Megan McArdle has a great post today about European posturing about international standards of behavior. She has this exactly right:
if it were 4,000 British or French civilians dead, their response wouldn't be a detached "well there are rules that nations have to abide by" -- ...Britian and France are more than willing to throw out their own rules in order to lash back. The only thing that would keep them from unleashing a massive can of whup-ass on anyone who killed that many of their citizens is that they lack the capability to attack anything larger than the Falklands without American support. And you know what? They'd get it. We would pen very few editorials on how richly they deserved it. Their ex-pats wouldn't have citizens of the host country seeking them out in the halls to say "Well, that's good. Now you know how it feels to be [insert your favorite complaint about American foreign policy here]." My ex-pat friends tell me, and I am unsurprised, that there is a vocal minority abroad that are glad, glad this happened to the redneck nation. Well, I've lived abroad and I've lived here, and for all our faults, very, very few of us would be glad that civilians of any color, race, or creed were killed.