Now, hold on just a second. The Gray Lady’s leitmotif for six years running can be lost on none of us: Bush-administration officials are reckless cowboys, insufficiently attentive to the human costs of warfare and clueless about the nuances of diplomacy, right?
So what’s going on? Here we have Bush’s Defense secretary actually factoring in the Times’s top war priorities: Don’t be rash, don’t kill anyone, don’t anger Muslims, don’t upset the international community, etc. Rummy, as if the Times editorial board was calling the plays, decides discretion is the better part of valor and pulls the plug on a risky operation … yet the Times ends up having a snit anyway?
As McCarthy writes, the Times wants to end that idea that only Bill Clinton was negligent in going after al Qaeda when he refused to accept bin Laden from Sudan or kill him prior to 2001.
Yet the idea that President Bush, who has been waging war on al Qaeda for nearly six years can be compared to President Clinton who hid from war against al Qaeda for eight years is crazy.
Do you really need to be reminded that the 2005 decision was one of restraint in the name of not risking our ongoing war effort by alienating an (imperfect) ally for a shot (not a guarantee) at an al Qaeda bigwig?
Contrast this to the decision of the Clinton administration to avoid almost any military actions in the face of repeated enemy attacks that might risk the ongoing effort of President Clilnton to live in the end of history and enjoy the party.
I'd say this is a lack of nuance on the part of the Times, but this rises to the failure to see the difference between black and white.
Of course, the ability to draw the same conclusion from opposite examples might just be one more case of an editorial judgment based on their premise, damned if you do, damned if you're Bush.
The New York Time's analysis is crazy. But in our political environment, it might just be crazy enough to work.
