Sanctimony.

Editor,

I find the sanctimony and hypocrisy coming out of Washington very annoying. "Chemical weapons!" which of course are nasty, cruel, and inhumane, have been framed as the ultimate affront to all morality.

But land mines, which the US refuses to eschew, and cluster bombs, which the US also refuses to eschew, and so-called "collateral damage" from drone strikes -- meaning civilian maiming and deaths of old people, noncombatants, women, and children -- somehow escape this calculus.

As does the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, white phosphorous in Falluja, and depleted uranium in Iraq.

Trumped up, pumped up outrage at a Gulf of Tonkin attack that never happened, WMD that Saddam Hussein didn't have, civilian massacres threatened by Gaddafi and apparently carried out by Assad, stir the greatest of humanitarian outcries by John Kerry.

But the murder of a million "communists" in Indonesia, torture and murder by Pinochet, Pahlavi, Mubarak, Contras --- do I have to list them all? --- supported, armed, trained, installed, and propped up by the USA are perfectly OK.

The PNAC plan for the last 30 years has been war in Iraq, war in Syria, war in Libya, war in Lebanon, war in Iran.

I am tired of self-righteous pronouncements, red lines, real or imagined events, and selective outrage at atrocities.

Washington wants war in Syria? War it will have.

But please stop with the sanctimony.

Re: "Responding to Syrian Atrocities" (8/27/2013)