The American public is said to have a taste for mild rebukes like “Goodnight Bush” but there’s no strong outcry for principled action which require holding people’s feet to the fire: real investigation, trial, and punishment beginning with impeachment. There is little organized challenge aimed at elected leaders on issues you’d think would merit at least voting reconsideration and pointed questions. Where’s the outrage?

Obama is quite a hawk, voting for war funding and now Obama supports telecom immunity for what used to be considered illegal domestic spying. An Obama presidency means more war is on the horizon: The Chicago Tribune quoted him on his hawkishness toward Iran. Despite this he’s still getting campaign funding from ordinary people.

There’s no clear indication that Bush, Cheney, and the rest will suffer any sort of investigation, trial, and punishment for warrantless spying, lying to the public about the justification for the War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran is next), or any of the other things people hate them for. Obama never favored impeachment because it would be a dysfunctional distraction (“I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority,” [and,] “I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction,” he added. “We would once again, rather than attending to the people’s business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus.”) and the US public isn’t holding him to account for that telling him that accountability and the rule of law are in no way a dysfunction. Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck in a corporate-managed election that is designed to leave out third parties and independents with varying dissident views.

The so-called anti-war movement in the US is dead. Its continued inaction builds on a pattern of shutting down to make way for the latest pro-war Democrat: not a peep during Sen. Kerry’s run, no serious criticism for Rep. Pelosi (“impeachment is off the table“), and now not a peep during Sen. Obama’s campaign.

The nation is sowing unaccountability. Nothing good will come from that.