Afghanistan Update

Last week saw history made in Afghanistan, as Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as that country's first ever freely-elected president. This event was a positive development not just for Afghanistan, but for the entire Muslim world, putting the lie to the notion that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

It is frankly shameful how the Karzai inauguration was all but ignored by the major American media. As Stephen Hayes wrote in the Weekly Standard:

Gratitude, it seems, is not terribly newsworthy. Neither is democracy. The Washington Post played Karzai's inauguration on page A-13, a placement that suggested it was relatively less important than Eliot Spitzer's decision to run for governor of New York or the decision of the U.S. government to import flu vaccine from Germany.

Unfortunately, it seems that good news is no news, as far as the media is concerned. Thankfully, Arthur Chrenkoff has again sought to rectify the situation, with another of his monthly updates on progress in Afghanistan:

The irony of the situation, if irony is indeed the correct word, is that the country that only three years ago was still ruled by the most dictatorial and backward of regimes can now claim to have one of the few democratically elected leaders in the whole region. Electing a president, of course, is only a start; a great many challenges remain for this impoverished and war-scarred country. How much still remains to be done to improve security, eradicate the scourge of drugs, and rebuild the physical and human infrastructure should not blind us to how much has already been achieved in the three years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime--indeed, how much continues to be achieved every day throughout Afghanistan, for most part out of the media spotlight. Below is a snapshot of the past month's unsung efforts to face and meet the challenges.

Freedom Blooms (Also available via Chrenkoff)