陇山陇西郡
宁静纯我心 感得事物人 写朴实清新. 闲书闲话养闲心,闲笔闲写记闲人;人生无虞懂珍惜，以沫相濡字字真。
“Sweep it up. Related or Note" heckuva stupidity, that's what they want - alert!
My note: This essay wrote timely and wisely about issue we
talked every where theseo days. I read Paul Krugman's
essays regularly because Paul Krugman, graduated at MIT, a place held in my heart, won Nobel Prize in
economics, columnist at New York Times. He's distingushed professor at Princeton
University, and City University of New York.
Read through, pay attention to his style of writing: Direct, logic
flow, clarity of thinking, sharpen argument, simple plain English, his choie of words -
master pieces!
W?e need our scholars acting like him!
******************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Source of Inspiration ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **********************
Fearing Fear Itself, NOV. 16, 2015
281Comments
Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/
Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from
Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the
natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the
terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to
understand.
Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s declaration that “this is an organized
attempt to destroy Western civilization.” No, it isn’t. It’s an
organized attempt to sow panic, which isn’t at all the same thing. And
remarks like that, which blur that distinction and make terrorists
seem more powerful than they are, just help the jihadists’ cause.
Think, for a moment, about what France is and what it represents. It
has its problems — what nation doesn’t? — but it’s a robust democracy
with a deep well of popular legitimacy. Its defense budget is small
compared with ours, but it nonetheless retains a powerful military,
and has the resources to make that military much stronger if it
chooses. (France’s economy is around 20 times the size of Syria’s.)
France is not going to be conquered by ISIS, now or ever. Destroy
Western civilization? Not a chance.
Continue reading the main story
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The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the
world.
So what was Friday’s attack about? Killing random people in
restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its
perpetrators’ fundamental weakness. It isn’t going to establish a
caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear — which
is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of
war.
The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize
that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from
the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can
inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the
response can go wrong.
It would certainly be a very bad thing if France or other democracies
responded to terrorism with appeasement — if, for example, the French
were to withdraw from the international effort against ISIS in the
vain hope that jihadists would leave them alone. And I won’t say that
there are no would-be appeasers out there; there are indeed some
people determined to believe that Western imperialism is the root of
all evil, and all would be well if we stopped meddling.
But real-world examples of mainstream politicians, let alone
governments, knuckling under to terrorist demands are hard to find.
Most accusations of appeasement in America seem to be aimed at
liberals who don’t use what conservatives consider tough enough
language.
A much bigger risk, in practice, is that the targets of terrorism will
try to achieve perfect security by eliminating every conceivable
threat — a response that inevitably makes things worse, because it’s a
big, complicated world, and even superpowers can’t set everything
right. On 9/11 Donald Rumsfeld told his aides: “Sweep it up. Related
and not,” and immediately suggested using the attack as an excuse to
invade Iraq. The result was a disastrous war that actually empowered
terrorists, and set the stage for the rise of ISIS.
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And let’s be clear: this wasn’t just a matter of bad judgment. Yes,
Virginia, people can and do exploit terrorism for political gain,
including using it to justify what they imagine will be a splendid,
politically beneficial little war.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
JT FLORIDA
15 minutes ago
Israel seems to have learned the point of your column through years of
various attacks. When a terrorist attack occurs, the scene is
quickly...
Cathy
15 minutes ago
One of the things I have read is that a strategy of Al Qaeda, and now
Daesh, is to draw the region in to war, to create a vacuum that the...
Pierre Lehu
15 minutes ago
This is a propaganda war more than anything and I think that's where
we are losing. First, I'd stop calling them terrorists because to
them...
See All Comments
Oh, and whatever people like Ted Cruz may imagine, ending our
reluctance to kill innocent civilians wouldn’t remove the limits to
American power. It would, however, do wonders for terrorist
recruitment.
Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and
shouldn’t be allowed to divert our attention from other issues. Sorry,
conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the
greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right. Terrorism can’t and won’t
destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might.
Continue reading the main storyWrite A Comment
So what can we say about how to respond to terrorism? Before the
atrocities in Paris, the West’s general response involved a mix of
policing, precaution, and military action. All involved difficult
tradeoffs: surveillance versus privacy, protection versus freedom of
movement, denying terrorists safe havens versus the costs and dangers
of waging war abroad. And it was always obvious that sometimes a
terrorist attack would slip through.
