All nations are equal but some are more equal than others

It will soon be a half-century to the day that a world-renowned 'leftist' wrote 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals', exhorting them to expose lies and tell the truth. And when much of the intelligentsia and leadership in the 'West' - the USA and its allies - cautions and warns the Russian Federation its incursion in and anticipated annexation of Crimea - is a violation of the UN Charter - they are certainly not lying. It is. But these voices were strangely silent when similar or worse actions were committed by the US and its allies.. No one called the 'war' in Vietnam - during which some 3-4 million people were killed in 3 countries by some of the most brutal and barbaric bombings in history (daisy-cutters, napalm, Kissinger's order to use 'anything that flies on anything that moves') a violation of international law. And of course the Korean War (so-called) in which a similar devastation was carried out in North Korea - actually had UN approval, as Stalin ordered his UN ambassador to abstain from vetoing the UN resolution. More recently the West supported dictators like Iran's Shah, Saddam Hussein till 1990, and Indonesia's Suharto ('our kind of guy' being Bill Clinton's assessment) who killed perhaps a million in his own country and some 200,000 in East Timor (with the gleeful supply of weapons by Western nations including Canada) who replaced Sukarno who had to be evicted for the crime of throwing out the IMF (though technically that was not a violation of the UN Charter). The more recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (casualties of locals unknown, and conservatively estimated at minimum in the hundreds of thousands plus devastation of countries and displacement of millions) were preceded not only with boasts about the 'shock and awe' of such carpet bombings, but declarations that the West would act with or without the consent of the UN. Likewise the continued theft of Palestinian land and resources (specially water) supported by the US and dismissed as the (minor) settlements problem. In Animal Farm, Orwell mocked the USSR, as a place where 'all animals were equal, but some were more equal than others'. In the post-communist world, it seems that all nations may be equal under the UN Charter, but some nations are more equal than others. It does not matter that Crimea and the Ukraine are in Russia's backyard, like Latin and South America (subject of the Monroe 'doctrine') are in the US's. The sole global hegemon and its allies are not bound by the rules of institutions they are bigger than; institutions that could not exist without US support. Those outside the club need to remember that. P. S. And if 'sovereign' nations feel harassed or threatened by the hundreds of armed bases the US maintains around the globe to advance its 'interests' (free trade, 'democracy' and 'freedom'}, that is surely not the US' fault. Sovereign nations need to grow up and take responsibility for their own feelings.