By Victor Davis Hanson
 Over the last four years Americans have played a sort of parlor game wondering when—or if—the Europeans might awake to the danger of Islamic fascism and choose a more muscular role in the war on terrorism. But after the acrimony over the invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, pessimists scoffed that the Atlantic alliance was essentially over.
| I'm one of the pessimists. NATO is an idea whose time has gone. The Euros aren't allies, they're acquaintances... |
Only the postmortem was in dispute: did the bad chemistry between the Texan George Bush and the Green European leadership who came of age in the street theater of 1968 explain the falling out? Or was the return of the old anti-Americanism natural after the end of the Cold War—once American forces were no longer needed for the security of Europe? Or again, was Europe’s third way a realistic consideration of its own unassimilated and growing Muslim population, at a time of creeping pacifism, and radically scaled down defense budgets after the fall of the Berlin Wall?
| Yes, to all. Bush was impatient with European weaselry. The continent was cresting on a trend of anti-Americanism that had been growing since the '60s, nursed along by the Soviet Union, and the Euros are now fat and prosperous, don't want to lose what they have, and don't have the strength to defend it. All they can hope for is mercy. |
Yet suddenly in 2006, the Europeans seem to have collectively resuscitated.
| I usually agree with Hanson, but in this case he's thinking wishfully. The European attention span is no longer long enough to allow them to actually do anything. |
The Madrid bombings, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the London subway attacks, and the French rioting in October and November seem to have prompted at least some Europeans at last to question their once hallowed sense of multiculturalism in which Muslim minorities were not asked to assimilate at home and Islamic terrorists abroad were seen as mere militants or extremists rather than enemies bent on destroying the West.
| Maybe so, but not enough of them. Spain's reaction to the Madrid bombings was to surrender, vote out the side with cojones and vote in the mushmeisters. Van Gogh was slaughtered like a sheep in broad daylight. The Dutchies were up in arms for a few months, then relapsed into their coma. The Brits were up in arms after the London subway attacks, then lost interest. Omar Bakri Muhammad was the only major Islamist who left the country, and that was only because he was too cowardly to wait out the heat, which was off in a couple weeks. Nobody's been deported, and immigration hasn't been curtailed. The French innalecks fell upon Sarkozy for calling the street lice "scum." Nothing has really happened; a few people have woken up, but not nearly enough to make a difference. |
On January 19, Jacques Chirac warned that his military would use its nuclear forces to target states that sponsored terrorism against France—El Cid braggadocio that made George Bush’s past Wild West lingo like ‘smoke ‘em out’ and ‘dead or alive’ seem Pollyannaish by comparison.
| But nobody, starting with Chirac, imagines he'd actually follow through on his threat, short of Paris being incinerated. So it'll probably be goodbye, Lille, and all the evil ones will get will be a strong note, and maybe the French ambassador withdrawn for consultations. |
Not long after, it was disclosed that the French and the Americans have coordinated their efforts to keep Syria out of Lebanon and to isolate Bashar AssadÂ’s shaky Syrian regime. And in a recent news conference Donald Rumsfeld and the new German defense minister Franz Josef Jung sounded as if they were once more the old allies of the past, fighting shoulder to shoulder against terrorists who would like to do to Berlin what they did to New York.
| The Frenchies regard diplomacy as their strong suit. But when Pencilneck does finally leave office, he'll probably go live in Gay Paree. The Merkel regime in Berlin looks better than it actually is through comparison with Schroeder's, but she's got a skin-of-her-teeth hold on power. |
The once plodding and ineffectual British-French-German diplomatic effort to circumvent Iran’s nuclear program finally reached its predictable dead-end. But instead of the usual backtracking appeasement dressed up in diplomatic doublespeak about “multilateralism” and “dialogue”, the Europeans pointedly warned the Iranians that further enrichment was unacceptable and that the use of force to prevent acquisition of an Iranian bomb could not be ruled out.