Paris may have changed that calculus a bit, especially when it comes
to Europe’s handling of refugees, an agonizing issue that has now
gotten even more fraught. And there will have to be a post-mortem on
why such an elaborate plot wasn’t spotted. But do you remember all the
pronouncements that 9/11 would change everything? Well, it didn’t —
and neither will this atrocity.
Again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all
they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do
in response is to refuse to give in to fear.
Read Paul Krugman’s blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, and follow him
on Twitter.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and
sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 16, 2015, on page
A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Fearing Fear Itself.
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Meredith
NYC6 hours ago
Obama might have called climate change the greatest fate we face. But the more relevant quote right now should be from Bernie Sanders. At the Democratic debate the other night, he related it to the terrorist threat, due to the instability, lack of resources, and migration of peoples that climate change will cause.
At the debate, Dickerson asked Sanders if after the Paris attacks--- does he still believe climate change is the greatest threat to national security?
BERNIE SANDERS:
“Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you're gonna see countries all over the world-- this is what the C.I.A. says, they're gonna be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you're gonna see all kinds of international conflict.”
I’m puzzled why Paul Krugman couldn’t at least mention that and give Sanders just a bit of the attention he deserves for his intelligent and realistic proposals on that and on other issues, where I’d think they’d agree.
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jlalbrecht
Vienna, Austria6 hours ago
An excellent article on keeping things in perspective. There were immediate tweets after the horrible killing of 127 people in Paris that everything would have been all right if they just had loose gun laws like we have in the US. The perspective? Since Friday night there will have been (on average) 11 gun deaths in all of France, while in the US there will have been about 180. Today in the US there will be another 90. And tomorrow. And Wednesday. And every day after that.
Paul Krugman is right that the jihadists aren't going to destroy western civilization. However, the fear instilled in the US population has lead to a country armed to the teeth and 33,000 gun deaths per year. 11 times more people die of gun deaths every single year in the US than were killed on 9/11. We have a gun massacre every week. How's that for perspective?
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Fred the Yank
London6 hours ago
Professor Krugman is once again right on the major issue. The refugee question has indeed become more fraught, but at the same time some of the answers might have become clearer. The refugees are coming, as most of us in Europe realise. There are those who are screaming that we have to secure the borders. Not a chance. Our choice is whether on the one hand to pretend the refugees are not entitled to be here thus condemning most if not all to a life underground and outside the law or on the other hand to take real and practical measures to allow them to join society as real participants, subject to the laws and responsible as citizens, provisional or otherwise. The latter would make Europe winners in a real sense.
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Arthur Silen
Davis California6 hours ago
As usual, Prof. Krugman is right on point. I'm trying to imagine what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were he alive today, would be saying to the likes of Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush. Those guys, and their cowardly cohort, are always ready to head off to war, provided that someone else takes the risk and bears the cost. It all fits in with their party's incessant fear mongering, whether it's immigrant bashing, or loudly calling out the president for his supposed 'weakness' and 'fecklessness'. They are clueless about the real threat facing everyone everywhere.
Churchill's biggest domestic problem in World War II was finding enough food for people to eat while still fighting the war. Defeating the submarine menace was his first order of business, and he was savvy enough to make that his main priority. I think Churchill would well appreciate the threat climate change poses to the world's food supply.
Understandably, radical Islamist attacks on targets of opportunity cause tremendous heartache and suffering, and they generate the big headlines. Slow death by drought and infertility of farmland that end up causing death to tens of thousands of people never gets the public attention in most assuredly deserves.
We know that increased ambient temperatures in the Middle East, along with water scarcities are pushing entire populations out of the region. Much of the radicalism that we now see is a reflection of a climate that is growing more inhospitable to agriculture every day.
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Spence
Malvern, PA6 hours ago
First comes fear and then comes panic which leads to brash and rash decisions. Hopefully, we will elect someone that doesn’t have their finger on the bomb. Killing more innocents people is what ISIS wants.
We spend $600B/yr on military spending for obsolete weapons, maintenance and Cold War duds should mothballed. Instead, money should be spent on intelligence and special ops. We need to stop using the same tactics of the last 50 years.
We need new thinking and that means cleaning Defense of the rust and 20th century dust balls. More money wouldn't solve this problem. And neither will taking away our civil liberties which becomes a slippery slope.
The sooner the Arab states realize they are part of the solution, the sooner we can shut down ISIS.
