Buried on MSNBC’s front page Wednesday was an interesting article from Reuters, which I found using my Fluent News iPhone app. And those are pretty much the only places this story resides. Just imagine the following came out while Bush was president, or during a John McCain presidency: this story would be one of the major leads for all news sources. Liberal/progressive groups would be out and about denouncing the GOP president. But, since Obama’s president, well, not much to see, move on
An average of two children per day were killed in Afghanistan last year, with areas of the once peaceful north now among the most dangerous, an independent Afghan rights watchdog said Wednesday.
The Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report that, of the 2,421 civilians the group registered as killed in conflict-related security incidents in 2010, some 739 were under the age of 18.
Now, the report blames 17% of the child deaths on the US and NATO (that would have been Bush or McCain in other times), and most of the rest on “insurgents.” And notice that the peaceful north is now a complete mess.
Civilian and military casualties hit record levels in 2010, with violence at its worst since the Taliban were overthrown by U.S.-led Afghan forces in late 2001.
Again, if Obama were not president, this would be a lead story. Mostly, the media has ignored Obama’s Big Afghanistan Adventure and the consequences of his Surge. Groups like ANSWER, Code Pink, and The World Can’t Wait have been relegated to fringe players who are rarely heard from.
