The Other War

We haven't heard much from the president over the years about Afghanistan. It's become a footnote, an aside, an add-on to speeches about Iraq.

The administration bears much of the blame for that, but so does the media. Most news organizations have pulled out of Kabul, not because it's too dangerous but because it's too expensive at a time when that country has slipped off the collective radar screen. There may be 23,000 American troops there, but the overriding story remains Iraq.

Compared to the huge and passionate divisions over Iraq, there was a widespread consensus in this country that going into Afghanistan, which had harbored Osama, was the right thing to do. It was the war tied directly to 9/11, not to claims of illicit weapons that turned out to be false. And with at least a minimally functioning democratic government, Afghanistan seemed to be a success story.

Then, of course, it became the forgotten war. Violence began to rise, with suicide attacks increasing fivefold last year, amid a resurgence by the Taliban. Success, it seemed, was slipping away.

Thus it was that President Bush gave a speech at AEI devoted to Afghanistan. How did he do? Let's put it this way: MSNBC and Fox cut away to show more pictures of the still-dead Anna Nicole Smith.

It was, to put it kindly, not a stirring speech. It was not sprinkled with applause lines. The president talked about deteriorating conditions but took no responsibility for that. And while Bush called for 3,200 more U.S. troops--and urged NATO to help out--he's doing that by extending deployments. It's not like there are large groups of American soldiers just sitting around these days.

With Congress in the throes of a debate over the surge, my sense is that Afghanistan, and the American soldiers stationed there, will remain a back-burner issue, even with yesterday's speech.

"President Bush warned on Thursday that he expected 'fierce fighting' to flare in Afghanistan this spring, and he pressed NATO allies to provide a bigger and more aggressive force to guard against a resurgence by the Taliban and Al Qaeda that could threaten the fragile Afghan state," says the New York Times.

"With American and NATO commanders pressing for more troops and experts predicting that further gains by the Taliban could put the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in danger, Mr. Bush used his presidential platform to lay out what he said was substantial progress in Afghanistan since 2001, but also a continuing threat."

Things are getting worse, but we're making progress. Hmmm. What does that remind me of?

Captain Ed may be a conservative, but he is unimpressed:

"I'm not sure why this speech got so much attention. There's nothing much new here, and it's one of Bush's poorest performances on the stump. He sounds like he's ad-libbing a great deal of the speech, and he's not a good enough speaker to do it."