Where is the war?

Yes, the story has been reported to some degree--"Taliban surrounded in Afghanistan", although the blogs have covered it more thoroughly than the mainstreamers. As AJ Strata opined,

Maybe Harry Reid should be calling for surrender in Afghanistan as well, before we have any chance of success. He better hurry though, the window of opportunity to snag defeat from the jaws of success is closing rapidly

The Democrats have given us very little information on how Afghanistan fits in with the withdrawal from Iraq aside from outlawing the term "Global war on Terror", which suggests, well, something. The majority of the media have back-paged it for a long time with some notable exceptions. To be fair, fighting has not been intense and wars there tend to subside in the winter. But that alone can't be the complete explanation.

After all, we still have a hot war in the very heart of al Qaeda country--the place where most liberals agree there should be a war--and yet there seem to be very few if any embedded reporters on the ground. Surely Mr. Murrow is rolling, if not spinning, in his grave.

OK, lacking a formal explanation it's tempting to offer conjecture and since bloggers are experts at this, let's press on! Conjecture one--perhaps there is not enough bad news, ie, roadside bombs, murdered civilians, Haditha-like incidents, Abu Ghraib-type incidents, crumbling infrastructure and power grids, and an undercurrent of Halliburton to overcome the good news, ie, killed enemy and progress made towards bringing freedom for the civilians, which would theoretically undermine terrorism.

Conjecture two--maybe it's because NATO is fighting the good fight in Afghanistan and therefore any coverage might tend to remind people that George W. Bush, of all people, managed to muster enough diplomacy to force the Euros to live up to their NATO commitments. It also kind of shoots that Pax Americana thing in the butt.

Finally, coverage in Afghanistan would remind everyone that we're still at war regardless of whether we end "the war". The Democrats have rather craftily set up the Iraq battle as THE war, shifting focus off the broader war. Now, bear with me for a really wild conjecture! Perhaps this lack of coverage is really a ploy by Rove since if we were only in Afghanistan the press coverage would surely be focused on stuff like this or this:

according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 52 per cent of respondents oppose the U.S. conflict in Afghanistan, up four points since September.

After a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq is there any doubt what would happen next?


One more thing, off topic (sort of). On Monday Hot Air and others ran the video of John Kerry being confronted by a couple of twoofers at a book-signing regards Steven Jones and Tower 7. This morning Lorie Byrd linked to an Ace of Spades comment that fried Kerry for by saying he'd "look into it" rather than issuing a flat out, "you're crazy".

Good points, but just because Kerry answered that way doesn't mean he's anything but a calculating politician. He might be somewhat out of touch with what Charlie Sheen's up to nowadays--he looked genuinely taken aback by the questions--but he also knows these people are HIS people and hitting them back would cause blowback on him from the ever-powerful blogs. The response of "I'll look into it" is the oldest blowoff in the book.