All countries are hypocrites, but we're at some kind of critical mass at this point. We are the country that very recently fabricated a case for war in Iraq, decimated that country, plunged it into civil war and chaos, and kidnapped and tortured hundreds (thousands?) illegally in the process. Then we set up an indefinite detention center in which we have held people even we don't claim are guilty of anything for years, which remains to this day, and THEN shrugged and said nothing was to be done about any of it.

"We'll stop torturing, probably," was our great epiphany / apology to the world.

It's not just weak, but actually grotesque, that we now propose that we, not the U.N., our allies, or anyone else, will be the arbiters of whether yet another ME country we transparently wish to control for the same reason we wish to control the rest of the region, has "crossed the line," thereby entitling our righteous wrath.

This is not the way back to international pre-eminence.

This is the stuff of crumbling empire.