Of last night's Democratic Party debate, Andre Damon (WSWS) observes, "The debate between Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley underscored the fact that the mass opposition to war that exists in the American population does not find reflection in the programs of any of the candidates running in the 2016 election. This includes Sanders, whose support for both the war in Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya was pointed out during the debate."
And while correct, it's also true that there's no push for a constituency for peace -- by which I mean, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, et al can't call for peace, can't argue for anything.
Not when a Democratic is in the White House, they're only vocal when a Republican's in the White House.
So the media silence is bad -- the corporate media silence -- but it's actually also a reflection of a left that has decided it's more important to spit polish Barack Obama than to protect the victims of war.
And that silence helps no one.
The failure to offer a true critique from the left of Barack's nonsense in Iraq has allowed the crisis to only worsen.
Now we're supposed to be outraged that Russia is doing what Barack should have been doing all along.
Shane Harris, Nancy A. Youssef and Michael Weiss (DAILY BEAST) report:
In the last Iraq war, the U.S. military helped beat ISIS’ predecessors with the help of the Sunni tribes. Now, Russia is trying to take a page from the old American playbook, and forge its own tribal alliances.
“Russia is serious in fighting terrorism and wants to finish the war as soon as possible, unlike the U.S.,” Faisal al-Asafi, a Sunni sheikh in Iraq’s Anbar province who opposes ISIS, told The Daily Beast. “Russia has already started bombing the transmission lines of ISIS while the U.S. is watching ISIS fighters moving freely from Syria to Anbar.”
Barack could have done that, could have wooed the Sunnis.
He didn't.
And what do you expect in a country that has no functioning peace movement and whose 'public radio' buries larger truths in parentheticals?
I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4497 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).
