Good Question

Charles Krauthammer asks a very good question today: why is no one talking about the amazing success of US policy in Afghanistan?

Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as the legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This in Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just hostile but untouchable. What do liberals have to say about this singular achievement by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.

Good grief. This is news? "Afghanistan grows poppies" is the sun rising in the east. "Afghanistan inaugurates democratically elected president" is the sun rising in the west. Afghanistan has always grown poppies.

The answer is pretty simple: the left-dominated media is not interested in any successes of the Bush Administration, including this story showing that Taliban members have been contacting the US military there

willing to lay down their weapons following an arms-for-amnesty offer by the US envoy to the country.

Krauthammer goes on to comment why we have succeeded in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq.

Iraq has for decades been exposed to the ideas of political modernism -- fascism and socialism as transmuted through Baathism (heavily influenced by the European political winds of the 1920s and '30s) to which Saddam Hussein added the higher totalitarianism of his hero, Stalin. This history has succeeded in devaluing and delegitimizing secular ideologies, including liberal-democratic ones. In contrast, Afghanistan had suffered under years of appalling theocratic rule, which helped to legitimize the kind of secularist democracy that Karzai represents.

It seems to me that this could also be applicable to Iran and hopes for a regime change there.