer‘s Web page attributes the piece to Ed Williams at the New York Times. But Krugman wrote it. A bit more from Mr. Krugman, writing from Vienna, Austria:
America’s founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That’s why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion. … More below:
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there’s the Downing Street Memo — the minutes of a prime minister’s meeting in July 2002 — in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam,” says the memo, “through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Many in the U.S. news media ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some said it was “old news” that Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002 and that WMD were just an excuse. No, it isn’t. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn’t inform their readers, viewers and listeners. They have never held Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. They’re wrong: It’s crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: The insurgency is in its “last throes,” says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: Anyone who suggests the U.S. will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. The best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message — readier than the news media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes we were misled into war.
In a Gallup poll in early April — before the release of the Downing Street Memo — 50 percent of those polled agreed that the administration “deliberately misled the American public” about Iraq’s WMD. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we’ll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.