It’s touching how American neoconservatives who have no regard for international law when they want to invade some troublesome country have developed a sudden reverence for national sovereignty.

Apparently, context is everything. So, the United States attacking Grenada or Nicaragua or Panama or Iraq or Serbia is justified even if the reasons sometimes don’t hold water or don’t hold up before the United Nations, The Hague or other institutions of international law.

However, when Russia attacks Georgia in a border dispute over Georgia’s determination to throttle secession movements in two semi-autonomous regions, everyone must agree that Georgia’s sovereignty is sacrosanct and Russia must be condemned.

U.S. newspapers, such as the New York Times, see nothing risible about publishing a statement from President George W. Bush declaring that “Georgia is a sovereign nation and its territorial integrity must be respected.”

No one points out that Bush should have zero standing enunciating such a principle. Iraq also was a sovereign nation, but Bush invaded it under false pretenses, demolished its army, overthrew its government and then conducted a lengthy military occupation resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The invasion of Iraq also wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, Bush proclaimed an exceptional right of the United States to invade any country that might become a threat to American security or to U.S. global dominance. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Grim Vision” or see our book, Neck Deep]

When asked questions about international law, Bush would joke: “International law? I better call my lawyer.”

The neocons’ contempt for international law goes back even further – to the 1980s and the illegal contra war against Nicaragua and the invasion of Panama. Only in the last few days have the neocons discovered an appreciation for multilateral institutions and the principles of non-intervention.

Despite this history, leading U.S. newspapers don’t see hypocrisy. Instead, they have thrown open their pages to prominent neocons and other advocates of U.S.-led invasions so these thinkers now can denounce Russia while not mentioning any contradictions.

On Monday, the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial writers published their own editorial excoriating Russia, along with two op-eds, one by neocon theorist Robert Kagan and another co-authored by Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke.

All three – the Post editorial board, Kagan and Holbrooke – were gung-ho for invading Iraq, but now find the idea of Russia attacking the sovereign nation of Georgia inexcusable, even if Georgia’s leaders in Tblisi may have provoked the conflict with an offensive against separatists in South Ossetia along the Russian border.

“Whatever mistakes Tblisi has made, they cannot justify Russia’s actions,” Holbrooke and his co-author Ronald D. Asmus wrote. “Moscow has invaded a neighbor, an illegal act of aggression that violates the U.N. Charter and fundamental principles of cooperation and security in Europe.”

And to top matters off, the authors accused Russia of breaking an even older international covenant: “Beginning a well-planned war … as the Olympics were opening violates the ancient tradition of a truce to conflict during the Games.”

The New York Times ran an op-ed by neocon columnist William Kristol, who also condemned Russia’s aggression without indicating any remorse for his own enthusiasm for U.S. invasions of countries that Washington didn’t like.

Wearing Blinders

While major U.S. news outlets may be comfortable wearing blinders that let them see only wrongdoing by others, the rest of the world views the outrage from Bush and the neocons over Russia as a stunning double standard.

This larger problem is that the Bush administration – along with its neocon allies and many establishment Democrats – have lost any credibility with the world community when it comes to invoking international law.

Bush has applied these legal principles a la carte for years (for instance, ignoring the Geneva Conventions when he chooses), and many longer-serving U.S. officials have viewed events through the lens of American exceptionalism for decades.

For instance, even as the Reagan administration condemned terrorism in the 1980s, it secretly armed the Nicaraguan contras who engaged in acts of terrorism inside Nicaragua. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush denounced Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, everyone conveniently forgot that he had invaded Panama in 1989.

It has been as if the rules moved on separate tracks, one set for the United States and one set for everyone else – and it was impolite to notice.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, it has become harder to ignore Washington’s double standards. Also, after the five-plus-year fiasco in Iraq, the Bush administration must confront both the limitations on its own imperial reach and the fact that it has done grave damage to the protocols of international behavior.

As Russia is now demonstrating in its conflict with Georgia, other big powers may want to play by the same do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do rules laid down by the United States.

