Some places still like us.
Posted on 07/03/2004 11:37:19 AM PDT by Pikamax
Europe Reassesses U.S. on Fourth of July
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By MORT ROSENBLUM, AP Special Correspondent
PARIS - It's July 4 in Europe, when U.S. ambassadors from Lisbon to Ljubljana hoist California chardonnay and ask their garden party guests to toast an often rocky but rock-solid friendship. This year, more than at any time in most people's memory, the response is mumbled and muted.
A new mood is clear in Athens, for instance, where the world will soon gather for ancient games meant to periodically wipe away any national hard feelings.
Once, Greeks just vented anti-American heat symbolically by vandalizing a downtown Athens statue of ex-President Harry Truman. Now rude graffiti is scrawled permanently near the U.S. Embassy.
The question across the Old Continent is not the oft-asked, "Why do they hate us?" In fact, not that many Europeans do. More thoughtful Americans ask, "Why have they lost respect for us?"
Iraq (news - web sites) is the obvious short answer. In polls and conversations, a clear majority of Europeans excoriate President Bush (news - web sites) for charging on alone into a widening quagmire that is reshaping the world around them.
Surface signs are conflicting. The French alone account for 10 percent of McDonald's new worldwide business. Across Europe, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird duke it out in English on the Cartoon Channel.
Because of NATO (news - web sites), multinational business and globalization that grows at Internet speed, the day-to-day dealings of the United States and Europe are inextricably intwined.
But analysts see something many describe as deep and troubling, a sea change from the usual ups and downs of trans-Atlantic sentiment.
This is particularly critical now, they say, as 25 European states are trying hard to build a more perfect union that is largely shaped, even if often at an unconscious level, on the American model.
"When Europeans look over at the roots they planted in America, they see root rot," said Barry Goodfield, an American psychotherapist and conflict specialist who has worked in Europe since 1972.
In each of these nations, citizens regard themselves as no less free than Americans, he said, with elections, an unfettered press and, in some cases, foreign policy experience dating back centuries.
"They have misgivings about our judgment, our motives, our implementation," he said by telephone from the Netherlands. "Democracy is ultimately about choice, and Europeans see choice being taken away."
By giving Europe a take-it-or-leave-it option on Iraq, Goodfield said, Bush insulted old allies at a deep level.
"We bypassed the U.N. and diplomacy, and they're reacting to a slap in the face," Goodfield concluded. "They see us as not playing by the rules, ignoring institutions that stand for justice and morality."
For many in Europe, it is a question of style and attitude.
At an official level, European diplomats say, Bush manages to jab continually at sore spots. Just as EU leaders reached a fragile accord on expansion, he visited Istanbul and told them they left out Turkey.
Yet, unlike earlier times when U.S. and European governments disagreed on issues, feelings run deep into every level of society.
European newspapers carry accounts of outraged travelers to the United States who end up in handcuffs and overnight cells before being sent home for what turns out to be a simple mistake.
While EU airport police barely glance at U.S. passports before stamping six-month entry permits, U.S. authorities require fingerprints and visas with pages of questions delving far into the past.
Americans familiar with Europe over the years almost invariably describe symptoms of a changing attitude.
Outside of Paris, an American visitor heard her French friend's 11-year-old daughter announce with clear contempt that she would not learn English but rather German as her school's mandatory foreign language.
Lisa Gerber, a Los Angeles-based actress who spent her childhood in Germany, Austria and Sweden, declares herself amazed on a visit to Europe at the depth of disdain many people seem to feel.
"The other day, I heard one Englishwoman tell another about someplace she'd been, and she added, 'The best thing about it is that there aren't any Americans,'" Gerber said.
In a European Union (news - web sites) of 450 million people, obviously enough, feelings vary widely. At recent celebrations on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, old allies and enemies hailed a firm friendship.
But a London-based public affairs group, Eurolegal Services, summed up the broad feeling on its Web site.
To Europeans, it said, some Bush supporters suggest a fond mother who watches her son at a graduation parade and notices that, while everyone else leads with the left foot, he leads with the right.
"Look," the mother exclaims to the woman next to her, "they are all out of step except my Johnny!"
That's a good boxing strategy.
The question across the Old Continent is not the oft-asked, "Why do they hate us?" In fact, not that many Europeans do. More thoughtful Americans ask, "Why have they lost respect for us?"
BS. I think Mort Rosenblum has an agenda.
"...her French friend's 11-year-old daughter announce with clear contempt that she would not learn English but rather German as her school's mandatory foreign language."
Smart girl. She'll need it.