| It took the election of a first-class psychoceramic in Teheran to bring it about. Had Rafsanjani won the election, or even Khatami, they'd still be yapping, with the Medes and the Persians pretended to bend while continuing doing what they want. They didn't erect those reactors and research sites the day Ahmadinejad got elected. |
A Europe that once dismissed as retrograde AmericaÂ’s anti-ballistic missile system may well soon be in range of IranÂ’s envisioned nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
| I haven't heard of the Euros actually purchasing any ABM systems, though. They still don't think they're going to be targeted, or if they are that it'll be after we're targeted, which'll give them time to develop defenses at their liesure. |
The Dutch suddenly agreed to deploy up to 1,400 troops in the more dangerous regions of southern Afghanistan. That show of fortitude prompted NATO to boast that its European and American forces may soon go on the offensive against many of the most recalcitrant Taliban strongholds.
| Yeah. I ate a salad last week, causing me to boast that I'm gonna get skinny as a rail. |
When a Danish paper was threatened for printing cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, neither the government of Demark nor the usually politically-correct European Union tried to impose censorship in the face of Arab boycotts, rioting, and not-so-veiled threats to make life difficult for Scandinavians. Instead, newspapers all over Europe reprinted the cartoons, ignored Arab threats—only to witness the United States State Department of all governments offer limp-wristed palliatives about cultural sensitivity rather than principled support of the surprising European defense of free expression and speech.
| The dimbulb who made those comments should be looking for a new career in the food service industry. The administration should issue a clarification immediately. |
Have the Europeans flipped out?
| Only temporarily. Don't forget the short attention span. |
Hardly. Recent polls show a majority of Europeans are becoming increasingly tired of current liberal immigration policies and foreign aid programs that have given billions of dollars to the Palestine Authority that they now learn in the aftermath of Yasser ArafatÂ’s death resulted in both rampant corruption and the Hamas backlash.
| Too bad nobody told them about it while it was going on... Oh. Wait... Well, it's too bad they didn't pay attention at the time. They'd maybe have saved some money. But my guess is they'll continue pouring euros down the same rathole so the women and children and puppies and kittens and fluffy bunnies don't starve. |
It is one thing to subsidize a double-talking Arafat, quite another to keep giving money to terrorists who openly promise to finish the European holocaust.
| Better to give the money to NGOs and let them pass it on. |
More importantly, despite distancing themselves from the United States, and spreading cash liberally around, the Europeans are beginning to fathom that the radical Islamists still hate them even more than they do the Americans—as if the fundamentalists add disdain for perceived European weakness in addition to the usual generic hatred of all things Western.
| Quelle surprise. My gaster has gone all flabby. |
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is out—and, in humiliating fashion for a supposedly principled socialist, now grubbing for petrodollars for the Russian state-run conglomerate Gazprom.
| Merkel's in power by a teeny-tiny margin. Schroeder's out, but there are still SPD hacks sprinkled liberally among her government. The only reason the street yo's aren't hollering "Merkel lied, people died" is that it doesn't rhyme in German. They're still trying to come up with something close, using less than 11-syllable words. |
Despite his eleventh hour saber rattling, Jacques Chirac is emasculated.
| Always has been Somebody just commented on the Emperor's wardrobe... |
Conservatives are now firmly in power in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States.
| They're out in Spain and keeping a low profile in Portugal. Scandinavia remains mush, Berlusconi's beleaguered, Eastern Europe's still not a power and won't be for years, though I'd guess the center of power will slowly shift to Budapest and Prague and Sofia in years to come. Belgium's a laughinstock, Luxembourg would be if anybody thought about it. |
Immigration legislation under consideration from Scandinavia to France makes the American Patriot Act seem tame. Italian wiretaps led to arrests of Muslim terrorists who were plotting another 9/11 at the very time Democratic Senators in confirmation hearings tore into Justice Alito for supposedly condoning police-state tactics.
