That Wacky, Wacky Washington Post Editorial Board Posted by Michael Cohen

One of the great challenges in writing "That Wacky, Wacky . . ." is the constant need to come up with new adjectives to describe the latest inanity, deception, outright lying and serial misleading of folks like Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot and Fred Hiatt. It's not as easy as it seems. Case in point: the editorial in Saturday's Washington Post and its rather astounding assertion:

When Mr. Obama opened his general election campaign this week with a major speech on Middle East policy, the substantive strategy he outlined was, in many respects, not very much different from that of the Bush administration -- or that of Republican Sen. John McCain

Now if you are surprised at this rather counter-intuitive notion, you may be ever more surprised as to why the Post makes this claim:

Mr. Obama was . . . hawkish about Iran. Hedging his much-discussed offer to meet personally with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- now the encounter would be with "the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing, if and only if, it can advance the interests of the United States" -- Mr. Obama fully embraced the Bush administration's view that "the danger from Iran is grave." He said "we will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran," and he pledged, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."

What would he do? In essence, Mr. Obama promises an improved version of the Bush administration's three-year-old strategy of offering, in conjunction with European allies and Russia, economic and political favors to Iran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program and threatening it with sanctions if it refuses. Mr. Obama would have the United States join the Europeans in having direct discussions with Tehran, and perhaps he would agree to bigger incentives. In exchange, he would seek European and U.N. Security Council support for far tougher sanctions than the Bush administration has obtained -- such as a ban on Iranian gasoline imports, which is probably the strongest measure available short of war.

I hope grafs like these illuminate my dilemma. How does one best describe this: ludicrously simplistic, breathtakingly misleading, astoundingly stupid? The "improved version" of the Bush Administration's strategy (and that is a word I use loosely) is in fact a diametrically different approach to dealing with Iran - namely bilateral discussions between US and Iranian leaders and a ratcheting down of the militarism of the Bush Administration.  Last time I checked it is one of the fundamental differences between the approaches of Senator McCain and Senator Obama to how best to deal with Iran's growing influence in the Middle East.  (Does the Ed Board read its own newspaper). What's more, simply because Obama recognizes the threat from Iran to Israel as being grave, the fundamental issue is how he will deal with it. It's like arguing that because lots of people thought Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region and had WMD they all embraced the Bush Administration's approach to dealing with that threat. What kind of a person would make that argument . . . oh wait a minute.

But as if this isn't enough, the Post delivers the understatement of the century is describing the difference between Obama's approach to the Middle East and that of Bush and McCain, "The gap in Mr. Obama's Middle East policy remains Iraq."

You think? Besides Iran, THIS is the fundamental foreign policy difference between Obama and McCain. Indeed, it's hard to imagine two approaches more dissimilar. And yet, the Post argues the "substantive strategy" differences between the two candidates are not that "different."

And then there is this coup de grace. Noting that Obama, "has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country," the Post argues that Obama should go to Iraq because:

That would offer him the opportunity to outline a strategy based on sustaining the dramatic reduction in violence recorded this year. No, the left wouldn't like it, but it would be in keeping with Mr. Obama's pragmatic approach to the rest of the region.

Besides mischaracterizing Obama's plan for Iraq as a "rapid" withdrawal it seems worth noting that there are others besides the "left" who would be happy with that approach - the approximately two-thirds of Americans who want to see troops home from Iraq in less than two years.

I'm telling you, it's not easy being a blogger . . .

 

Comments

[Caitlyn]

Perhaps Obama should travel to another battleground to open talks with another opponent - the Washington Post editorial staff. They definitely need to hear about Obama directly and not through their circle of conservative contacts and corporate owners.

[Zathras]

Perhaps my monitor is playing tricks on me, but as that Post editorial appears before me now the paragraph immediately following the Post's declaration of similarity between Sen. Obama's view of the Middle East and Sen. McCain's has to do with...the Israelis and Palestinians.

Did Michael Cohen think this paragraph was "...ludicrously simplistic, breathtakingly misleading, astoundingly stupid"? He must have, given the general tone of his post here as well as what appears to be the developing orthodoxy among Obama supporters that the appropriate response to any suggestion that the Illinois Senator does not at all times and in all ways represent millenial change is ostentatious outrage. I expected at least a pro forma denunciation of Republican sympathy for "the Zionist entity" and tolerance of "Israeli aggression" against the "oppressed Palestinians."

But in fact Obama's position on this part of the Middle East does appear pretty similar to Bush's, and McCain's, except for the part about the indivisibility of the Jewish state's capital, Jerusalem. Which still can be the subject of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as long as it remains Israel's indivisible capital. DA, to my surprise, follows suit by skipping the whole subject to move on to Iran, and the Post's "...ludicrously simplistic, breathtakingly misleading, astoundingly stupid" view that Obama's commitment to negotiations at any level without preconditions is not that much-longed-after millenial change. What happens if these negotiations begin and Iran just stiffs us -- which I'd say was pretty likely at the moment, though it probably wasn't always? Of course I recognize that if the Iranians were dealing with an Obama administration everything would be different, because they would find Obama as inspirational as we all do. But surely this possibility might be considered in any analysis of how much difference negotiations with Iran would actually make.

[Shawn Brimley]

No Mike, you are right, the WP does not read its own editorials. Maddening.

[Michael Cohen]

Zathras, read closer or get a new monitor. The Post argues that on their approach to the Middle East, Obama and McCain are similar. This is not to say that Obama's approach is right (although I think it is); it is however, absurd to suggest that it is similar to McCain and Bush. On Iraq and Iran, it's anything but. The Post shades the differences btw Obama and McCain on Iran, when in fact they are quite different, and glosses over the "gap" between their positions on Iraq.

As for Israel, I didn't even mention the fact that in his speech Obama pledges to play a more proactive role in spurring talks between Israel and its neighbors - a role the US has largely failed to play for the past 8 years.

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