It is a case of Washington, Bush and the neocons reaping what they have sown.
_______



About author
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Robert Parry's web site is Consortium News

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/16431

We've been meddling in other nations affairs openly and overtly and justifying military actions we choose to undertake for a very long time.

Bush is just the latest and one of the most arrogant U.S. presidents lead the charge...and people here in the U.S. wonder why internationally so many dislike the policies of the U.S. haha

Or why so many americans are discusted

this administration we have here in office is a disgrace not only to us as americans, our military, and forefathers, but to the many other countries who once looked at us as a nation to model themselve from... I think George Washington is probably rolling over in his grave this very second to the thought that not only is the country falling into a hole but the shovel that digging that hole shares his very name....


I personally feel we as americans are just as much to blame as the administration for letting this happen and if we dont speak up, take action and make it known that we will accept nothing less than a postive change for the better this election, it will only get worst..
THIS IS THE U.S.A. We're the ones that are supposed to be holding ourselve to a higher standard, not the excetpion to the rule. I don't know about all of you but in my home we lead by example, not by dictating..

I'm so sick of all you self hating Americans!
Get this straight. It's about sticking by your allies! Georgia is our ally, Russia (namely, Putin) wants to smother and destroy anything that remotely resembles democracy.
Keep sticking up for these enemies of our country and see what you get.
I suppose Bill Clinton bombed Bosnia to help all those poor people who were getting slaughtered. Think again, It was to take the headlines away from his blowjob!
By the way, weren't the oppresssed in Bosnia Muslims. See how they thanked us?

LOL, sovereignty is only sacred when the great burning Bush says it is, didn't you know that?

Can it get any worse eh?

by Dave Lindorff
We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any independent American corporate news media these past few days as the coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

In the first case, we had the completely pointless if prurient airing of Edwards’ sordid extra-marital affair. Pointless because Edwards at this time is a has-been politician. If there were any point to the coverage it should have been, as Alex Cockburn pointed out in his journal Counterpunch, the abject failure of those same reporters and “news” organizations to cover the story back last fall, when it might have mattered. Back then, when the only paper covering the story was the National Enquirer, Edwards was still a viable candidate for the presidency, or a possible contender for vice president again. It’s not that his personal sex-life has any news value in and of itself. The point is that had he won the nomination, or been picked as a vice presidential running mate, its inevitable exposure later during the general election would have destroyed any Democratic presidential chances. And the corporate media knew back then all about this story. They just weren’t pursuing it (and the current blitz of stories proves that they weren’t holding back out of principle!).

Then there’s the Georgia war. I was stunned by the graphic depictions of Russian brutality in Gori and other cities that were massively bombed and shelled, with apartment buildings collapsed into rubble, children killed, and civilians targeted. The New York Times, in particular, had photographic images of dead Georgian soldiers, of charred bodies, of hysterical mothers. On NBC News, Russian planes were shown dropping their loads of bombs on apartments.

We read that President Bush condemned the Russian invasion of another nation and called for an immediate ceasefire. Yet there was not one word of astonishment or challenge from reporters or commentators or editorial writers at this stunningly cynical statement coming from a leader who himself is responsible for the blatantly illegal and much more destructive invasion of another nation. And remember, while Georgia is on Russia’s border, and was at least possibly guilty of oppressing and attacking and perhaps even killing members of the Russian minority in two of its provinces (Georgia bombed the biggest town in the secessionist province of Ossetia, killing perhaps 1000 civilians, before Russia invaded), Iraq is half a world away from America and was minding its own business, not threatening Americans in any way. Russia, thus far, has at most killed a few thousand Georgians. America has, by most accounts killed hundreds of thousands and perhaps as many as 1.2 million Iraqis, very few of them combatants.

We watch and read voluminous reports on this relatively small Russian war against its neighbor and former domestic province (Georgia was one of the SSRs in the old USSR), and meanwhile there is almost nothing being reported about the continuing five-year-old war launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. And certainly, over the course of five years we have gotten no visual depiction of that war even approaching the scenes that were on display from the front in Georgia.

