The New York Times editorial board is the meritorious winner of my eleventh AS Award for the editorial published on Wednesday.

The editorial is titled “Iran Punishes its People”. After recapping a number of measures enacted by, what the NY Times rightfully calls “Iran’s fraudulently elected president”, in order to destroy the opposition to his regime, the editorial proceeds to offer inane advice.

The editorial states: “Washington has condemned this assault on all traces of reform-minded opposition and free expression. It has sensibly [must be joking] done so in measured tones [hardly audible in my opinion], not wanting to give Mr. Ahmadinejad another excuse to claim his opponents are agents of the West, and specifically, the United States.”

In a past blog I criticized this weak and hypocritical response. It gained nothing for the U.S. except the contempt of the thugs in Iran, and seriously damaged any possibility that when the reformers finally win, they will be sympathetic to the United States. The U.S. picked the wrong side!

Despite the naive desire by the U.S. not to rock the boat, the Times did note that Ahmadinejad nevertheless did blame the United States. So much for “diplomacy”.

The editorial discussed the impasse over a nuclear deal. It concluded: “Mr Obama has set a deadline of the end of this year [is this like the shifting line in the sand?] for diplomatic progress on the nuclear issue. He should keep to that. If Iran continues to repudiate the exchange deal…the United States must line up other members of he United Nations Security Council, including Russia and China, for much tougher sanctions.”

In what world does the editorial board of the NY Times live? Obviously no one on the board read my latest blog on “Playing to win”. For if they had, they immediately would have realized how absurdly silly this recommendation is.

Instead of bending over backwards to defend Obama’s policies, maybe the NY Times should be more objective and less apologetic. Freedom of the press does allow the Times to criticize a president whom they support. Criticism would be good all round and might contribute to creating the “good citizens” that Tom Friedman believes are lacking.