If it hadn't been for the US, she would be learning German as her first language.
Frankly, Goodfield, I couldn't give a damn about what they want. We were attacked on 9/11. We need not take a chance on the good intentions of a man like Saddam. I truly, deeply don't care if the Euroweenies wanted to come along. Some did...and some didn't. Just because the populace are ignorant of the danger doesn't mean the leadership has to be...look at Berlusconi and Blair. These two guys have more balls than the rest of Western Europe combined.
Someday, unless they're taken over by the Muslim whackjobs, maybe Europe will have a chance to thank us for saving the world from Islamo-Facism. Or they can join in the fight. Either way, I'm glad we're on this path.
To determine the true degree of freedom, productivity, and wealth in a society, look at the tax rates. The lower the tax rate, the higher the level in all three areas.
Power to the People! (The Individual, that is...)
"When Europeans look over at the roots they planted in America, they see root rot," said Barry Goodfield, an American psychotherapist and conflict specialist who has worked in Europe since 1972. >>>
That's because they continually refuse to look at their legs, which are rotten to the crotch.
'The best thing about it is that there aren't any Americans,'" Gerber said. >>>
The same could be said of Auschwitz.
Puke. The UN may just be the most corrupt and ineffective organization in world history, and it stands for nothing resembling justice and morality. But the US supplies the bulk of the funds to support the UN ... more than any other country by far. So we are trying ... but when an ideal obviously fails to live up to its promise, it no longer is worth of respect, or of playing by its rules.
It's crazy but people like to choose their friends for some reason. For some reason, we have people in this country that do not like Europeans. We have Europeans that do not like Americans. What's the big deal? Are we so robotized that everybody is supposed to like the same people or worse, hate the same people?
Then I'd say they're all idiots but Johnny.
Europeans won't be satisfied until America has been destroyed. That is why they love Kerry. They know he is an incompetent boob, who like Bill Clinton, will wage war on aspirin factories in Sudan as his main contribution to the war on terror.
Screw Europe.
onyx worte: "I think Mort Rosenblum has an agenda."
Say it isn't so! Not from the AP--no way!
On a serious note, the author quotes anecdotal evidence in a poor attempt to make it seem like all Europeans dislike us. This is a deceptive technique commonly used to manipulate readers into false conclusions. Anti-US graffiti near one of our embassies or some girl who doesn't want to study English have absolutely nothing to do with the overall relationship between Europe and the US. The article is laughable!
"Anecdote: A particular or detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a biographical incident or fragment; a single passage of private life."
Well the author biased as his agenda is hit on a point...there really is a difference in style. Europeans have always been cowards when faced with evil. They always thought they could bargin with madmen. They have been unwilling to take madmen at their word.
Look at how they did(n't) deal with Hitler. He laid out his agenda of conquest and genocide in Mein Kampf. When he ruled Germany, they refused to believe he would follow through. They tried to bargin with him.
Well the US is different. Bin Laden has said he wants to obtain nucs and use them on us. to destroy this country. Well we take him at his word and will destroy him first.
If the feckless Euro's don't like it... Tough.
Some places still like us.
Hey relax, becouse french and germans are acting the way they do it not mean all europe is like this. Europe is made of a lot of countries and we in eastern europe do not take nonesense from france of germany.
Kagan, beautifully summed up Europe's ignorance like this:
"...the "paradise" of peace and prosperity Europe now enjoys is made possible, quite simply, by American power. Provided with "security from outside," Europe requires no power of its own; yet protected "under the umbrella of American power," it's able to delude itself that power is "no longer important" and "that American military power, and the 'strategic culture' that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous."
European leaders see themselves as inhabiting a post-historical world in which war has been rendered obsolete by the triumph of international "moral consciousness"; yet most of them do not see or do not wish to see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage.
Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually and well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of "moral consciousness," it has become dependent on America's willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.
In short, though the U.S. makes Europe's "paradise" possible, "it cannot enter the paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate . . . stuck in history, [it is] left to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong Ils and the Jiang Zemins, leaving most of the benefits to others."
And when it does address those threats, furthermore, it feels Europe's wrath, for "America's power and its willingness to exercise that power—unilaterally if necessary—constitute a threat to Europe's new sense of mission."
If Europe's intellectual and political elite was briefly pro-America after 9/11, it was because America was suddenly a victim, and European intellectuals are accustomed to sympathizing reflexively with victims (or, more specifically, with perceived or self-proclaimed victims, such as Arafat). That support began to wane the moment it became clear that Americans had no intention of being victims."
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