| The one thing the Euros have going for them is the competence of their police, when they're allowed to do anything. When they're not, as in Britain this weekend, fuhgeddaboudit. |
Liberals here at home attribute the change of European hearts and minds to the abandonment of our own neocon unilateralism, and Mr. Bush’s long overdue return to multilateral bridge building. But that is a superficial exegesis, given that America still supplies the bulk of the coalition troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq—and receives daily European goading about electronic surveillance abroad and detention centers in Eastern Europe.
| Bush is rather like the Shadow, with the ability to cloud Dems' minds... |
Two other developments better explain the warming in Atlantic relations and the EuropeansÂ’ sudden muscularity. First, the Bush administration wisely adopted a Zen-like strategy of keeping low and letting the ankle-biting Europeans take the lead in dealing with radical Islamists like the Iranian theocracy and Hamas. As we stayed silent and played the sullen bad cop, the good guys were sorely disappointed at learning that, yes, the Iranians want both the bomb and Israel destroyed, and that, yes, Hamas, is still intent on annihilating the Jewish state and expecting subsidies to realize that aim. Second guessing and cheap anti-Americanism are easy without responsibility, but the Europeans found very quickly that for all their subtlety and exalted rhetoric they did no better than George Bush in dealing with these anti-Western fanatics.
| Rather worse, in fact. But at least they're convinced, for the time being. Give them three months and they'll have decided that they should talk some more. |
Second, the two most difficult hurdles are now past—the removal of the odious Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And thus the overblown caricature of Americans as war-mongering bombers has run out of gas. Europeans, of course, always wished both autocracies gone, but quickly learned they could admit that desire only in the first case.
| Actually, they weren't real happy in either case. Go back an read a few days' Rantburg from late 2001. |
But now that the Americans are doing the fighting and dying, the Europeans can still be against the war, but “for the peace” with the utopian rationale that “whether the war was right or wrong, Iraq must not become a failed state.” Even the most diehard leftists are beginning to see that the fascists who once threatened Salman Rushdie and now bully the Danish cartoonists are the same as those who blow up female school teachers and reformers in Baghdad.
| I'd differ with that, too. The die-hard leftists regard the U.S.A. as the greater threat, and will until their friendly neighborhood Islamists chop off their heads. It's the lukewarm lefties who're starting to feel little twinges toward self-preservation, as long as it doesn't involve being nice to the Merkins. |
So is Europe now finally at the front or will they retreat Madrid-like in the face of the inevitable second round of terrorist bombings and threats to come?
| My money's on retreat. I'm not even sure if they realize that if they retreat all the way they've given away the farm, the cow, and the tractor. |
Americans are not confident, but we should remember at least one simple fact: Europe is the embryo of the entire Western military tradition.
| Right. Europe is Mark I. We're Mark VI. |
The new European Union encompasses a population greater than the United States and spans a continent larger than our own territory. It has a greater gross domestic product than that of America and could, in theory, field military forces as disciplined and as well equipped as our own.
| But that's only a theory. Any Jan Sobieski is still far in their future. And the first 9-11 was a close-run thing. |
It is not the capability but the will power of the Europeans that has been missing in this war so far. But while pundits argue over whether the European demographic crisis, lack of faith, stalled economy, or multiculturalism are at the root of the continentÂ’s impotence, we should never forget that if aroused and pushed, a rearmed and powerful Europe could still be at the side of the United States in joint efforts against the jihadists. And should we ever see a true alliance of such Western powers, the war against the fascists of the Middle East would be simply over in short order.
| There's a great line in a science-fiction novel, who's name I've forgoten: "The reason we decided to study war no more is because we were too damm good at it". Nobody does industrial age killing like a European style army. We'd rather not have to do it, but push us past a tipping point and we will. And this will not be between people with a shared past and history, as WWI and WWII in Europe were, but against a totally alien enemy. It won't be pretty, and our grandchildren may be revolted at what we do. But, they'll be alive to do so. |
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