After the Chilcot inquiry finally released its report this week, which found that Tony Blair had misled parliament and the British people into a bloody and illegal war in Iraq, some parts of the American left are bitter that there will not be a similar inquiry and condemnation of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and co in the Land of the Free. This is due to Obama and the Democrats, who have shown themselves every bit as hawkish and Bush’s Republican administration, which started the War. Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk has pointed out how Obama, despite his initial anti-war rhetoric, has been every bit as zealous in continuing the war, including assassination by drone, as his Republican predecessors. This is highly ironic, and once again shows the how farcical the decisions of the Nobel Committee are, as Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As indeed was Henry Kissinger, despite the Nixon presidency’s support for every extreme-right Fascist butcher and mass murderer across the world from South America to Indonesia, including horrific bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Obama was able to position himself as the peace candidate against Shrillary, as he had been in the Senate at the time Bush declared war, and so couldn’t vote against it. Once in power, however, he passed legislation ruling out any future prosecution of Bush and co for starting the conflict.
In this piece in Counterpunch, John Stauber comments on how the Democrats as well as the Republicans gave their support to the war in Iraq. Clinton, Kerry and Biden, the leading Democrats, voted for the war in 2002. The progressive faction in the Democrats, MoveOn, also worked with Nancy Pelosi to maintain public support for the war. It could have been a powerful voice for peace. Stauber also mentions a book by another journalist, David Barstow, which revealed how the Bush administration had run the ‘Pentagon Pundits Programme’, in which the major US TV networks put on the air retired military analysts, who recited the material they were fed by the White House to broadcast pro-war propaganda. Despite work by himself, Barstow and other journalists exposing the lies of the press and the political parties, Stauber observes that most Americans are still unaware of all this, and continue to believe the lies of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Stauber concludes
So no Chilcot type investigation for America, the source of the war. 13 years after the launch of the illegal, first-strike offensive attack that created ISIS and has killed and displaced millions, some are asking why not. Blame Obama the peace poser and his pro-war Democrats. American Exceptionalism strikes again.
The original article is at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/07/wheres-the-us-chilcot-report-blame-obama-hillary-biden-and-kerry/
This should be a source of major discontent in America. Already voices are being raised in radical news organisations like The Young Turks and elsewhere that the Democrats and their presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, are showing themselves to be every bit as corrupt, corporatist and pro-war as the Republicans. Despite Bernie Sanders’ attempts to drum up support for Clinton, many of those on the American left are severely disappointed and alienated from the Democrat party. They are also becoming increasingly disillusion with the broader American political system, which permits only two parties to dominate the political landscape, and which has been careful doctored to maintain the interests of corporate big business against the needs of the American people.
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