A story almost to funny to beleive that it is the Guardian printing it! 
‘God forbid a success story’
US political blogger Glenn Reynolds says the media are doing their best to ignore the implication of elections elsewhere: that George Bush may have been doing something right
Thursday October 14, 2004
The photo above shows Afghan men waiting in line to vote. John Tammes, the reader and US army major who took it, was kind enough to email it to me and give me permission to use it.
Mr Tammes writes: “These men are waiting to vote in Dasht-e Robat (Parwan province). They were very good natured about waiting and they seemed to be proud of what they were doing.”
So they should have been: despite threats of death and destruction from the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida as well as many media commentators, they had turned out to vote. The election may not have been perfect - the UN apparently needs a better ink supplier - but international monitors pronounced it fair.
As a result, it is getting rather little attention in the western media - because if Afghanistan is obviously not the “quagmire” people have been calling it for three years, Bush must have been doing something right. That raises the troubling possibility that he might know what he is doing elsewhere, a notion that must not be entertained - if at all - until after the US elections.
The Afghan elections are not the only ones that matter for Bush this week. Australia’s John Howard, along with Tony Blair one of Bush’s strongest supporters, won what Australia’s The Age called a “thumping victory” over an opponent who had pledged to withdraw from the Iraq coalition, as Spain has.
Howard’s victory was big, and now antiwar forces have been reduced to claiming that the election had nothing to do with Iraq really. (Just compare these New York Times treatments: “War plays a role in elections in Australia” (pre-election) and take (post), relegating Iraq to the background.
The election was really about the economy, you see. In part no doubt it was - but what would it have been about had Howard lost? I think I know.
Like the Afghan elections, the benefit for Bush is largely negative but still very real: had those elections gone badly, there would have been renewed “quagmire” talk and claims that the Bush administration was incompetent; had Howard lost many of those now spinning the poll as an economic test would be holding it up as evidence of Bush’s unpopularity, the disastrousness of the Iraq war and so on.
**Instead, the US press is doing its considerable best to ignore these developments or to explain them away. **
Reporting from Kabul on the “prevailing attitude”, Scott Norvell quotes a regrettably typical comment from an American reporter in this part of the world. “At least it’s news,” the journalist said of the Afghan election scuffle over the weekend. “Otherwise this is just a success story.” God forbid
But that is what it was: a success, no matter how hard the international media tried to spin it. There were no car bombs raining body parts all over the polling stations; there were no last-minute assassinations; there were no drive-by shootings.
The best they could come up with for “news” was grumbling from hopelessly trailing opposition candidates about washable ink and threats of a boycott. The media’s disappointment was palpable.
I hope for more such disappointments in the future, for while Bush is the winner in these events, he is not the only one.
Mr Tammes emailed me last week after the opening day of an Afghan girls’ school. He wrote: "What better way to get ready for the historic presidential election here than to … open a girls’ school.
"The people here are interested in the election, and all have told us how wonderfully different it is to be involved in choosing a leader.
“However, security concerns regarding the election and such will not get in the way of their fierce determination to provide a better life for their kids - not by one day. School repair or construction is the number one request for assistance we get. And now these girls will get schooling, the same as the boys.”
That represents quite a change from three years ago, doesn’t it? Strange that it gets so little attention. The Kerry campaign no doubt hopes that this condition will persist for a few more weeks at least.
Rather, they continue with one single minded track which has been spoon fed to them so lovingly by the Bush Admin.
