COLUMN LEFT : The Sinners Cast Stones at Iraq : The U.S. record rightly makes us hypocrites in the eyes of many Third World nations.

In these days of national unity and high moral purpose against the monstrous Saddam Hussein, variously depicted by cartoonists as a spider (“Iraqnaphobia!) or Hitler or both, it is salutary to remember that a good many people in the Third World regard the United States as singularly hypocritical.

Consider the sudden rediscovery by U.S. politicians and commentators of the United Nations as a splendid body, emblem of mankind’s most virtuous aspirations. In a not untypical editorial, on Aug. 6, the Boston Globe announced “The U.N.’s coming of age,” saying that with the three resolutions against Iraq’s aggression passed by the Security Council, “the United Nations may finally achieve the lofty status its founders sought 45 years ago.”

What that fine phrase “coming of age” actually means is that for once the United States and the rest of the world were in step. In years when this has not been the case and the United States was in a minority in the Security Council and the General Assembly, then the United Nations was denounced here as a “Third World talking shop,” sadly short of lofty status.

Being essentially a mouthpiece for the state, the American press has mostly managed through the last decade to overlook the degree of isolation of the United States from the rest of the world. To take some examples: In June, 1986, the World Court condemned the United States for its “unlawful use of force” in mining Nicaragua’s harbors, in supporting the Contras and in conducting illegal economic warfare. The court ordered the United States to stop violating international law and to pay reparations. Congress promptly voted $100 million for the Contras.

In November, 1986, the U.N. Security Council passed, 11 to 1 with 3 abstentions, a resolution calling on the United States to observe international law. The United States vetoed it. Nicaragua than went to the General Assembly, which voted 94 to 3 (United States, Israel, El Salvador) calling on the United States to comply with the World Court ruling. In 1987, at the time of the Washington summit and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, the U.N. General Assembly voted 154 to 1 with no abstentions to oppose the buildup of weapons in outer space. It voted 135 to 1 against the development of new weapons of mass destruction. In both of these cases the United States cast the lone negative vote. The American press was mostly silent.

In the same session, the General Assembly passed a resolution condemning “Terrorism Wherever and by Whomever Committed.” The vote was 153 to 2, with Honduras abstaining. It’s not hard to figure why the United States and Israel objected, since the resolution contained the statement that nothing in it “would prejudice the right of peoples, particularly those under colonial or racist regimes, or under foreign occupation or other forms of domination, to struggle for self-determination, freedom and independence, or to seek and receive support for that end.” When Yasser Arafat renounced terrorism, he did so within the terms of that U.N. resolution, which all NATO countries except the United States supported. No doubt that language would today appeal particularly to the emir of Kuwait.

To take one final example, in January the Security Council voted 13 to 1, with Britain abstaining, to condemn the sacking by U.S. troops of the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama. No talk then about the lofty U.N. ideals.

In sum, when the world disagrees with the United States, the world is crazy. All through the 1950s, when the United States controlled the place, the United Nations was extolled as the locus of visionary statesmanship and the Soviets were reviled for their vetoes. Disgusted talk about Third World domination came later, in the 1970s and 1980s, when the boot was on the other foot.

It’s this shifting posture that strikes folks out there, particularly in the Third World, as peculiarly hypocritical. One day Saddam Hussein is the West’s bulwark against the ayatollah, the next he’s evil incarnate and openly invoked in the press as a worthy target for assassination.

So, yes, Hussein is getting a good deal of support inside the Arab world from people infuriated at the double standard. “What did they (the United States) do to stop the (1982 Israeli) invasion of Lebanon,” asked a Palestinian computer programmer quoted in a report in the London Times. “What have they done about the bloody occupation of the West Bank?” The answer is that the United States has done nothing.

So, as the escalation of a U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia begins, we may as well be clear about the dominant opinion in the region--of people in the streets, not terrified sheiks or U.S. client states--about the moral credentials of this proud upholder of the rule of law.