BrianGarst.com

This election cycle has seen a proliferation of “fact checking” and “ad watching” columns and websites, all pretending to peddle impartial analysis of candidate claims.   While useful in the aggregate, some of these are little more than venues for partisan advocacy under the fig leaf of impartiality.  The most recent such Ad Watch column by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post exemplifies this behavior.

Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are — (Barack Obama:)“. . . just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” (Narrator:) How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops. Increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and congressional liberals. Too risky for America.

ANALYSIS

This John McCain ad blatantly distorts Barack Obama’s words in an effort to paint him as callous about the role of the U.S. military. The commercial truncates a comment that Obama made to a voter in New Hampshire in August 2007. According to the Associated Press, the senator from Illinois brought up Afghanistan when asked whether he would withdraw troops from Iraq to fight terrorism elsewhere: “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” In short, Obama was saying he wanted to avoid just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, not that this was all that American troops were doing. His meaning was the opposite of what is portrayed in this spot. Civilian casualties have been rising in Afghanistan this year, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month apologized for U.S. airstrikes that have killed civilians.

This is an utterly dishonest analysis by Kurtz.  Obama was indeed saying he wanted to avoid air-raiding villages, but that doesn’t preclude him from also saying that it’s all that American troops are doing.  Those two positions can be held simultaneously, much to Kurtz’s chagrin.  So while it’s true that the ad does not include that Obama wants to avoid “just air-raiding villages,” it doesn’t claim he wants to encourage it either, and thus can’t possible portay the opposite of Obama’s meaning, another of Kurtz’ false conclusions.  And that issue isn’t even the point.  Whether or not Obama wants to avoid it is immaterial to his assertion that “just air-raiding villages” is what he thinks we are doing now.

Kurtz would have us believe that Obama is just mentioning civilian killing air-raids as a hypothetical outcome of having too few troops, but that’s an overly generous reading of Obama’s statement.  While Kurtz scolds the McCain camp for cutting out part of the quote, Kurtz himself completely ignores an important qualifying clause from his analysis.   If Obama did not believe we were “just air-raiding and killing civilians,” why would he then immediately and describe how that is presently affecting Afghanistan, when he says it “is causing enormous pressure over there.”  He doesn’t say that it “would” cause pressure, he says that it “is.”

Kurtz is free to conclude that Obama didn’t mean to imply that he thought that American troops were only air-raiding villages and killing civilians, but it’s not dishonest to point out that, if taken how it was actually delivered, it’s exactly what his statement claims.  If Obama was overly flippant and imprudent in his response, that’s his fault and his problem.   Obama is prone to these kind of gaffes when speaking off the cuff and without his precious teleprompter to guide him.  Falsely attacking McCain as a liar is apparently how Howard Kurtz wishes to contribute to the Obama campaign and cover up this particular shortcoming of The Messiah.

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