A week has proven to be a long time in international politics. On Aug. 26, arriving in Europe, NATO military strikes on Syria seemed both inevitable and imminent to punish it for alleged chemical weapons use on Aug. 21. On Thursday, the British Parliament rejected, by a 285-272 vote, the government motion that would have paved the way for British participation. Prime Minister David Cameron said he would respect the vote. By Friday, the United States was looking decidedly lonely and exposed in its hard-line stance that military attacks were still necessary and could be launched without U.N. sanction.
When Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush as U.S. president, the world, sick of the latter's triumphalist, in-your-face unilateralism, heaved a collective sigh of relief. How ironic then that Obama risks making the U.S. the biggest international outlaw of our times.
Consider four examples. The intensified use of drones to kill foreign-based enemies has been described in a joint study by Stanford and New York University law schools — two of the world's leading law faculties — as violating international law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law and possibly also U.S. law. The creation of an uber surveillance state that spies massively and routinely on millions of Americans and foreigners has stirred an angry backlash. The refusal to prosecute the torturers and their legal enablers from the Bush regime, while pursuing, prosecuting and persecuting whistleblowers of government malfeasance, shows a strange perversion of priorities in the land of the free and brave.