Krugman is brilliant as usual. One questioner asks how Bush might regain popularity given his incompetence.
He replies: If Bush does make a comeback, it will be because the media are, once again, complicit in joining the sales job. I'm just guessing it won't happen.
Krugman then answers question from someone who argues the following: 1. The invasion of Afghanistan was successful. 2. Libya abandoned nuclear weapons and terrorism. Libya was close to developing a nuclear weapon. 3. Israel withdrew from Gaza. 4. Syria's withdrew from Lebanon. 5. The nuclear disarmament agreement with North Korea was a major success. 6. Relations with China and Russia are now good. 7. Iraq is a mess, but so was the American South in the 1860's. Bush deserves credit for destroying a very heinous and potentially dangerous regime.
Paul Krugman: Not mostly my area, but here's what I understand: 1. The capture of Kabul was well done. But the victory was squandered; Osama got away at Tora Bora, and Afghanistan is still on the boil. 2. Libya was nowhere close to a bomb. My understanding is that a deal along the lines we concluded had been on offer from Libya for a long time, but the Bush administration refused to take it until they needed something to offset the bad news from Iraq. 3 & 4: Some good things have happened in the Israel-Lebanon area, but it's not at all clear whether U.S. policy played much role. [And I would disagree. Now more Israeli troops can balkanize the west bank} 5. Again, we could have had a similar deal with North Korea five years ago — before they withdrew the fuel rods. 6. China and Russia are authoritarian regimes that make deals when they think it's in their interest. What, exactly, have we gotten from them? 7. I thought Iraq was Philadelphia in 1787 — or was it Germany in 1945 — or, um, some historical parallel (none of which involved a comparably bloody guerilla war) that obscures the fact that America's armed forces are being ground down, and its soldiers killed, in a war we didn't need to fight.
In a previous column Krugman wrote, "By Bush administration standards, the choice of Ben Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve was just weird. For one thing, Mr. Bernanke is actually an expert in monetary policy, as opposed to, say, Arabian horses.... Last but not least, Mr. Bernanke has no personal ties to the Bush family. It's hard to imagine him doing something indictable to support his masters. It's even hard to imagine him doing what Mr. Greenspan did: throwing his prestige as Fed chairman behind irresponsible tax cuts."
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