With 65 deaths, July officially became the deadliest month for American soldiers in Afghanistan. Nine years into the war in Afghanistan, American casualties continue to rise at a rapid pace. The past three months — June, July and August — have amassed a total of 180 American deaths. Yet news of the war in Afghanistan is seemingly absent in our media.

‘It is very hard to keep the general public highly interested in anything for a long period of time,’ said Syracuse University Middle Eastern studies professor Hossein Bashiriyeh. Oct. 7 will mark the nine-year anniversary of America’s military involvement in Afghanistan, and using President Barack Obama’s timetable, troops will not begin drawing down until July 2011.

On Aug. 31, Obama officially announced combat operations in Iraq have ended. The president did not declare the war an outright victory and said there is still much work to be done, but ‘it’s time to turn the page.’

By sticking to his timetable in Iraq and ending America’s combat mission as pledged, the Obama administration saw the Iraq withdrawal as a political victory. The fact remains, however, that 50,000 troops are still in Iraq, and since the end of the combat mission, two more soldiers have been killed there.

The timetable for leaving Afghanistan has also been questioned. The U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said Obama predicting a drawdown in 10 months is ‘probably giving our enemy sustenance.’ After returning from Afghanistan, U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said plans to start reducing troops by the summer of 2011 are probably unrealistic.

In his Aug. 31 speech, Obama said his strategy in Afghanistan is similar to his strategy in Iraq. Increased forces will be sent to Afghanistan ‘for a limited time to provide space for the Afghans to build their capacity and secure their own future.’

With an increase in troops to Afghanistan and a continuing rise in American casualties there, the question remains: Why has there been so little media coverage of the Afghanistan war?

According to a NPR report, ‘Afghanistan has received just 2 percent of all news coverage since Jan. 1.’

This is because of the ‘increasing apathy regarding developments in the region on the part of the American public,’ Bashiriyeh said. ‘Despite all the escalation, what is going on there is not news anymore.’

When the Bush administration shifted its attention to Iraq, so did the media and the public. The American public is much more consumed with domestic issues than our struggling war efforts abroad.

Between the oil spill disaster and the struggling economy, Obama has had many domestic problems to deal with that have overshadowed the military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The American media has often been criticized for being ethnocentric, and the trending coverage towards domestic issues has reinforced this theory.

There have already been nine American casualties this month in Afghanistan. With the end of combat missions in Iraq, Obama said in his Aug. 31 speech, ‘we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on the offensive’ in Afghanistan. For the next 10 months, the American public will cautiously wait to see if Obama can stick to his timetable, without any help from the media.

Benjamin Klein is a junior political science and magazine journalism major. His column appears weekly, and he can be reached at btklein@syr.edu.

Published on September 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm