The hypocrisy of the Obama administration is off the rails. Obama has denounced Russia’s president Putin for a “breach of international law” by seizing the Crimea in the conflict over the Ukraine. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, has accused Russia of being “in direct violation of international law.” Their mouthpiece, the New York Times (3/3) claims Putin “stepped outside the bounds of civilized behavior.”  And the European Union (EU) is backing the U.S. all the way, “in defense of Western values.”
Dictator Putin sending troops into the Crimea is relatively minor compared to the actions of U.S. rulers — presently and historically — along with EU members France, Britain, Germany and Belgium, among others. While Obama poses as a global sheriff on the side of “international law,” actually he is the world’s outlaw-in-chief. Under capitalism and imperialism, “international law” boils down to the law of the jungle. It represents anything that capitalist powers can get away with, especially through the use of military force.
War By Terror, A Presidential Duty
Last October the McClatchy news service reported that “the Obama administration violated international law with top-secret targeted-killing operations that claimed dozens of civilian lives in Yemen and Pakistan.” And Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school, indicated the scope of the Obama U.S. government’s ongoing contempt for that international law:
According to Senator Lindsey Graham…, the Obama administration has killed 4,700 individuals in numerous countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Obama has successfully embedded the process of drone killings into the executive branch is such a way that any future president will inherit it, along with the White House ‘kill list’ and its ‘terror Tuesday meetings. Unbounded global war is now part of what it means to be president.
Obama’s war machine protects over 1,000 bases worldwide, including dispatching Special Forces for targeted assassinations. But his administration is only following U.S. rulers’ war policies to maintain U.S. top-dog status, especially to control the flow of oil and gas which usually is behind many of its invasions. Hardly a year has gone by in the 20th century and into the 21st that the Pentagon and the CIA haven’t engaged in invasions, the overthrow of elected governments and assassinations. Beginning in 1898 when they grabbed Cuba and the Philippines (where they first introduced waterboarding and killed thousands, “outside the bounds of civilized behavior”), then throughout Central and South America in the first half of the 20th century and then triphammer style in the post-World War II era.
U.S. Presidents’ Military Machine Marches On
Their “breaches” of a non-existent international law included:
1953: Overthrowing the elected government of Iran and installation of the dictatorial Shah
(Eisenhower);
1954: Overthrowing the elected government of Guatemala which led to 100,000 deaths
(Eisenhower);
1962: The CIA-directed assassination of Congo’s elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba
(Eisenhower);
1965: Invasion of the Dominican Republic to eliminate an elected president who didn’t bow to Wall Street’s wishes (Johnson);
1971: The CIA-aided anti-communist massacre of over a million workers in Indonesia by dictator Suharto’s government (Johnson);
1963-1973: Invasion of Vietnam and accompanying bombing of Cambodia and Laos, a failed effort which led to five million deaths over ten years (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon);
1973: CIA-Henry Kissinger-inspired overthrow of the elected government of Salvatore Allende in Chile and takeover by the fascist Pinochet (Nixon);
1979: The $30 billion CIA campaign from Pakistan to invade Afghanistan and counter the Soviet presence there (which led to the Taliban seizure of power and training of Osama bin Laden) (Carter);
1983: Invasion of tiny Grenada that presumably had a “Marxist” government (Reagan);
1979: Arming and backing of fascist death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador (Reagan);
1989: Invasion of Panama to squeeze out Japanese banking influence (Bush, Sr.);
1994: U.S. Invasion of Haiti (Clinton);
1999: Wholesale bombing of Yugoslavia which killed thousands and destroyed huge amounts of infrastructure (Clinton);
2003: “Shock and awe” invasion of Iraq — on the pretext of non-existent weapons of mass destruction — which killed hundreds of thousands and displaced four million, leaving that country in a shambles of daily killings (Bush, Jr.);
2001: Invasion of Afghanistan, a key to the oil and gas of central Asia (Bush, Jr., Obama);
2010: The deployment of the U.S. Navy around Haiti and backing of the UN force there, keeping workers under wraps (Obama);
And now the invasion of U.S. Special Forces into southern Libya to fight “enemies” in four adjacent African countries (Obama);
European Bosses No  Slouches
Either
But EU capitalists, while not up to U.S. “standards,” are no slouches either. French imperialists engaged in the slaughter and torture of tens of thousands in its carnage in Algeria. It now has troops in half a dozen African countries to protect its investments in these former French colonies. Belgian King Leopold perpetrated a holocaust in the Congo, killing and mutilating up to 15 million workers and peasants in 1876--1908. Over two centuries, British capitalists ran roughshod over central Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, among others), South Africa and India. Nazi Germany under Hitler enslaved and slaughtered tens of millions in his master-race scheme. These are the “Western values” they’re protecting in the Ukraine whose people are suffering from a Nazi-led overthrow of another autocratic government, protected by Putin.
It’s time the international working class put an end to hypocrite-in-chief Obama, his capitalist allies and fascist Putin. Only a communist revolution can destroy this motley crew of “breachers” and put our class in the saddle.