New York Times September 7,
2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN
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The best book I've read about America after 9/11 isn't
about either America or 9/11. It's "War Is a Force
That Gives Us Meaning," an essay on
the psychology of war by Chris
Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any
poll analysis or focus group, it explains why
President Bush, despite policy
failures at home and abroad, is ahead
in the polls.
War, Mr. Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges.
"Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including
ours," he says, "is the passionate yearning for a
nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war
alone is able to deliver." When war
psychology takes hold, the public
believes, temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in
which our nation is purely good, our enemies are
purely evil, and anyone who isn't our
ally is our enemy.
This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those
in power.
One striking part of the book describes Argentina's
reaction to the 1982 Falklands war. Gen. Leopoldo
Galtieri, the leader of the country's
military junta, cynically launched
that war to distract the public from the failure
of his economic policies. It worked: "The junta,
which had been on the verge of
collapse" just before the war,
"instantly became the saviors of the country."
The point is that once war psychology takes hold, the
public desperately wants to believe in its
leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least
deserving ruler. National adulation for the junta ended only
after a humiliating military defeat.
George W. Bush isn't General Galtieri: America really was
attacked on 9/11, and any president would have followed up
with a counterstrike against the Taliban. Yet the Bush
administration, like the Argentine junta, derived enormous
political benefit from the impulse of a nation at war to
rally around its leader.
Another president might have refrained from exploiting
that surge of support for partisan gain; Mr. Bush didn't.
And his administration has sought to perpetuate the war
psychology that makes such exploitation possible.
Step by step, the fight against Al Qaeda became a
universal "war on terror," then a confrontation with the
"axis of evil," then a war against all evil everywhere.
Nobody knows where it all ends.
What is clear is that whenever political debate turns to
Mr. Bush's actual record in office, his popularity
sinks.
Only by doing whatever it takes to change the subject to
the war on terror - not to what he's actually doing
about terrorist threats, but to his "leadership,"
whatever that means - can he get a bump in the polls.
Last week's convention made it clear that Mr. Bush
intends to use what's left of his
heroic image to win the election, and
early polls suggest that the strategy may be working.
What can John Kerry do?
Campaigning exclusively on domestic issues won't work.
Mr. Bush must be held to account for
his dismal record on jobs, health care and the environment.
But as Mr. Hedges writes, when war psychology makes a public
yearn to believe in its leaders, "there is little that logic
or fact or truth can do to alter the experience."
To win, the Kerry campaign has to convince a significant
number of voters that the self-proclaimed "war
president" isn't an effective war
leader - he only plays one on TV.
This charge has the virtue of being true. It's hard to
find a nonpartisan national security
analyst with a good word for the Bush
administration's foreign policy. Iraq, in particular, is a
slow-motion disaster brought on by wishful thinking,
cronyism and epic incompetence.
If I were running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people
frequently about Mr. Bush's flight-suit photo-op, when he
declared the end of major combat. In fact, the war goes on
unabated. News coverage of Iraq dropped off sharply after
the supposed transfer of sovereignty on June 28, but as many
American soldiers have died since the transfer as in the
original invasion.
And I'd point out that while Mr. Bush spared no effort
preparing for his carrier landing - he even received
underwater survival training in the White House pool - he
didn't prepare for things that actually mattered, like
securing and rebuilding Iraq after Baghdad fell.
Will it work? I don't know. But to win, Mr. Kerry must
try to puncture the myth that Mr.
Bush's handlers have so assiduously created.
....back to:
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American Pictures
....gives Moore
thanks
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.....gives the plane truth
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liberation
.....gives you the
blues
......gives Bush a human face
.....gives billionaires for Bush a free rap
....gives you the
world vote on Bush-Kerry
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