The New York Times is basically done with Afghanistan. My friend the Times reader reports:
Afghanistan is now entirely off the NYT’s front page. The question of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal has disappeared even from the coverage inside. Still no mention of the Ghani phone-call controversy.
There are two long articles trying to puzzle out how the Taliban might rule, and one on a protest for women’s rights in the city of Herat. This is now just another foreign story for the inside pages.
In an otherwise gloomy political environment, Democratic hopes now center on a public backlash to the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. This issue dominates both the front and inside pages.
Notably, after having failed to offer an institutional editorial on the Afghanistan situation for weeks, NYT has a big official editorial today on the abortion ruling. Back to normal.
I atone for my sins by reading the Washington Post, rather than the Times. The Post, too, is making a mountain out of the Supreme Court’s molehill procedural ruling in the Texas abortion case. Its two lead front page stories and lead editorial sound the alarm for the pro-abortion crowd.
Afghanistan makes the Post’s front page, but the story is about resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir.
As for our pullout, the party line is: Mistakes were made, maybe; it’s time to move on, definitely. This wouldn’t be the line if the Afghan debacle had occurred during a Republican administration.
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