Dissecting the NY Times-Obama Agenda
The notion that the Agenda Media or other branches of the Dead Tree Coalition were outlets of the truth disappeared decades ago. Now there’s proof that they’ve made the final step into being an outlet for the DNC. When Obama wrote a factually inaccurate op-ed on Iraq, the NYT published it without hesitation. When John McCain submitted an op-ed rebutting Obama’s points, former Clinton speechwriter and current NY Times hatchetman David Shipley opted not to publish Sen. McCain’s op-ed.
Shipley’s delivering what he thought was a death blow turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Sen. McCain because the McCain campaign sent the op-ed and Shipley’s email to Drudge. Mr. Drudge was perfectly willing to publish it in its entirety. Here is Sen. McCain’s op-ed verbatim:
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City, actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
Sen. McCain’s been right about the surge from before Day One. He advocated ramping up the number of troopssince before Gen. Petraeus was brough in to train Iraqi troops. Amazingly, the Obammessiah refuses to support the surge:
Moran: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?
Obama: No. Because, keep in mind that –
Moran: You wouldn’t?
Obama: Keep in mind, these kind of hypothetical’s are very difficult. You know hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one I just disagreed with.
When Obama says that “these kind of hypothetical’s are very difficult”, he’s unwittingly admitting that McCain made a great decision in a difficult situation. He also unwittingly admitted that his decisionmaking might not be as high quality as Sen. McCain’s.
Despite the fact that McCain made a great decision in a difficult situation, the NY Times refused to publish his op-ed. That’s unconscienable. What’s worse is letting a political hack like David Shipley have a say on what gets published on the NY Times op-ed page.
The NY Times’ Kate Philips posted a response to the Shipley disgrace on the NY Times’ blog:
(In full disclosure, I worked as the deputy Op-Ed editor under Mr. Shipley during the mid-to-latter part of 2004, and it was policy then not to publish direct responses to Op-Ed columns already in print. Very rarely would a direct counterpoint to an Op-Ed be published; more often the response would be directed to Letters to the Editor. But dueling candidate Op-Eds sometimes rise to a different level, when they go beyond back-and-forth or standard talking points that everyone is familiar with.
While it’s obviouisly NY Times’ policy not to publish a counterpoint op-ed, that doesn’t mean that they can’t do that. In fact, I’d argue that, in this instance, that’s precisely what was called for.
Let’s examine some of the things in Sen. Obama’s op-ed. Here’s the opening paragraph of Sen. Obama’s op-ed:
The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
I’d hardly call Maliki’s agreeing to a time horizon agreeing with Sen. Obama’s timetable. Sen. Obama certainly can’t prove that Maliki’s government has changed official policy. Therefore, that statement is unsubstantiated. It’s possibly pure spin.
It’s one thing for Sen. Obama to argue that his Iraq policy is better than Sen. McCain’s. That’s his opinion. It isn’t fair to misstate another sovereign government’s policy as a way to justify Sen. Obama’s policy.
Put another way, it’s one thing for Sen. Obama to argue the merits of his policy. It isn’t ok for him to manufacture ‘facts’ to justify his policy.
Here’s another Obama misstatement:
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country.
I can’t believe that Sen. Obama believes this. We didn’t redeploy our troops. Indeed, Sen. McCain and President Bush resisted this new direction. Yet somehow the Iraqis have met 15 of the 18 benchmarks laid out by Congress. Where’s the proof that Iraqis needed the threat of our redeployment to motivate them?
I think it isn’t difficult to make a case that our staying is what drove Iraqis to get their act together. The Anbar Awakening didn’t start until the Surge started tearing down AQI strongholds. Once word spread of the Anbar Awakening, other provinces started turning on AQI. That allowed Coalition troops to focus on Sadr’s militias.
Once Iraqis saw that we wouldn’t abandon them to Iran on one side and on the other, many benchmarks happened in a relatively short period of time.
Contrary to Obama’s opinions, the Iraqis are “taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country” without following the Obama Doctrine. Perhaps Sen. Obama can explain how that happened at today’s news conference. (That’s assuming that the press is actually willing to press him.)
Finally, there’s this paragraph:
But this is not a strategy for success; it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
Let’s see. Violence is down dramatically. All but a couple of benchamrks are yet to be met. Actually, the major benchmarks have been met. Iraqi security forces are taking command of more provinces. As for U.S. troops staying long enough to stabilize the country, I haven’t heard Iraqis insisting on Coalition troops leaving. I suspect that that’s because it’s in their interest to have a stabilized Iraq.
The easiest logical conclusion it that the NY Times published Sen. Obama’s op-ed to help him win. It’s just as easy to conclude that they refused to publish Sen. McCain’s op-ed because it would’ve dissected Sen. Obama’s op-ed for all the world to see.
The Times couldn’t let that happen; they’ve got much too much invested in Sen. Obama to publish an op-ed that would’ve made their candidate look bad.
UPDATE: The NY Post is giving the NY Times grief for not publishing Sen. McCain’s op-ed. It’s accomplishing that by publishing Sen. McCain’s op-ed the day after Drudge exposed the NY Times’ shilling for St. Barry.
Technorati Tags: NY Times, Obama, John McCain, Op-eds, Iraq, Surge, Anbar Awakening, Military, Benchmarks, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog