As an economist I have never had much patience with <\/span>Paul Krugman<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u2019s<\/strong> <\/span>economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan that to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He did so on September 11 in his New York Times column, \u201c<\/span>The Years of Shame<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u201d Krugman wrote that 9\/11 was hijacked by \u201cfake heroes\u201d who used the event \u201cto justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight\u201d and that \u201cour professional pundits\u201d lent their support to the misuse of the event.<\/span><\/p>\n The stuck pigs, of course, squealed loudly. The war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, <\/span>publicly cancelled his New York Times subscription<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and the complicit presstitutes in Washington\u2019s wars of aggression jumped on Krugman with spikes and hatchets.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps Krugman meant to use the plural and say \u201cunrelated wars.\u201d The US government has made war on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, resulting in massive destruction of homes, infrastructure, and lives of civilians, all in the name of one lie or the other. In addition, the US government is conducting military operations against the populations of three more Muslim countries\u2014Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, with extensive loss of civilian life in Pakistan, a US ally. Drones are sent in week after week that blow up schools, medical centers, and farm communities, and each time Washington announces that they have killed \u201cmilitants,\u201d \u201cal Qaeda,\u201d \u201cTaliban leaders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks to what Krugman calls \u201cour professional pundits\u201d and Gerald Celente calls \u201cpresstitutes,\u201d the American people know little if anything about the murder of countless civilians and displacement of millions of others in these six Muslim countries, which the Bush\/Obama governments regard as \u201csecurity threats,\u201d or habitats of small elements that are \u201csecurity threats,\u201d to the single super-power.<\/span><\/p>\n Before I continue, think for a minute about the level of threat posed by these Muslim countries that lack internal unity, an air force, a navy, a modern army, and nuclear ICBMs. Compare this \u201cthreat\u201d to the Soviet threat, which, at least, was potentially real. The Soviets had the Red Army, which had defeated Hitler and his high-class war machine. The Soviet Union had an amazing array of extremely powerful ICBMs with single and multiple nuclear warheads, and nuclear submarines outfitted with nuclear-armed missiles.<\/span><\/p>\n Somehow we survived 46 years of this threat without going to war. But Iraq, which all but the most stupid people on earth now know had no \u201cweapons of mass destruction,\u201d was such a threat that the US government felt not only compelled to invade but also justified to lie to the United Nations in order to attack and destroy a country that had done nothing whatsoever to us and posed no threat whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n The same for Afghanistan. The Taliban posed no threat whatsoever to the United States or its European allies.<\/span><\/p>\n Pakistan is a US ally; yet, Washington has murdered thousands of Pakistani civilians. The liars in Washington and the presstitute media always claim that murdered civilians are \u201cal Qaeda terrorists.\u201d Every time Washington blows up a hospital, a farmer\u2019s home, a school, Washington issues a report that it has just killed some al Qaeda leader. Some of these leaders have been reported killed multiple times.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not surprised that this does not sit well with Paul Krugman. The best thing in the Keynesians\u2019 resume is not their economics\u2014although it was better, perhaps, than the economics that could not explain the Great Depression\u2014but their moral conscience. Keynesian economists, for the most part, cared about people and what happened to them. I knew many of the Keynesians and debated before university and professional audiences a handful of Keynesian Nobel prize-winners. I never thought that they were callous people. I never expected to miss them.<\/span><\/p>\n To return to Krugman: His message comes across most powerfully in the presstitute pundits\u2019 response to him. Michelle Malkin misinterpreted Krugman\u2019s courage as cowardice and called him a \u201csmug coward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCoward\u201d was an epithet that the presstitutes seized upon. A Washington Post writer, Erik Wimple, declared Krugman \u201ccowardly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n After establishing Krugman to be a \u201ccoward,\u201d the presstitutes, who delight in murdering \u201ctowel-heads\u201d in six countries, escalated their attack on Krugman. Peter Bella declared Krugman to be \u201cvile\u201d and to have \u201cno conscience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Bella\u2019s interpretation of a moral conscience as its antithesis is a typical presstitute response. It led to attacks on the New York Times for having a \u201ccowardly,\u201d \u201cbewildering,\u201d \u201carrogant,\u201d \u201cvile,\u201d contributor who \u201chas no conscience\u201d as a columnist.<\/span><\/p>\n Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post declared the New York Times for publishing Krugman\u2019s column to be \u201ca spiritual wasteland,\u201d this from a \u201cnewspaper\u201d that many regard as a CIA asset.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, shut Krugman up. Cancel his column. We don\u2019t want to hear anything from anyone that casts doubt on Washington\u2019s murder, maiming, and dislocation of millions of people because of a \u201cthreat\u201d that is a total lie. We are the exceptional nation. We are the light unto the world. Ordinary laws do not apply to us because we are exceptional. Laws are for underlings. We have \u201cfreedom and democracy.\u201d Anyone who doubts us is evil and a terrorist and a pinko-liberal-commie.<\/span><\/p>\n It will be interesting to see if Krugman\u2019s column survives his statement of truth. It will tell us whether America has succumbed totally to being the land of the liars, or whether a person of moral conscience still has a voice.<\/span><\/p>\n Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan. His latest book, How the Economy was Lost,<\/em> has just been published by CounterPunch\/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts[at]yahoo.com<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n Michael Hoffman’s Afterward<\/strong>: It is almost certain that some self-righteous skeptics who doubt the official miracle story of how the buildings were destroyed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 (a doubt I share – see this writer’s <\/span>review<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/strong>of David Ray Griffin’s excellent new book, 9\/11: Ten Years Later<\/em>), will call Krugman to task for accepting the official account of 9\/11, even as he criticizes how it was exploited by war criminals. They may even question Dr. Krugman’s integrity. I strongly disagree with this refusal to acknowledge the good will and sincerity of some of the people who accept the official story of anything, whether it be the mystical statistic of “Six Million<\/em> Jews”\u00a0 killed by the Nazis, or the “science” of “global warming.” If we despise everyone who does not doubt everything that we doubt, we will end up supporting an inquisition in reverse — of true believers.\u00a0 Exhibiting a Pharisaic pride in the fact that we don’t believe what those “compromised Publicans” believe (Luke 18:9-14), doesn’t help advance the cause of truth; more humility might.<\/span><\/p>\n