Remember The War?

Remember under President George W. Bush when every car bombing and every single Iraq war death was front page news? Every week seemed to bring some new “grim milestone” having to do with the war that the media would hype endlessly? I had a love-hate relationship with that reporting. On one hand, every single US life lost in war is a tragedy and is worthy of attention and should never, ever be swept under the rug for the sake of politics. On the other hand, the media’s fascination with war casualties to the near exclusion of all other news about the war bordered on ghoulish.

Well now we’ve got a new President who, with the war in Iraq won (though nobody on the left will admit it), is focusing on the war in Afghanistan. He’s escalated the war in Afghanistan and, frankly, I support what he’s trying to do. He’s not cutting and running, he’s finishing what we started.

But what’s curious is, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of attention being given to that war. And certainly the endless coverage and hand-wringing from the media about the war casualties is missing. The war in Afghanistan just saw its deadliest month ever, and yet I doubt 60 Minutes will be doing a special. I don’t think Katie Couric is going to be interviewing any families of lost soldiers. I doubt very much if Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews will mention it at all.

Which is a pretty disgusting double standard, no? When war was a convenient political topic for Democrats it was in the news endlessly, and all of the coverage was slanted toward the side of the issue that was most beneficial to Democrats. Troop deaths. Lack of progress. New attacks from the enemy. War protests. Those stories are still out there, but now that it’s a Democrat President prosecuting the war suddenly the stories don’t seem as important. And the perspective the stories are covered from is all different.

Funny how that works, no?