Another tough Krugman question is just as easily refuted. He writes, “Aren’t the leaders of a democratic nation supposed to tell their citizens the truth?” Indeed they are, and indeed they did.
As President Bush frequently said, Saddam Hussein was a threat. To his own people. To Israel (he paid blood money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers). And to the United States (why did he want WMDs and missiles unless he planned to use them against a far-off target, like the U.S.?).
While rushing to falsely condemn the Bush administration for lying, Krugman ignores actual lies told recently by a government.
Beijing initially covered up the severity of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic. SARS has gone on to infect at least 3,000 people in China alone. As the Washington Post reported on April 30, “until earlier this month, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and other Chinese officials sought to minimize the disease and limited information about its spread. The government acknowledged on April 20 that it had deliberately underreported SARS cases.”
Because China lied and dragged its feet, the disease was able to spread quickly to other countries. By the time Beijing admitted the extent of the epidemic (assuming China’s leaders are now telling the whole truth) to the World Health Organization, SARS had already broken out in Canada and the United States. China’s lies have put thousands of lives at risk.
Governments should, as Krugman insists, be honest with their people. As China proves, government lies can kill real people. However, as Krugman surely knows, when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration was honest with us. By telling the truth, it eliminated a real threat, stopped real killing and gave Iraq a real chance at a better future.
And that’s no lie.