V.D. Hanson hits it again with this perceptive essay on multilateral fantasies:

But how accurate — or important — is the charge of unilateralism? President Clinton never really evoked the sanction of the 190 nations of the U.N. when he quite understandably bombed in Serbia and Iraq. The EU and U.N. were not brought in on either incursion — how could they be when they had a proven record of appeasement and inaction in Serbia that had led to a quarter-million Europeans perishing and allowed almost a million Rwandans to die?

In addition, September 11 proved that all we had been doing the last eight years — a cruise missile here, a federal indictment there — was taking aspirin and bed rest for a metastasizing malignant tumor. Luck, not diplomacy or deterrence, prevented other killings besides the litany in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Yemen.

Required reading for anyone who harkens back to the "good old days" of Clinton administration foreign policy, or the revisionism that has made it seem effective.