Tuesday, July 22, 2008

NYT rejects another inffective attack by McCain on Bush and Obama

So the New York Times has refused to print a rebuttal by John McCain to a prior opinion piece by Barack Obama, which the Times did see fit to print.

This action by the Times IS dangerously outrageous. Dangerous that the powerful MSM (and they are still powerful) could have so much say as to when someone gets heard or is kept silent.

At the same time, the opinion piece by McCain(’s staff) is, once again, little more than (a) McCain egotistically pushing his resume, as if he has been the only one with the answers, while once again enthusiastically jumping on the MSM bandwagon of bashing Bush with “mission accomplished”, and (b) McCain critiquing Obama. In the entire piece, McCain devotes only a couple of sentences to what he would do, what his plans are. But that is consistent with much of his campaign, which more and more appears to have only three prongs — attack Bush and attack Obama while pushing his resume.

Rarely, if ever, to we get a simple statement of philosophy or advocacy for some policy, and only such a simple statement, e.g. “we should do this . . . and we should do that . . .” Instead, the main focus is always on the narcissistic personal, “me good, they bad.”

What is McCain’s over-arching philosophy for the Middle East? What is his overall philosophy and strategy for combating and defeating terrorism beyond “stay in Iraq and Afghanistan until we decide to leave”? I don’t know. I have no clue. McCain’s maverick, ad hoc, “do whatever he feels like doing today” approach to everything gives me absolutely no indication of what his comprehensive geopolitical worldview is.

Clearly he does not subscribe to the Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney strategy of destablizing and eventually conquering Islamic extremism and oppressive Islamic countries by boldly and audaciously planting a seed of Western-style freedom right in the middle of Islamodom. And I suppose that he does not subscribe to the Dem strategy of cut-and-run-and-hide-under-our-beds. But what is his philosophy and/or strategy? I dunno. “Peace with honor”? “Declare victory” and slink home? Some other throwback to the Vietnam era? I don’t know. And perhaps McCain doesn’t know either.

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