The anti-American movement condemns war, especially without United Nations approval. These complaints presume that (a) the use of force is usually immoral and (b) only the UN, or another collective body, can provide moral justification. Unfortunately, the assumptions are often backward. Force can be moral; and the UN can serve as a device for immoral inaction.
Rwanda is the tragic example. When the genocide against Tutsis began, the UN had a peacekeeping force there that was too small to be effective. The UN Security Council (with US backing) reduced it. If France or other European nations had quickly dispatched a modest force - 10,000 to 20,000 troops - they could have contained the genocide, whose toll is crudely estimated at 800,000. France, a supporter of the Hutu government that conducted the genocide, was especially well informed.
Europe was similarly ineffective in Bosnia and Kosovo. Only after reluctant US intervention did those slaughters stop. Deaths are roughly reckoned at 200,000. Europe's paralysis produced more carnage in Rwanda and the Balkans than anything likely to occur in Iraq. Yet anti-American street demonstrations dwarf protests against Europe's own failures. This moralism is selective and self-serving.
http://afr.com/commentopinion/2003/0...X0FNT4QDD.html