Portland cartoonist Matt Bors reports from Afghanistan.
by Alison Hallett
PORTLANDER MATT BORS is a nationally syndicated political cartoonist who several weeks ago embarked on a month-long tour of Afghanistan. Traveling with two friends—experienced war reporter and cartoonist Ted Rall and photographer Steven Cloud—the three men aim to explore the areas of Afghanistan that traditional, embedded reporters rarely cover. Bors is keeping a cartoon diary of his experiences on his blog, as well as collecting material for future long-form projects.
"All I can do is present the situation as honestly as possible," Bors told the Mercury before he left. "I don't imagine the cartoons that come from this will have the normal humorous tone of my editorial cartoons, but I'm also not pretending to be an objective journalist. I wouldn't want that anyway. 'Objective journalists' have been reporting from Afghanistan for nine years and they rarely venture out of Kabul or their embed program. Our main goal is to see how Afghans outside of these areas actually live."
"We've been in Afghanistan for almost nine years and there's no end in sight," he continued. "With Obama's surge and the insurgency both ramping up offensives, this is the most important time of the war, probably the beginning of the end, really. Public support is tanking and there appears to be no way out. If there's anytime to pay attention to what's going on over there, it's now."
Follow Matt Bors' Afghanistan updates at mattbors.com/blog and read a complete transcript of this interview at portlandmercury.com.
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