On Saturday, February 22, 2003 at 06:52:57 (-0500) Michael Hoover writes: >not much into paul krugman, don't necessarily agree >with some of his take on marshall plan, think title of >his 2/21 nyt column is great play on words... > >http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/opinion/21KRUG.html?ex=1046842592&ei=1&en=dce9f5e0c7040c64
Krugman has actually been doing a rather fine job of debunking the many lies of the Bush administration, unusual among mainstream commentators. His beliefs about the U.S. efforts at "fostering prosperity, stability and democracy" after World War II are typical fantasies, unfortunately. Reworking his sentence gives a much better picture of reality: "America's leaders understood that fostering wealth accumulation (greed), instability and corporate rule was as important as building military might in the struggle against Democracy." We wanted "stability" for *our* investors, didn't care one whit about what the people of the world wanted (to hell with the Vietnamese, to hell with the Italians, to hell with the Resistance) and worked frantically to return control of the defeated states to the hands of the discredited ruling class. For him to even use the phrase "America can also be proud of the way it built democratic institutions" shows how little he knows of the history and the meaning itself of the word democracy. Finally, he drives his Range Rover deep into the weeds with this one: " Meanwhile, outraged Iraqi exiles report that there won't be any equivalent of postwar de-Nazification, in which accomplices of the defeated regime were purged from public life." As if "very many very nasty people" did *not* remain in power, or were not returned to power with the generous assistance of U.S. taxpayers, in Germany and Italy (among others). Krugman can be proud of his efforts to shed some truth on the mendacious and militant Bush regime, but he should remember that the roots of the current phase of our empire were firmly and consciously put in place beginning with our reconstruction of a postwar world order that would serve the needs of U.S. investors first, no matter the consequences for democracy. Bill
