Weigel

Don’t Mention the War

The Obama campaign’s sparkling propaganda video “Forward” has been analyzed to death all day, but one more point: Does anybody else notice a word missing during the short section on foreign policy?

There’s footage of Afghanistan, I think, but no mention of the word or the policy. And any honest accounting of Obama’s 2008 campaign promises would have to mention Afghanistan. He campaigned on a troop surge there. Like John Kerry, he compared the “wrong war” – Iraq – to the one America should have focused on, and won. In power, after a long period of debate, Obama got the troop surge. And it’s not mentioned here, at all.