Huffington Post Continues Running Completely Inaccurate Headlines
The front page of the Huffington Post is continuing to run inaccurate, sensationalist, politicized headlines in hopes of trying to ally another source’s story with the Huffington Post’s own Liberal political bias.
The first such instance we noticed took place in November of this year when a Huffington Post headline tried to twist the words of Joe Wurzelbacher in hopes of further de-legitimizing Sarah Palin.
Now the Huffington Post is trying once again to connect a Time magazine story about the failures of the global aviation security system in capturing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he boarded Flight 253 to the war in Afghanistan. The headline on the front page of the Huffington Post reads “The Opportunity Cost Of Afghanistan: Vulnerable To Terrorism At Home,” however, the Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson Time magazine article entitled “The Lessons of Flight 253,” is more a criticism of the entire U.S. security infrastructure in combatting the War on Terror than it is the outright statement against the War in Afghanistan the Huffington Post headline alludes to.
The Time article does state that the United States must: focus on more than Afghanistan, put greater pressure on the Pakistani government to oust militant groups throughout Pakistan, address threats in places like Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, and remember that Al Qaeda is much bigger than just Osama Bin Laden. However, the article is more of an analysis of the breakdown in global security than it is a railing invective against continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
Like many other Liberal groups, the Huffington Post continues to miss some key facts about Afghanistan. As the Time article states, Afghanistan is not the entire War on Terror, however, providing sustainable security and development in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the first step in insuring Al Qaeda and the Taliban can never again easily gather in a single place to plot new attacks on the world. Also, simply because the War on Terror and the U.S. presence in Afghanistan have both been mismanaged does not mean the solution is for the United States to disengage from Afghanistan.
The Huffington Post should be calling for more intelligent solutions and holding the Obama Administration accountable for bringing change to U.S. domestic and foreign policy. If the United States security system is flawed (a criticism that has been lodged against the TSA since before 9/11) then it is naive to simply infer that the United States will instantly put the time, money, and effort they have been pouring into Afghanistan into the security infrastructure of the United States. There is no reason for the Huffington Post to think that the Obama Administration is unable to create effective policies for U.S. security and strategies for success in Afghanistan at the same time. To infer otherwise is to insult the intelligence of the Obama Administration and disregard the reputation for ingenuity that the United States was once known for. More importantly, such inferences, continue to create fear and mistrust in the American people of the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan.