by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n What follows is a fair summation of about 20 or so dialogues I had recently with a series of Europeans \u2014 a good cross-section really of Scandinavians, British, Germans, Greeks, and Dutch. Questions and answers are taken almost verbatim from our exchanges.<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0What we object to most is the unilateralism and the language of the Bush administration, more so than any particular policy decision. Can’t they tone it down?<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Maybe this cowboyism is akin to a similarly southern-accented president’s previous failure to consult both our Congress and the U.N. when we bombed Milosevic? Or are you guys ticked off at the litany of needlessly provocative and uncouth asides \u2014 like “German way,” “sh*tty little country,” “Nazi manner,” “problems with Miami and New York,” etc.? Or perhaps Mr. Bush \u2014 in the manner of President Putin \u2014 threatened castration to a French journalist?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Moving on \u2014 you need to study our past to learn why we will no longer accept war as a method of adjudicating disputes.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0We long ago did that \u2014 and in 1941 figured war was the only way to restore what you nearly destroyed.<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Well, war is simply not an option any longer for us, like it or not. You started this mess in Iraq and now want us to bail you out; so, yes, there is a sort of “I told you so” self-righteousness over here \u2014 and why not?<\/p>\n Dumb Americans:<\/i>\u00a0And do Osama bin Laden, General Mladic, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Il \u2014 all suitably impressed with your elegant forbearance \u2014 agree about the futility of war? As far as Iraq goes, forget about the war, look at the peace. We are not asking you to help us fight, but to send some aid to a consensual government emerging in Iraq. Are we to assume that you would extend $100 billion in military and trade credits to a mass-murdering fascist, but almost nothing to his victims, who got very little from your lucrative trade deals?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Perhaps our growing divide arises out of a sort of American simplicity about Israel and Sharon \u2014 now that the neocons have taken over Washington and have ignored the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. The United States simply is not as sensitive as we in Europe are to the problem of refugees and the abuse of power that is seen as so threatening to the Muslim world.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Do you mean the 50-something dead in Jenin last spring or the 80,000-something Muslim dead in Grozny over more than a decade \u2014 or is the rub the 250,000 Muslim dead in Kosovo and Bosnia? Is it the “hyper” reaction of IDF or of the Russian and Serbian armies that grates on you?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0True, there are legitimate differences in both points of view. But we worry that the Americans are not really aware of the depth of the European venom toward the United States. The anger is really cascading.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Do you think such populist fury will result in the wholesale expulsion of our soldiers from Germany, Suda Bay, or Spain? Or maybe even the ejection of the United States from NATO?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Don’t laugh \u2014 an all-EU force is months away.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Centered around the\u00a0Charles de Gaul<\/i>\u00a0or the Luxembourg Air Force?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Come on. You know that the animus is directed at Bush, not the American people.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0No; I think the divide is even worse than that, I’m afraid. You see, the reaction over here is just the opposite \u2014 we have nearly given up not so much on European governments but Europeans themselves, which we see as essentially the same.<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0In some ways you’re right. After all, over half our population now believes that you \u2014 not the North Koreans or the Iranians \u2014 are the real threat to world peace.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0I suppose a similar poll 65 years ago would have revealed the same thing about your fear of a unilateral Churchill and your ease with a multilateral Hitler, who seemed to get a nod from the Russians, Italians, Spanish, Eastern Europeans, and Japanese when he went into Poland. But in any case, we wish you luck with the Iranian mullahs. And as far as Tehran goes, for your sake \u2014 as long as we are not yet in missile range \u2014 we hope that your Nobel Prizes, trade credits, lectures, and so-called “soft power” provide better deterrence than an ABM.<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Our disagreement is not so simplistic as that. But part of the problem is that Americans simply do not know much outside their shores and listen to silly Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for their information.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Do you prefer instead the erudition and scholarship of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, or Thierry Meyssan, who, if the best-seller lists are any indication, have taught Europe much about America since 9\/11?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0I’m talking about snap judgment and simple solutions to complex problems.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Like Bonapartism, Prussian militarism, Nazism, Italian fascism, Francoism, Marxism, and Communism?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0Well, it is precisely our experience with those nightmares that guides us today, and explains why we would never allow a South Central or Harlem. And certainly we wouldn’t unleash someone like this Ashcroft \u2014 or wage a preemptive war in Iraq.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0Marseilles is a socialist paradise? But tell me: Are Jews safer in Paris than Arabs are in Detroit? And is it a more moral thing for us to jail and try terrorist killers or, like you, turn them loose, as we saw all the time during the last two decades?<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0But don’t simply scoff; for us the idea that you would spend $87 billion on fighting in Iraq while your own people don’t have health care is preposterous.<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0But was the death rate this August higher in the Sunni Triangle or Paris? We believe that a nanny state is not only inefficient, but, when the temperature rises, downright lethal.<\/p>\n Europeans:<\/i>\u00a0You can see what we need is more communication \u2014 what concrete steps need to be taken to resolve the issue?<\/p>\n Dumb American:<\/i>\u00a0For starters? Perhaps forgive Iraq’s multibillion-dollar debt to France and Germany that Saddam ran up for imported weapons that killed thousands of his own people and some of us as well. Build a couple of aircraft carriers and learn how to use them to promote freedom and democracy. Impose a trade embargo on Syria and Iran. Don’t give any more money to those who funnel it to suicide bombers on the West Bank. If you are in NATO, send 50,000 troops to Afghanistan to finish off those who attacked your ally; otherwise get out or dissolve NATO.