Byron York in the Washington Examiner reports on the strange absenc... Even while the war in Iraq grinds on and the war in Afghanistan is escalating dramatically, the most militant wings of the anti-war left seem strangely quiescent.

"The news that emerged is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually fallen off the liberal radar screen. Kossacks (as fans of DailyKos like to call themselves) who were consumed by the Iraq war when George W. Bush was president are now, with Barack Obama in the White House, not so consumed, either with Iraq or with Obama’s escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, they barely seem to care.

As part of a straw poll done at the convention, the Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg presented participants with a list of policy priorities like health care and the environment. He asked people to list the two priorities they believed “progressive activists should be focusing their attention and efforts on the most.” The winner, by far, was “passing comprehensive health care reform.” In second place was enacting “green energy policies that address environmental concerns.”

And what about “working to end our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan”? It was way down the list, in eighth place."

What could explain this dramatic shift in “progressive” priorities? Most obviously, the absence of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney as lightening rods for hatred might explain the sudden disinterest in foreign policy. More charitably, the economic downturn and struggles over health care reform might simply give “progressives” bigger policy fish to fry than rehashing debates over American interventions abroad.

It is also possible that progressives are simply biding their time, awaiting a battlefield reversal that will give them the political context to renew their attention to longstanding themes about nefarious American imperialism and the beloved “lessons of Vietnam”. After all, it is not the case that the far-left drops anti-American themes entirely during Democratic presidencies, as the anti-globalization crazes during the Clinton administration attest.

What may be more revealing is the reaction that emerges in the coming weeks to the report of the strategy review in Afghanistan. As the United States undertakes a renewed debate over whether the costs of escalating the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Central Asia are worth the limited prospect for gains, it will become more clear whether the anti-war movement was merely a special case of anti-Bushism or whether it remains a long-term project of opposition to U.S. foreign policy.

http://www.poligazette.com/2009/08/18/theres-a-war-on/