Not in the weekend Globe

is the one piece I was looking forward to, as advertised in Friday's paper:

"Farewell Africa: Globe correspondent Stephanie Nolen departs her Johannesburg post with a bittersweet look at the continent's progress in her five years reporting there."

Presumably Nolen got bumped by the three pages on Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, on the occasion of no. 100 having been reached. I have mixed feelings about articles like this:

1. Yes: quite right to remind people that there is a huge human cost to this Afghanistan mission. Our soldiers are doing something noble and tremendously difficult, and when they make the supreme sacrifice of course they deserve three pages. Attention should be paid. [moment of silence, head bowed]

2. But... I'm not actually going to read it. Did you? A quick skim strongly suggests there's nothing new here, factually or so to speak emotionally. And articles about the troops never have useful policy implications, since the take-away message is always on the one hand that the soldiers believe strongly in what they are doing (which is indeed a point worth bringing out) and on the other hand that it doesn't actually seem to be working. I've yet to see an article that pushes beyond that stalemate to something I didn't already know.

3. If you have Christie Blatchford covering the military, The Point Will Get Made.