Apparently, in the view of our corporate news editors and managers, it is important for Americans to fully witness the bloody horrors of war when that war is being fought by Russia, but we are to be carefully protected from seeing such things when they are being perpetrated by our own centurions. We aren’t even allowed to see the grievous injuries and death being suffered by our own troops.

And, of course, don’t feel to good about the quality of the coverage of the Russian/Georgia conflict either. This too is biased. Indeed one reason we are shown all the carnage is that the US government has been backing Georgia, and there is evidence that the US even encouraged the Georgian attacks on ethnic Russians which provoked the invasion. The US also has obligingly airlifted Georgian troops back from Iraq to Georgia.

This is not news. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

American corporate news media broadcasts and articles should include a disclaimer: “This report was approved by the media managers of the Bush/Cheney administration.”

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening
__________________

The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news.
Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theater directors instead of journalists."
~~~ Arundhati Roy ~~~

Contrary to popular belief, neoconservatives have a love of enforcing and worshiping international law as if it is the ruling doctrinal code of the world. It is the very thing that makes them so disgusting--they're liberals on crack.

That said, your topic is misleading and full of globalist propaganda. This sentence says it all:



I wonder what this author would say of the U.S.-supported theft of Kosovo from the Serbs? Apparently it's only a double-standard when only specific people advocate certain policies.

I am finding it verry interesting that the media is actualy showeing civilian casulties something that was missing from our wars in the middle east. ya know screaming crying mothers and mutilated children.

WASHINGTON - August 13 - The New York Times reports today: "The United States took a series of steps that emboldened Georgia: sending advisers to build up the Georgian military, including an exercise last month with more than 1,000 American troops; pressing hard to bring Georgia into the NATO orbit..." Neither President Bush this morning nor Secretary of State Rice yesterday took questions following their comments.


FRANCIS BOYLE
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle is author of Breaking All The Rules and Destroying World Order. He said today: "It is curious but not surprising how the Bush administration and its allies have now found renewed respect for international law in the Caucasus, but not when it comes to (1) the United States invading Afghanistan and Iraq, while threatening to attack Iran; (2) Israel invading Lebanon and Palestine, attacking Syria, and threatening to attack Iran; (3) Ethiopia invading Somalia; (4) Colombia attacking Ecuador, etc. From an international law perspective, the real issue here is whether during her trip to Tbilisi a month ago, U.S. Secretary of State Rice gave the proverbial green light to Georgia to attack South Ossetia and thus deliberately provoke an overreaction by Russia. And how does this fit in with the U.S./U.K. naval armada currently steaming for the Persian Gulf and possible military confrontation with Iran over its right to engage in nuclear enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?"


RICHARD FALK
Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of more than 20 books including The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq. Falk recently returned from Turkey.

He said today: "I am above all astounded by the mainstream media's failure to take proper note of the pipeline geopolitics that infuses the Russian moves with their global significance. Also, in the course of condemning Russia, Bush failed to take any account of the fact of Georgia's provocations in denying rights to the people of South Ossetia, which continue to threaten the population with Georgian oppressive rule. On a wider front, Washington's effort to penetrate the Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia by seeking to promote NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, together with the intended deployment of a missile defense system in East Europe, undoubtedly helped tip the scales in Moscow.

"One can imagine the U.S. outrage if Russia reacted similarly to American interventions in Cuba or Panama. Even so, the Russian recourse to force across an international boundary is a challenge to the core principle of international law and to the UN Charter. This is not a defensive use of force, and from an international law perspective, should be challenged and censured.