<\/p>\n And so it typically goes. Most of these European interlocutors are impressively educated. They are naturally inquisitive and well versed in the nuances of culture. But there is also a great fear among them \u2014 almost as if the United States is a painful reminder that the world might not be so calm beyond their shores. If we would just not stir things up, leave it alone, not worry about it \u2014 the “problem” of terror might go away \u2014 as if the Soviet Union once collapsed due not to billions invested in American deterrence, but to a change of heart by well-meaning Marxists in Moscow.<\/p>\n Europeans fixate on American and Israeli foibles \u2014 and not the far greater transgressions of Russians, Chinese, Iranians, or Arabs. Why? Because we alone listen to them, and with us they are not overwhelmed by the magnitude of a Grozny, Tibet, mass hangings in Tehran, the obliteration of an entire town in Hama, or the gassing of Kurds. And of course Mr. Bush does not threaten to cut off any European journalist’s testicles, or brag about not clicking his heels to Germans.<\/p>\n I’m sure that the Europeans are light-years ahead of us in the use of public transportation. They probably are wiser in their per-capita energy utilization, and their primary and secondary education may be superior. But there is also something of Calypso’s island about them. For all their professed enjoyment of food, shelter, and lovemaking, the Europeans are bored silly with their listless routine and are increasingly timid \u2014 this from a great people who should not, but really do, live in terror of their own past. Like Odysseus in his comfy subservience to Calypso, these mesmerized and complacent sensualists sometimes contemplate leaving the comfort of their fairyland atoll and in boredom weep nightly, gazing out at the seashore. But as yet they lack the hero’s courage to finally build a raft and sail rough seas to confront suitors who are trying to crash their civilization.<\/p>\n This war would be over far sooner if 350 million Europeans insisted on a modicum of behavior from Middle Eastern rogue regimes, rounded up and tried terrorists in their midst, deported islamofascists, cut off funding to killers on the West Bank, ignored Yasser Arafat \u2014 and warned the next SOB who blew up Europeans in Turkey, North Africa, or Iraq that there was a deadly reckoning to come from the continent that invented the Western military tradition. Indeed, European sophistication and experience, combined with real power, could be a great aid to the West in its effort to promote liberal and consensual governments outside its shores. But if they do not even believe in the unique legacy of their civilization, then why should we \u2014 much less their enemies?<\/p>\n So for now we should not lament that the Europeans are no longer real allies, but rather be thankful that they are still for a while longer neutrals rather than enemies \u2014 these strange and brilliant people who somehow lost their way, and no longer can distinguish between a noisy Knesset and Arafat’s hangmen, much less between those racing to topple a tyrant in Baghdad and others lounging at Sebrenica.<\/p>\n \u00a92004 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dialoguing with the Europeans. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What follows is a fair summation of about 20 or so dialogues I had recently with a series of Europeans \u2014 a good cross-section really of Scandinavians, British, Germans, Greeks, and Dutch. Questions and answers are taken almost verbatim from our exchanges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[808],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1fA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3977,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/endless-summer\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":0},"title":"Endless Summer?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The European countryside is as beautiful as ever. Hotels in the cities are as packed as they are high-priced. Tourists fill Rome. The same bustle is evident from Lisbon to Frankfurt. Everywhere European stewards welcome in millions of sightseers to enjoy the treasures\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2006"","block_context":{"text":"June 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/june-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2861,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/europe-got-obama-now-what\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":1},"title":"Europe Got Obama–Now What?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services \"Yes, we can!\" Germans shouted in unison with candidate Barack Obama at their Victory Column in Berlin this past summer. To judge by the crowds and European media, most Europeans were as ecstatic about the coming of the Obama presidency as they were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2009"","block_context":{"text":"April 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/april-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4132,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-european-awakening-against-islamic-fascism\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":2},"title":"A European Awakening Against Islamic Fascism?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Real Clear Politics Over the last four years Americans have played a sort of parlor game wondering when \u2014 or if \u2014 the Europeans might awake to the danger of Islamic fascism and choose a more muscular role in the war on terrorism. But after the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2006"","block_context":{"text":"February 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/february-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3950,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/scapegoating-guantanamo\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":3},"title":"Scapegoating Guantanamo","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When President Bush arrived in Vienna last week, protestors bore \"World's No. 1 Terrorist\" signs while chanting \"We will, we will fight Bush.\" A Harris Poll conducted prior to the president's visit revealed that the European public thinks\u00a0America\u00a0is a greater global threat than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2006"","block_context":{"text":"July 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/july-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4261,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/todays-euro-usa-split-will-persist\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":4},"title":"Today’s Euro-USA Split Will Persist","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still \u2014 even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has narrowed \u2014 despite a common heritage and a supposedly shared goal of global democracy, free markets, and defeating terrorists. Europeans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2005"","block_context":{"text":"September 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/september-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4296,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/more-continental-drift\/","url_meta":{"origin":4810,"position":5},"title":"More Continental Drift?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The rationale behind a new world order by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise A version of this essay appears in the current issue of\u00a0The American Enterprise The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still \u2014 even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2005"","block_context":{"text":"August 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/august-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4810"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4811,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4810\/revisions\/4811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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