Responsibility For Thee But Not For Me

Marco Rubio made a stunningly hypocritical statement the other day, which Judge Nap gleefully—or maybe ruefully—replayed for multiple guests today. I reproduce the exchange from this session:

Scott Ritter: How Foolish to Attack The Houthis.

Rubio: We can't ignore, and the reason why the president mentioned Iran is because the Iranians have supported the Houthis. They provided them intelligence. They provided them guidance. They provided them weaponry. I mean there's no way the Houthis, okay, that the Houthis would have the ability to do this kind of thing unless they had support from Iran. And so this was a message to Iran: Don't keep supporting them, because then you will also be responsible for what they are doing in attacking Navy ships, in attacking global shipping.

Ritter: He needs to be careful about linking Iran and the Houthis together in a way that makes Iran culpable for what the Houthis do, because the United States provides a hell of a lot of weapons to a lot of people around the world who do a whole bunch of stuff with those weapons, and we open ourselves up to be treated in the same fashion.

Judge: So, if Iran is morally and legally culpable for what the Houthis do the United States is morally and legally culpable for what the Ukrainians do and for what the IDF does.

Perhaps Rubio’s statement passed muster with ordinary American viewers, but for most of the world it was the epitome of the hypocrisy that is fundamental to American “exceptionalism”—the idea that America makes up its own rules as it goes along and holds everyone else to different standards. Now, I’m not embracing moral relativism or formalism. However, by most standards the actions that America has supported in our war on Russia and on the Palestinians—as well as on Yemen and other countries over the past decades since our Global War on the World began after 9/11—are far worse than anything Iran has done. Most of the world sees this, and our reputation and moral standing suffer as a result.

Two additional points.

Rubio’s statement is remarkably weak. He simply states that “the Houthis couldn’t have done that on their own,” and concludes that Iran “must have” been behind it all. But why doesn’t he say that we have reliable intelligence to that effect? He could provide a general description of what we know without giving away “sources and methods”. Unless we don’t actually know that. Maybe he’s right, but his presentation was not terribly convincing.

In that regard, Ritter went on to note that the Houthis are not nearly as unsophisticated as they’re regularly portrayed by the MSM. He maintained that they do actually design and build many of their own systems and he compared this attitude toward the Houthis to the attitudes that were displayed toward Iraqis back in his says as a weapons inspector. We underestimate “the other” at our own risk.

That is all.