"At the same time, it pales in significance if compared to analogous U.S. behavior, especially the 2003 unprovoked and unlawful aggression against Iraq. At this point, what is needed in Georgia is for the Russians to withdraw, and for the UN to establish a peacekeeping presence in South Ossetia (and Abkhasia) capable of protecting the human rights and autonomy of these two societal entities until some sort of internationally monitored referendum can serve as the basis for self-determination in both places. To revive Cold War rhetoric of 'the free world' in relation to Georgia, as Bush did in his statement on the crisis, is one more instance of monumental irresponsibility by the president, and Orwellian in its implication that Georgia was a democracy respectful of human rights."
More Information http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0813-12.htm

I still find it quite astonishing that none of these types of articles ever address or even acknowledge the UN violations of Saddam as he EMBARRISHED the world and single handedly mad a mockery out of the UN for over ten years.

Im more suprised that there were almost zero articles on how saddam was our friend in the middle east for decades all the while he allegadly gassed the kurds in 88". But thats realy not the topic of this thread

You can not entertain Iraq on the same playing field as your examples always point too. There are far less similarities and far more differentations. The reason why none of your articles ever refers to those ten years of Iraq holding the world and the UN hostage is that any reference to these would greatly overshawdows any conclusion reached.

What? While they were searching for WMD's that weren't there? Also, what's this about Bill Clinton getting a blow job?

nol one thinks saddam held the world hostage, 3/4 of his country was under a no fly zone and severe economic sanctions in place killing many thousands of innocents. Were do you get your history from?

OH, PLEASE!!! THE USA IS THE GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD. AND DON'T EVER FORGET IT!

LINDYY

It is true that the U.N. sanctions killed more Iraqis than it punished Saddam, but what do you mean "no one talks" about our Cold War-alliance with Saddam? Of course it's talked about, and it's a perfect case in retrospect showing the difference in Cold War policies and today. And what exactly do you mean "alleged" gassing of the Kurds? I'm not for the war in Iraq, but that gassing is not alleged--it's well documented as actually happening.

One still cannot tune into a discussion of Iraq without a neo-con bringing up The Gassing of His Own People as a reason to go to war. Yes, it was a terrible thing. I remember the photographs of the bloated bodies of mothers, their arms still wrapped around their dead children. This happened in 1988. So why didn't the United States react then?

And, more to the point, what actually happened, and how did the U.S. respond at the time?



Halabja is a town in the southern part of Iraqi Kurdistan with about 60,000 inhabitants. In 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, Kurdistan resistance fighters supported by Iranian troops took possession of the town.

In a widely circulated account, Kendal Nezan wrote:

The next morning Iraqi bombers appeared out of a clear blue sky. The people of Halabja were used to the successive attacks and counter-attacks of the Iraq-Iran war that had ravaged the region since September 1980. They thought they were in for the usual reprisal raid. Those who had time huddled in makeshift shelters. The rest were taken by surprise. Wave after wave of Iraqi Migs and Mirages dropped chemical bombs on the unsuspecting inhabitants. The town was engulfed in a sickly stench like rotten apples. The bombing stopped at nightfall and it began to rain hard. Iraqi troops had already destroyed the local power station, so the survivors began to search the mud with torches for the dead bodies of their loved ones.

The scene that greeted them in the morning defied description. The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers' breasts. Children held their parents' hands, frozen to the spot like a still from a motion picture. In the space of a few hours 5,000 people had died. The 3,200 who no longer had families were buried in a mass grave. [Nezan, "When Our 'Friend' Saddam Was Gassing the Kurds," Le Monde diplomatique, March 1998 ]

According to Nezan, the gassing of the Kurds actually began in 1987 and continued into 1989. The aftermath of the Halabja massacre, however, was photographed by Iranian war correspondents and thus became worldwide news.



However, recently Stephen Pelletiere wrote in the New York Times that Iran, not Iraq, gassed the Kurds of Halabja.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time. [Pelletiere, "A War Crime, or an Act of War?" The New York Times, January 31, 2003]

On the surface, Pelletier's story makes little sense in light of the Reagan Administration's reaction to Halabja, or else the Reagan Administration's reaction makes little sense. Take your pick.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/02/08_gassing.html