A reader writes on the Krugman attack and my defense:
"I’m speaking from my own standpoint here, and there are a whole lot of folks out there just like me–after 9/11 we were not partisan. I didn’t vote for George Bush in 2000, but I supported what began after 9/11. It felt GOOD to support him and feel the unity of the country. I loved it.
And then it all started to come apart. Not, as you accuse, because of partisanship–and you’re saying specifically it was Democrats (and Krugman, and "leftists" on college campuses–oh gawd I gotta yawn) who were the partisan troublemakers. But it came apart because the unity and support began to be abused and misued, and some of us did not allow our love of that unity and support of our leader during a crisis to obscure our ability to reason.
It was in the run up to Iraq that you and others actually put on rose colored glasses and drank the koolaid while I was saying, whoa wait let’s think about this. I had no love for Saddam, but the facts were not present in the case the administration was making. I hate being lied to, and I knew that was happening. And I didn’t have access to even half the info others do. My position was, Why are we rushing in here? We can take Saddam down on OUR timetable, and in doing so we have to wrap up Afghanistan and ensure that we have the forces and the money to do it. This wasn’t any feat of prognostication on my part. It was simple common sense, with a dash of knowledge of history and an understanding how these things play out in the hands of breathless humans.
Krugman may be clairvoyant; probably not. But a dumb guy like me whose support swings back and forth between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s doing a good job, saw this was a bad deal from the get-go. I’m a little resentful that my conscientious and throughtful objections are viewed as partisan hooey by the now-chagrined who think we all should have been hoodwinked, and we would have been, too, had we just been good Americans.
Feh."
I’m now overwhelmed by how many people say they now opposed the war all along because they could see that the WMD issue was invalid. It’s amazing so few made the case at the time.
The Dish 