US double standard set out in black and white

A comprehensive US government report on the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of the previous president was released on Tuesday.

Carefully crafted by the Senate Homeland Security and Rules committees to ensure support from both parties, the 128-page review of what transpired on Jan 6 excludes the word "insurrection" except in quotation marks and footnotes and uses the word "rioters" just 27 times. This flies in the face of the TV footage seen around the world, which showed the mob, intent on stopping the validation of Joe Biden's election as president, violently breaching security lines and breaking into the Capitol building.

The congressional investigators' sugarcoated review belies the written statements from the 50 police officers who defended the Capitol and described how the mob broke into and "vandalized" the Capitol building, "ransacked" offices and "stole property", and how they "attacked members of law enforcement and threatened the safety and lives of our nation's elected leaders".

Perhaps the US tendency to sugarcoat violent espousals of political views as freedom of speech has left the report writers blind to what was staring them in the face, as for months when black-clad rioters caused mayhem in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, indiscriminately assaulting people and attacking the police with bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails, the same US Senate members called them "peaceful protesters", "democracy fighters" and "heroes".

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, even said the riots in Hong Kong were "a beautiful sight to behold". Yet when that "beautiful sight" appeared in front of her, she called those responsible "punks" and said she will "never forgive these people".

A double standard? Of course. That has become par for the course for US politicians. For decades, they have been trying to cause trouble in whatever country or region they dislike. It is a habitual trick they play to support opposition forces against the local government and encourage violence, so they get a chance to intervene and promote regime change.

In doing so, they always hide their motives under the guise of calls for "democracy" and "freedom", and a phrase they dearly like to use "standing with the people there". Yet from Ukraine to Venezuela, from Syria to Libya, people have suffered as a result of the attention the US politicians have given to affairs that do not concern them.

Intent on their mischief-making elsewhere, US politicians have ignored the mounting problems at home; both the long-term problems such as the widening social divides and increasing racial hatred, and the immediate COVID-19 crisis that has killed almost 600,000 people in the country.

While the candy-sucking report declines to draw the conclusion, the Capitol riot was incontrovertible evidence of the failing governance system of the United States.