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A continent divided: Half of Europe is leaning to Kerry. But it's the wrong half
...Take the question of who supports Kerry. Spain's Zapatero (who holds office partly by courtesy of Osama bin Laden) is the only head of government who has openly declared for Kerry. But France's Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder are silently in Kerry's corner. And most Scandinavian and socialist leaders join them there.Britain's Tony Blair and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, however, have a clear interest in Bush's re-election. His defeat would weaken them at home. And their support for Bush is shared by some leaders in countries like Poland, Hungary, Latvia and even Holland who have taken major political risks to put troops in Iraq. Kerry is oblivious to all this. In particular, he seems not to realize that he and his fellow Democrats have been repeatedly insulting the 15 European countries in the U.S.-led Iraq coalition. Although they include some of the leading military powers in the EU and NATO, they were dismissed at the Boston convention as "countries you can buy on eBay." That kind of thing rankles at least as much as Donald Rumsfeld's "Old Europe" -- and it annoys America's friends rather than its rivals... Posted by: tipper 2004-08-22 |
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