The Tribune Editorial Board and Middle East chaos

The Tribune January 8, editorial "An arch of chaos", once again displays the Trib's 13 year long support of criminal US wars of conquest in the Middle East that are largely responsible for the current chaos it laments. Before the Trib Editorial Board joined with fellow media giants like the New York Times and Washington Post to enable the criminal Bush administration to engage in unlawful regime change, al-Qaida was confined to a narrow, inhospitable area of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now they're spreading like a massive infection in Iraq, Syria and other areas from the boil of senseless war you enabled the Bush administration to lance. To dismiss getting hundreds of thousands killed, millions injured or homeless, and trillions squandered with this triviality: "More than a decade and two American wars in the Middle East have taught U.S. leaders about the potency — and limits — of our options," is unconscionable. You make this catastrophe sound like some simple, benign policy failure. To make your first priority there to "defend Israel, a close ally in a troubled neighborhood" ignores their massive humanitarian crimes against the Palestinian people, their hundred or so nukes, gained, in part, from stealing our nuclear secrets, and their relentless efforts to ensnare us into their plans to take out their rival for hegemony, Iran, with pre-emptive war if necessary. As we learned a hundred years ago from the Great War, close allies don't goad close allies into needless war. When you trumpet that "We back the efforts of a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, led by Illinois Republican Mark Kirk and New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, for new, more impactful sanctions on Tehran," you fail to mention that Kirk's bill essentially ties US to support Israel should they unilaterally decide to pull the trigger against Iran. To editorialize support for the junior Senator from Illinois, who's replaced the duo of John McCain (GOP, AZ) and Lindsey Graham (GOP, SC) as the Senate's biggest warmonger, is irresponsible.

The Trib Editorial Board loves to pontificate about punishing miscreants in Chicago and Illinois who betray the public trust. But when it comes to the monstrous criminality of our Middle East wars, not a word, not a peep, about bringing the evildoers to justice or firing the media enablers who continue to ignore past transgressions and advocate new ones.