It was, so far as anyone could remember, unprecedented. Last Friday morning, as Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, finished his remarks before the United Nations Security Council, the galleries burst into spontaneous applause. De Villepin had said what most of those in the audience wanted to hear, that "war is always the sanction of failure" and that the use of force against Iraq "is not justified at this time." France, de Villepin said, "believes in our ability to build a better world together."
Everyone sensible wants to build a better world, and everyone acknowledges that a keystone of...