NY Times Wants It Both Ways on Iraq

RUSH: The New York Times today is unbelievable. Lead editorial: “Past Time to Get Real on Iraq.” This is a ramp-up to opposing Bush’s plan tomorrow night for his “surge.” By the way, I read the Washington Post today. The real interesting ingredient to me about this is not really the additional troops. I’ll get to that here in just a second. I have to share this Times editorial with you, because it’s mind-blowing. They want it both ways. They’re telling us to get out of Iraq. This is absurd, they think, to go in there and ramp up our troop presence and put our troops at risk. This is crazy, and they’re laying the groundwork here for everybody to join their side in this and to oppose it.
What’s interesting about this lead editorial is the third-to-last paragraph, and let me read this to you. After they have advocated the US getting out, pulling troops out of Iraq, for most of the editorial, they write: “Nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens to Iraq after it leaves. With or without American troops, a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the United States, too, whether it consists of an expanding civil war that turns into a regional war, or millions of Iraq’s people and its oil fields falling under the tightening grip of a more powerful Iran.” This is mind-boggling. They tell us we have to get out of Iraq and then tell us that we’ve gotta make sure nothing bad happens there after we get out! This is a classic case of wanting to have it both ways. You couldn’t have responsible comment like this from anybody with accountability. Here we have a stupid, unsigned editorial — which, of course, will be passed off as wisdom among Drive-By Media circles, because you can say anything you want.

Like I can, too, I have no accountability when it comes to policy and these people certainly don’t, although their first and foremost desire is to have that power without the accountability. But to suggest that we should get out of there and get out of there now and not do anything further aimed at victory, and then after we get out, win the thing? Protect Iraq? Make sure a nightmare doesn’t happen? Their tantamount admission here is that a nightmare will happen if we get out but that we should still get out and that we should still protect the place after we get out. How in the world does that happen? Can you imagine if Bush in his speech tomorrow night said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have decided we’re going to pull out of Iraq. We’re going to get it done exactly when the New York Times wants. We’re going to do it tomorrow. As of tomorrow we’re going to be out of Iraq but I want to assure the Iraqis that after we bring our troops home and our presence there is finished, we will continue to protect the country.
“We will continue to protect the oil fields, and we will ensure that Iran doesn’t take ’em over and that there’s no great civil war.” How in the world would that be reacted to? They’d call in the men with the little white coats and say, “Hey, it’s time for some serious couch time here. We gotta hook some electrodes up to the skull and see what’s going on inside the president’s head.” When the New York Times’ unsigned editorialist writes in gibberish it is passed off as reasoned thought and something worthy of consideration. This is just classic liberalism. “We feel, and we are good people,” and they think that their words, words alone can accomplish missions like this. It’s a great case study. Now here’s the part in the Washington Post story that interests me. It’s by Michael Abramowitz today: “Bush Works to Rally Support for Iraq Surge, and they start by saying, “President Bush on Monday began promoting his plan to send more troops to Iraq, bringing more than 30 Republican senators to the White House as part of a major campaign to rally [you] behind another effort to stabilize that country.
“Senators who met with Bush said the president made it clear that he is planning to add as many as 20,000 U.S. troops to help quell violence in Baghdad,” which is exactly what the New York Times just editorialized that they want to happen. They want to quell violence, but they want to do that pulling our troops out and then making sure that somehow we make sure there’s no violence after we’re gone. This is what’s interesting. “They also heard the president say that his new plan has a better chance for success than past plans because of a greater willingness on the part of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to commit Iraqi forces against all perpetrators of violence including the Shi’ite militias.” Gordon Smith, senator from Oregon, a Republican, said, “‘It was clear to me the decision has been made for a surge.’ Smith said the president believes the political processes have been overtaken by sectarian violence, that sectarian violence must be quelled, so political processes can be restored.”

Anyway, the thing that’s striking here… By the way, Iraq is going to put $10 billion into this effort themselves, but if this is true, that if somehow Maliki has been convinced, “Hey, you’ve gotta attack the Shi’ites…” See, he’s a Shi’ite and the Iranians are Shi’ites and a lot of people opposing the surgery on the right have been upset — or concerned, I should better say — that if we’re just going to go in there and give Maliki 20,000 more troops, he’s a Shi’ite, and if he’s not going to come down on his own people who are causing problems, then we’re just building up a legitimate satellite of Iran. That has been a very real concern of a lot of people looking at this. The main impact of this is that the president says to these Republican senators he has convinced, somehow, Maliki to tighten down on his own party, if you will, his own sect, the Shi’ite Muslims who are creating sectarian violence. If that indeed is the case, that’s as much a story, as big a news as the 20,000 troops compromising the surge.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
The Democrats have a new slogan: “Stop the Surge.” Senator Kennedy is proposing legislation to cut off funding for any of the additional troops and so forth. That’s typical Democrats. We talked about this yesterday. They’re ramped up in the interest of US defeat. There’s no other way to look at this, folks. I don’t mean to sound hysterical about it, but there’s no other way you can analyze their actions. This is all about winning, the president’s ideas: winning and wrapping this up. The Democrats are opposed to it. Now, we know they’re opposed to it in principle, because that’s who they are, and they’re also opposed to it because they’re scared to death of Cindy Sheehan and that ragtag brand of kooks that’s out there marching all over the country and disrupting Democrats now. Nevertheless regardless the reasons — forget the motivation in this case, and we’ve got sound bites from Teddy Kennedy coming up — there’s no other way you can analyze it: They are invested in the whole notion of us losing.