NYTimes.com Article: A Willful Ignorance

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

A Willful Ignorance

October 28, 2003
 By PAUL KRUGMAN





According to The New York Times, President Bush was
genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders
that they had become deeply distrustful of American
intentions. The report on the "perception gap" suggests
that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly
that war - which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and
minds - is going.

Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity:
"The best way to get the news," he says, "is from objective
sources. And the most objective sources I have are people
on my staff." Two words: emperor, clothes.

But there's something broader going on: a sort of willful
ignorance, supposedly driven by moral concerns but actually
reflecting domestic politics. Surely it's important to
understand how others see us, but a new, post 9/11 version
of political correctness has made it difficult even to
discuss their points of view. Any American who tries to go
beyond "America good, terrorists evil," who tries to
understand - not condone - the growing world backlash
against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered
in a tone of high moral indignation. The attackers claim to
be standing up for moral clarity, and some of them may even
believe it. But they are really being used in a domestic
political struggle.

Last week I found myself caught up in that struggle. I
wrote about why Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister
- a clever if loathsome man who adjusts the volume of his
anti-Semitism depending on circumstances - chose to include
an anti-Jewish diatribe in his speech to an Islamic
conference. Sure enough, I was accused in various places
not just of "tolerance for anti-Semitism" (yes, I'm Jewish)
but of being in Mr. Mahathir's pay. Smear tactics aside,
the thrust of the attacks was that because anti-Semitism is
evil, anyone who tries to understand why politicians foment
anti-Semitism - and looks for ways other than military
force to combat the disease - is an apologist for
anti-Semitism and is complicit in evil.

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last
year the Bush administration, in return for a military base
in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that,
according to the State Department, uses torture "as a
routine investigation technique," and whose president has
killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity
police were notably quiet.

Why is aiding a brutal dictator O.K., while trying to
understand why others don't trust us - and doing something
to create that trust - isn't? Why won't the administration
mollify Muslims by firing Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose
anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will, from his
counterterrorism position? Why won't it give moderate
Muslims a better argument against the radicals by opposing
Ariel Sharon's settlement policy, when a majority of
Israelis think that some settlements should be abandoned,
and even Israeli military officers have become bitterly
critical of Mr. Sharon?

The answer is that in these cases politics takes priority
over the war on terror. Moderate Muslims would have more
faith in America's good intentions if there were at least
the appearance of a distinction between the U.S. and the
Sharon government - but the administration seeks votes from
those who think that supporting Israel means supporting
whatever Mr. Sharon does. It's sheer folly to keep General
Boykin in his present position, but as Howard Fineman
writes in a Newsweek Web-exclusive column, the
administration doesn't want "to make a martyr of a man who
depicts himself as a Christian Soldier, marching off to
war."

Muslims are completely wrong to think that the U.S. is
engaged in a war against Islam. But that misperception
flourishes in part because the domestic political strategy
of the Bush administration - no longer able to claim the
Iraq war was a triumph, and with little but red ink to show
for its economic plans - looks more and more like a
crusade. "Election Boils Down to a Culture War" was the
title of Mr. Fineman's column. But the analysis was all
about abortion and euthanasia, and now we hear that
opposition to gay marriage will be a major campaign theme.
This isn't a culture war - it's a religious war.

Which brings me back to my starting point: we'll lose the
fight against terror if we don't make an effort to
understand how others think. Yet because of a domestic
political struggle that seems ever more centered on
religion, such attempts at understanding are shouted
down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/opinion/28KRUG.html?ex=1068340494&ei=1&en=c15e373bfce280a3

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