Friday, November 26, 2004

Moral Authority
Excerpted from the article No Blood for Chocolate! which appeared in the National Post (a Canadian Newspaper), but you need a subscription to access the article there, so if you want to read the whole article, go here.

Where are the mass protests in the streets of the world's capitals against France's military intervention in the Ivory Coast?

This month, French peacekeepers in the former French colony launched a pre-emptive assault against the Ivorian air force. They also interferred with the internal politics of the troubled nation and sought regime change -- or at least they have been accused of both by President Laurent Gbagbo.

They acted without authorization by the United Nations Security Council.

They violated both the UN Charter and the terms of the peacekeeping resolution that established their specific mission in the West African nation.

The Security Council did sanction their attacks after the fact. Nonetheless, the French acted unilaterally, and only sought and
received a UN cover story later. There wasn't even a coalition of the willing. No Brits, Aussies, Poles or Dutch to help out; just French troops, jets, helicopters and armoured personnel carriers.

What's galling is the way the French have done it all without any deference to the multilateral consensus-building they so smugly demanded of the Americans and British last year when the boots were on the other feet.

Doubly galling is the silence -- even complicity -- of the UN and the international community, which last year so sanctimoniously and vocally obstructed the invasion of Iraq.

No other nation has inserted itself militarily into African affairs in the post-colonial period more than France -- nearly two dozen times -- including on behalf of the murderous Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who proclaimed himself emperor of the Central African Republic, and in support of the Hutu government of Rwanda, whose supporters butchered half a million or more Tutsis in 1994.

The truth is, international opposition to the Iraq war (including French opposition) was prompted as much by bitter anti-Americanism and irrational hatred of George W. Bush as it was by any true concern for peace or multilateralism.
Via Instapundit, via The Diplomad's great post on how America ought to immitate France's foreign policy.

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