Posted on 11/30/2003 10:19:54 PM PST by RWR8189
History may be their influence, but European Bush-bashers should look past their assumptions
"Why do they hate you, Mr. President?" asked Nick Robinson, the political editor of Britain's ITV News, at a press conference in London last week. "I don't know that they do," the President replied. But I fear he's too optimistic. There is something about Bush that just gets under the skin of Europeans.
But why? Start with the obvious: the dislike of Bush is the repayment, with interest, of an old slight. Bush and his closest advisers were dismissive of Europe from the start. After spats over global warming and the International Criminal Court, the Administration rebuffed NATO members who pledged their support to the U.S. following Sept. 11, 2001. Other slurs followed, like Bush's sneer at the American reporter who dared ask the French President a question in French. None of that made Bush loved. Now many Europeans simply doubt that his commitment to democracy in the Middle East is genuine and cannot fathom why the U.S. does not lean harder on Israel to secure a lasting peace.
I suspect, however, that there are more fundamental factors at work. Bush reminds Europeans of the dark angels of their past. He is a conviction politician, a man who knows what he thinks and couldn't care two hoots for what he doesn't know. But after its blood-drenched flirtation with fascism and communism, Europe distrusts such certainty. Remember: Margaret Thatcher, another conviction politician, was hated—really, truly hated—by half of Britain. Bush is religiously devout, and that too calls up troubling spirits from Europe's vasty deep. Not all Europeans are godless heathens nor all Americans washed in the blood of the Lamb. But in European memory, religious fervor has often been a source of bitter communal strife—think of Ireland and the Balkans. Bush is prepared to use force to advance his political goals. But after the carnage of what might be called the long European war from 1914 to 1989, some Europeans—particularly older ones, in my experience—just cannot accept the idea that any war can be a good one.
Europe these days is a curiously inward-looking place. Its political class is preoccupied with the time-consuming process of building the European Union. Young Europeans, meanwhile, are enjoying the borderless, happy and comfortable world that is their own continent. I couldn't prove it, but I suspect that Europeans are both less interested in and less knowledgeable about the U.S. than they were 20 years ago. They increasingly form their views of the U.S. from the sort of European journalism that stresses American weirdness, as if every American were a Botoxed, snake-handling cowboy Holy Roller, and that has produced what Nick Robinson calls a "grotesque caricature" of Bush in Europe.
Fair-minded Europeans who read Bush's speech in London last week will surely adjust their image of him. I was particularly struck by this passage: "Because European countries now resolve differences through negotiation and consensus, there's sometimes an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way. But let us never forget ... beyond Europe's borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders." Every word of that is true. If Europeans continue to hate the man who said them, they diminish not him, but themselves
Like being a Republican maybe? If Bush were Left friendly the socialist elites of Europe rhapsodize over him. Dean is a "conviction politician" as well. The Euroweenies would love him.
There is nothing which will make you stupid faster than the bland assumption that your own opinion doesn't have a name. If you "reject labels of right and left" for yourself, you assure yourself that those who disagree with you are inferior. And in that moment you become self-righteous, hypocritical, blind to truth.It's why we have so many journalists who would test out at high IQs but who nonetheless speak as blithering idiots.
Surely those same memories have room for the notion that not confronting an aggressive tyrant with a track record of invading two of his neighbors is what got them into such trouble in 1939 in the first place?
Nonsense. Bush is prepared (i.e., he has the cajones) to use force to stop the aggressive spread of Islamofascist terrorists and the dictators who support them, in order to protect Americans and American interests and allies, at home and abroad.
Political goals? Yeah, real smooth political strategery there: "I guess I'll engage in a land war and subsequent peacekeeping operation against a bloodthirsty Islamic regime, completely surrounded by other Islamic regimes (some of whom are principal suppliers of our oil bloodline), knowing full well that half my own countrymen might very well chicken out and lose their nerve, knowing that America's global popularity will likely plummet (cuz furriners don't like decisive, bold superpowers), knowing that if we can't immediately find a crapload of WMDs in Iraq the media is going to eat me alive...
"Yeah, and why don't I try this risky endeavor in the middle of a popped-bubble-and-terrorist-induced recession, about 20 MONTHS before I'm up for re-election (so that even if I do get a patriotic post-war popularity bump, the media and the Dims will have plenty of time to snipe at me and secondguess me and whittle my ratings down well before November 2004). Sounds like a great, shrewd political move."
Bush did the right thing because it had to be done, not to further his political agenda.
I disagree. I think the blithering idiots would test out at the level of blithering idiots. Maybe ever so slightly above. Adjust for level of laziness.
In the years leading up to the war, Churchill was largely hated -- he was viewed as a rabble-rouser and a warmonger. Churchill correctly understood Hitler, and reached the conclusion that Britain would have to eventually confront the Nazis. Many leftists then rhapsodized over the planned economy and the regimentation the Nazis were bringing to Germany -- it all seemed so "progressive." Some leftists were anti-fascist, to be sure (often preferring Stalin's utopia), but there were those who were taken-in by such things as the Autobahn, which, presumably, can only be built by a socialist dictatorship. The "sophisticated" people of the day tried to convince themselves that all would be well with the world if only old Winston would shut-up and not provoke Hitler.
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