Where’s The Endless Reporting Of War Deaths In Afghanistan?

Remember under President Bush when ever 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 Olbermann 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?

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  • http://Array SigFan

    There’s a war in Afghanistan? When did that happen?

    Every time a soldier got a hang nail in Iraq it was screeched to the roof-tops by the MSM. I saw a report today that American casualties are at their highest point in Afghanistan and the only place I found any mention of it was here:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090715/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

    God bless these courageous soldiers and their families. I hope they know that most of us recognize and appreciate their sacrifice for us.

  • http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

    Obama still hasn’t capture OBL?

  • NDgal

    They’ve been too busy covering Jacko and taking cracks at Palin.

  • ellinas

    Where’s The Endless Reporting Of War Deaths In Afghanistan?
    By Rob on July 15, 2009 at 10:47 am

    It’s there for the ones that want to read about it in the newspapers, and it’s there for the ones that want to watch on TV and/or follow it online.
    You are nothing but a blind partisan preacher, preaching to the choir and making cheap partisan points.
    Open your eyes and ears and you shall find what you are looking for.

  • http://redcollarsblog.blogspot.com/ red collar

    I just read Michael Yon’s latest report from Afghanistan where he did mention record numbers…and I was shocked.

    It’s not in the news. Really, the MSM is not doing it’s job. It was pulling overtime under the Bush administration, which also falls in the “not doing it’s job” category.

    Incidently, General Patraeus is also not in the news. My guess is that Obama gets the glory, whatever and whenever it is from now on.

  • Buzz

    How would you know, you freely admit to not watching or listening to the MSM.

    Oh, Faux News is saying that the MSM isn’t reporting on the deaths. Funny how there is multiple posts on the same topic the same day. Do they send you all an e-mail or what.

  • jimmypop

    wtf are you talking about? the wars are over. barry and the liberals gave us their word in 2006.

  • Zach

    I’m speaking about this as a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq (twice) and as an American.

    First off, the reason that the Iraq war casualties were given more press during the Bush years was that the war in Iraq was his idea. He started a war that he didn’t have to and got a lot of people killed both on our side and over there. He broke it, he bought it, he will have to deal with the judgement of history. That’s why there was more focus on casualties during his Presidency. And for the record, my job over there was to track the progress of the war in my partcular sector and I can tell you that the media downplayed the depths that Iraq had sunk to while at the same time refusing to ask any difficult questions of the White House. I know this is the case because we had televisions in Iraq in my office. We were also prompted not to discuss the progress of the war to reporters in the lead up to the 2004 elections. In the end, after multiple warnings most of us were scared to.

  • WOOFX

    Plenty of Afghan coverage .

    Saturday, July 11, 2009
    Bomb Kills 25 in Afghanistan;
    15 British, 2 US Troops killed in past Week;
    Blood-Drenched Warlords Return to Gov’t with Impunity

    I can tell by various web metrics that you guys are not interested in the Afghanistan story. You should be and I am going to parse it today anyway. It is one of the advantages of being non-profit that I write what I want and you can read it or not

    http://www.juancole.com/

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