Mark Yzaguirre writes in:
While I suspect a lot fewer Americans have served in Afghanistan, I think those who did serve in Afghanistan tended to come from the more elite portions of the military (intelligence, special forces, ROTC graduates) or in special civilian services (CIA, DEA, USAID) that probably have more contact and overlap with members of the upper middle class in general and the media in particular. Maybe I'm just extrapolating from personal experience here, but two of my classmates from Harvard Law School were killed in Afghanistan (CIA and USMC/DEA) and I have other friends who went there. But I can't think of anyone I know who was killed in Iraq and no one close to me went to Iraq. Could it be that part of the reason why Afghanistan may loom larger in a lot of people's minds is not just because that war was more popular than the Iraq war, but because that war affected the part of American society that has a bigger voice?