When I watch US media coverage of world events, I often have the impression that I truly live in a parallel universe. Of course, it is natural for the perspective of my fellow citizens on the other side of "The Pond" to be different. Many, if not most, are struggling just to get from one day to the next. They are typically worried about keeping their jobs -- if they are lucky enough to have them, having good schools and meaningful job opportunities for their children, keeping their health insurance and not going bankrupt if they happen to have someone in the family with a chronic medical condition, among other particulars. They are much more concerned about domestic issues that touch them directly. Even from my "lofty" perspective here, I am also concerned by those issues, on their and my own children's behalf.
Even so, given our global society, there are just too many geopolitical, cultural and social issues that touch upon and affect "domestic" issues that a true disservice is done to my fellow citizens when geopolitical issues are reported superficially. Or even worse, when those geopolitical issues are not reported at all.
It is not that we do not have good journalists. We have some truly outstanding ones, especially in the print media, in publications such as The New Yorker, where Seymour Hersch, for one, has broken story after story ... only for any of those important stories that did not find favor with the corporations or interests that control the media to fade from the public consciousness. They are never given the "hype" in broadcast or even other print media that would be given to coverage of, say, a comely pregnant spouse who has gone missing. This is not to say that the latter is not important, especially to those who love her. Still, the proportionality of the effect is much different.
In the United States, there is currently great and justified concern about the burgeoning budget and trade deficits, especially because they will hinder, if not prevent outright, government expenditure in areas that can assist the general population with their most common concerns. Much is made, for example, about the impact on the US budget deficit of passing health care reform that will benefit the US population as a whole, most often in an effort to stall passage of any meaningful reform. But the real "elephant in the room" is that the biggest annual deficit producer, once entitlement programs like Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security -- which actually do benefit large segments of the population -- are excluded, is the US military. Even President Obama proposes not simply to maintain, but to increase military expenditures in 2010.
The largest and ever-increasing portion of the military expenditures is due to the two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) begun during the administration of George W. Bush, and especially to Iraq. So it would seem logical, at least to me, to be a tiny bit curious about how the US managed to convince Tony Blair, at the time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and who was initially -- and correctly, in the opinion of anyone who knows a thing or two about international law -- against an invasion of Iraq, to jump on the war bandwagon. Had Blair not done so, it is quite likely that the so-called "Iraq War Coalition" would not have been formed at all. (My own theory is that somehow he was "Stepfordized" while visiting the Bush ranch in Texas. Even some of his closest friends didn't recognize him after that.)
Given this natural, to my mind at least, curiosity and the Iraq War's overall adverse impact on the US budget deficit as well as international relations generally, it is mystifying that the Chilcot Inquiry has received little to no mainstream media coverage in the United States. It is truly as if there has been a news blackout. Begun in November 2009 in the UK, the Chilcot Inquiry, otherwise known as the Iraq Inquiry, is an ongoing inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors with broad terms of reference to consider the UK’s involvement in Iraq from mid-2001 to July 2009. It is intended to cover "the run-up to the conflict, the subsequent military action and its aftermath with the purpose to establish the way decisions were made, to determine what happened and to identify lessons to ensure that in a similar situation in future, the UK government is equipped to respond in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."
If one "googles" news reports on the Chilcot Inquiry, one receives results like this. It is natural that the print media reports begin with British sources, of course. What is less natural, however, is that few "mainstream" US news sources carry any reports at all. Try searching for yourself with the newspapers that you most frequently read. My search through the Washington Post's archive, for example, retrieved eight stories since November 2009. Many of those were only available on-line. The two that were published in the print version were on pages A08 and A27 respectively. The A27 reference was in a column by Jim Hoagland. The A08 reference was to Tony Blair's testimony before the committee on Friday, 29 January 2009. The headline clearly provides the "slant" for the story, "Ex-British prime minister Tony Blair: The world is safer without Saddam Hussein."
Uh, Mr. Blair and WaPo headline writer, that's not the point.
Even PBS, my bastion of last hope for a "free" press because it is public and supposedly less susceptible to corporate interference, brought up only three responses to my "Chilcot Inquiry" search. "Iraq Inquiry" did better, having 647 results, but many of those actually referred to previous inquiries, not specifically the Chilcot Inquiry, which is the most recent.
So why is this "blackout" happening? I certainly have no answer and I wish that I did. At least, the UK is asking the questions to those who should be providing answers. A US commission is long overdue.
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