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Joel
Cotignac2 hours ago
I'm not a bleeding heart that blames American imperialism for all the world's ills, but we cannot deny the violent collateral damage our bombs do. Krugman points out that "the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire" as well as the importance for Western powers to keep up the fight. He also addressed those who exploit this incident for political gain. However he doesn't address the fact that we too often and too soon turn to military violence that should be a last resort. Now that we've helped engender an environment that produces ISIS and other terrorist groups, we have to fight them. But we should also develop our significant cultural, diplomatic and economic tools that we have let atrophy in recent years.
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Richard M. Waugaman, M.D.
Chevy Chase, MD2 hours ago
We are always in danger of forfeiting our civil liberties and supporting right-wing leaders when terrorism or other threats make us afraid. Since the 1970s, the social psychology theory of "terror management" has been replicated in nearly 200 empirical studies. It reminds us that we need to be especially vigilant in balancing the need for security against terrorism with protection of civil liberties. We also can't let terrorism breed bigotry.
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Fred DiChavis
Brooklyn, NY1 hour ago
I don't think the terrorists could have scripted a response from the West any better suited to their aims than what the Republican presidential candidates wish to do--or what the Bush administration did after 9/11.
Imagine if, in late 2001, we'd finished the job at Tora Bora and then committed perhaps five percent of what we've ultimately spent in Iraq to rolling up the Taliban and making Afghanistan a functioning, 21st century nation. We could have drained the swamp, and we'd have literally trillions of dollars available to invest in our infrastructure, or educating our people, or even just paying our bills.
Instead we grew Daesh, as surely as if it had been a lab experiment. What will be the unintended consequences of our next dumb war?
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mfo
France1 hour ago
All is relatively normal here today so, no, the people of France are not terrorized. The French are fuming angry; angrier than I've ever seen them and I've lived here a long time. Besides the obvious emotions everybody had to explain to their kids, who remember the Charlie/grocery store attack, what happened on Saturday morning.
I do see many people on Facebook, especially American's, urging people to move on to some other cause. Those on the right want the world to arm like America; those on the left seek to divert attention to other causes. Many use inappropriate buts, as in "what happened was awful, but..." Yes, those causes are important, some vitaly so, though they can wait a few days while the pain still lingers.
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Edward
Midwest1 hour ago
In 1995, more people, including toddlers in a day care center, (168) and many more people (680) were injured in a terrorist attack right here in the United States, in Oklahoma City.
We did not round up and jail the militia and neo-nazi hate groups that spawned the terrorists. Our government tracked down those directly responsible, arrested and jailed them, and put one of them to death.
This is the response required when terrorists act. We investigate, arrest, try, and convict and punish. We also increase surveillance of such groups to keep them ineffective in the future.
Ted Cruz and the other Republican demagogues would arm every Frenchman, increase bombing of cities in the Middle East, and send soldiers (other people's children) into areas now controlled by ISIS, to be killed and forever maimed, to the end that everything becomes worse.
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SimpleAnswer
North Carolina33 minutes ago
Where is NATO? This is an attack on a member of NATO, and every country in NATO ought to be retaliating.
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Paul
Nevada31 minutes ago
Well stated, the worst action the US can take is overreaction.
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JB
Guam24 minutes ago
Actually, I think 9/11 did change everything. Our reactions, not terrorists, have made me feel less safe and less free.
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Dr. Hu
eugene, or.16 minutes ago
When we in the West cheered on the democratic impulses of the Arab Spring, only to stand idly by and watch them wither and die for failure to offer jobs and economic growth, we ensured that the forces of jihad would fill the vacuum. Is US imperialism to blame for the reprehensible murders in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt? Not totally.
Yet the imperialist, Bush-Cheney war on Iraq roiled the entire Middle East, and, together with their support for the anti-Sunni administration in Baghdad, led directly to the rise of ISIS and its former Baathist military commanders.
In turn, the refugees overwhelming Europe's capacity to provide jobs, housing, education, and a decent life, are also a direct result of the chaos set in motion by Bush's imperialistic impulses
That said, economic imperialism--the aggressive WTO style of neoliberal globalization which you espouse--has played a deeper role in propagating the despair and hopelessness which provides such fertile ground for Jihadi recruiters.
The globalized capitalist economy is failing at its most basic task--providing jobs and a decent life for far too many people. When we turn our backs on socially-corrosive levels of unemployment in US inner cities, southern Europe, and seemingly everywhere but China, we invite anarchy and disorder.
The 1% grows filthy rich while the masses of humanity migrate and rebel. We're mired in the struggle between "Jihad vs. McWorld" which Benjamin Barber so astutely described.