Krugman on Ashcroft on Krar
Paul Krugman has a really interesting column on Attorney General John Ashcroft’s low-profile response to the arrest last year of William Krar, who gives every indication of being a real-live WMD-wielding terrorist. Why would the AG downplay such a thing, when he’s clearly willing to call a press conference at the drop of hat to announce non-developments in any number of other cases? Well, maybe it’s because Krar isn’t a muslim, but is instead a white supremicist from Texas, and highlighting homegrown terrorism doesn’t advance his boss’s political agenda in the appropriate way.
I don’t know; maybe I’m just paranoid. Anyway, here’s Krugman: Noonday in the Shade
June 23rd, 2004 at 9:47 pm
I’ll venture to say that Krar represents the fact that there always has been, still are, and always will be, crackpots of all stripes who have a twisted agenda and just enough firepower to endanger dozens or maybe hundreds of people. Not quite the same threat as a sophisticated, well-financed world-wide organization with the desire and capability to devastate large areas and kill tens or hundreds of thousands!
June 24th, 2004 at 9:50 am
And let me add that insinuating a race/racist element to the distinction between the two cases is rather reckless.
June 24th, 2004 at 10:30 am
The Bush administration has demonstrated a willingness to lump all Arabs together in terms of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, claiming that a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with those attacks can be invaded and overthrown as an appropriate response to them. To my way of thinking, that actually is racist. It’s hard for me to see what would be reckless in pointing that out.
But I wasn’t making that particular point here. I was just pointing out, as Krugman does, that to trumpet from the rooftops the apprehension and detention of Jose Padilla, who as far as we can tell never actuallly did much of anything, while sweeping under the rug the foiling of a plot involving someone who had actually gone so far as to accumulate lots of automatic weapons, 60 pipe bombs, and a cyanide bomb “big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000 square foot building”, is kind of odd. And when you add in the fact that FBI representatives are characterizing “ecological and animal-rights extremists” as the greatest domestic terror threat we currently face, it raises serious questions about whether politics and ideology are getting in the way of rational assessments in Ashcroft’s Justice Department.
One of the key failings of the Bush administration has been the way they have let ideological blinders prevent them from perceiving and dealing appropriately with real threats. That was true in the run-up to 9/11, it was true of the Iraqi WMD intelligence failures, and it was true of the failure to plan adequately for the aftermath of the war. Given that track record, I’d say there’s nothing reckless at all in being alert for evidence of their engaging in more of the same. It’s just common sense.
June 24th, 2004 at 6:09 pm
Maybe I just missed the speech that day, but please tell me when Bush has blamed ALL Arabs for terrorism, let alone the 9-11 attack! You’re more effective when you’re less extreme.
The fact that they caught this William Krar crackpot indicates to me that they ARE still paying attention to other domestic threats. I could care less if they don’t make a big deal about his arrest.
July 9th, 2004 at 7:28 am
The Bush Administration has been careful not to lump all Arabs together as terrorists. I’ve not once heard any comment that the ordinary Iraqi citizen had anything to do with 9/11. I’ve not heard one comment that the government of Ira
July 9th, 2004 at 7:30 am
q under Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. If you can find a direct quote of Bush or one of his close advisors claiming that Saddam Hussein authored the 9/11 attacks, then your ranting has some value. Since you can’t, it has none. If you were willing to make more careful claims, people who disagree with you might listen to you.
August 4th, 2004 at 2:59 pm
Jeremy sez: “If you can find a direct quote of Bush or one of his close advisors claiming that Saddam Hussein authored the 9/11 attacks, then your ranting has some value. Since you can’t, it has none.”
There’s this thing that’s been developed recently called “implication;” perhaps you’ve heard of it. In prewar speeches and statements, Bush and his cadre of dissemblers would cleverly mention Saddam and 9/11 in the same sentence again and again and again, ad nauseum. The end result of that was that in August of last year, a national poll showed that a full 70% of Americans believed Iraq was directly involved with 9/11.
Example: If I made the statement “Jeremy Price is a great American, but white supremacists are a scourge upon the face of this nation and must be stamped out with extreme prejudice” enough times to enough people, a significant portion of those who heard me would believe that Jeremy Price was a white supremacist. This is exactly what happened.
Perhaps they didn’t actually come out and state so, but their implication was so strong and insistent that the link was made. In other words, they cleverly lied without actually having to tell the lie.
September 23rd, 2004 at 7:39 am
“they cleverly lied without actually having to tell the lie.”
That’s Awesome!! Do you think that’s more like “I voted for it before I voted against it,” or maybe more “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is?”