by Michael Miner
Article Reprint
Some say the editorial page is a newspaper’s Department of Futile Gestures, as the opinions expressed therein turn a nifty phrase or two a lot more often than they turn public opinion. There’s even a word by which journalists celebrate this futility, Afghanistanism—which is two-fisted advocacy in the service of remote corners of the earth that readers haven’t the slightest interest in and the paper hasn’t the slightest influence over. Alas, Afghanistanism isn’t what it used to be. Since 2003, America has actually thought about Afghanistan.