What the NYT Wouldn't Print

The flap over The New York Times refusing to print an oped by John McCain is a gem. Their refusal to print McCain’s responding to an Obama oped published last week is the sort of thing that conservatives love.

And the absurd rationale offered by the NYT editor was a gem. David Shipley didn’t like the oped because it didn’t mirror Obama’s oped but instead criticized Obama.

But now the New York Post has published McCain’s oped and concerned voters can compare the two political documents side by side.

I’d have to say that Obama’s oped is the more tendentious. After all, he has to wriggle through the fact that he thought that Iraq was lost a year ago, and now it turns out that it isn’t.

The difference in narrative is substantial. Writes Obama:

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he writes, says that we can’t step up the effort in Afghanistan until we draw down the troops in Iraq.

That’s true, but now that we are winning in Iraq we can spare the troops needed in Afghanistan. And that is exactly what President Bush proposes to do.

McCain points out the obvious. Obama doesn’t seem interested in winning.

I’m dismayed that he never talks about winning the war - only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will - and a triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us.

That is true. Obama does not mention the word “win” in his oped. But when you are in a war, it’s a question of winning or losing. When Obama says he would “pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan,” you have to ask: Well, what’s the point of those combat brigades? Are they there just to pursue a strategy or are they there to win the war?

Thirty years ago, liberals insisted that the US “end” the war in Vietnam. That meant, in fact, losing the war in Vietnam. It took Ronald Reagan to turn the US around and erase the defeat in Vietnam with a “surge” that ended up winning the Cold War and putting the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history.

Do we have to go through the whole process again with the war on Islamic extremism?