The US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice threw a fit and let loose a furious tirade against Russia and China for their veto of a resolution aimed at Syria. Rami G. Khouri points out how hypocritical her reaction is.

Rice said that she was “disgusted” by the double veto, and added that, “A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant.”

She was correct, of course, and we should all share her anger at the double veto, because the ongoing killings by all sides in Syria are unacceptable by any standards.
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Yet I chuckle nevertheless, because am not sure whether we should assess Ms. Rice’s outburst at the level of Russian and Chinese policy, conditions in Syria, the work of the U.N. Security Council, or the foreign policy consistency or duplicity of the United States.
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I cannot take Rice and the U.S. seriously here, because the U.S. sets the world’s gold standard on using vetoes in the Security Council to shield criminal activity, by Israel in particular. I am not sure if Rice and the U.S. government think the world is stupid or merely perpetually servile to American swagger.

The problem she has in being taken seriously is that the U.S. has used its veto power in the council 42 times since 1972 to kill resolutions seeking to affirm international law and stop assorted Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. Virtually every major Israeli contravention of international law, U.N. resolutions and basic human decency has been shielded at one time or another by the U.S. through the use of the veto power – including land expropriations, settlements expansion, murder and assassinations, respecting holy sites, attacking civilians in neighboring countries, applying the Fourth Geneva Convention to occupied lands and populations, intercepting civilian aircraft, killing U.N. employees, and more.

It will be interesting to see what the US will do with its client state Bahrain which is also cracking down on those calling for democratic change. The repression there has not yet reached the appalling level in Syria but the outlook is not good.

But US governments have become so used to applying double standards in their dealings with other countries that I doubt that it even occurs to them that they are being hypocritical.