I believe Mr. Harris correct in this. But those rules are, after all, self-imposed, and hence self-revocable. And so it has proven.
Of course the radical Moslems were misled by this sort of rule structure - who can blame them? What they saw, and what I find most curious about this, is that other Western powers such as France and Germany felt so terribly threatened when the U.S. decided to behave in contravention to rules that were clearly working against its interests. I don't think it's entirely paranoia to conclude that were not only happy with such rules, but were happy specifically because it was U.S. interests that they worked against, further, that they intended to employ those rules against the U.S. themselves, and even further, that they were actually doing so and had done so in the past. This certainly seems to be the gist of Chirac's comments. A U.S. less restrained by these rules is a U.S. more vulnerable - and that was precisely what they wanted. Why?
With the EU it's a no-brainer: They don't have the requisite hard power to be an influential player in a world where the strongest nation isn't restrained by regulations, however stifling they are to the promotion of long-term peace and stability. In fact the Europeans have built their societies in such a way that they won't have the means to pursue a more traditional realpolitik foreign policy. So that's all they do - whine. On a more sinister note, now that there's no USSR to keep them utterly dependent on US military protection, they can also retaliate by pooling their financial and technological resources to help nations - especially China - that do have a long-term potential to challenge American power.