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| Europe |
| Victor Davis Hanson says, "Blame Whom?" |
| 2004-03-15 |
| Long -- didn’t make sense to cut it.... Let me get this straight. Two-and-a-half years after September 11, on a similar eleventh day of the month, 911 days following 9-11, and on the eve of Spanish elections, Al Qaeda or its epigones blows up 200 and wounds 1,400 Spaniards. This horrific attack follows chaotic months when Turks were similarly butchered (who opposed the Iraq War), Saudis were targeted (who opposed the Iraqi war), Moroccans were blown apart (who opposed the Iraqi war) and French periodically threatened (who opposed the Iraqi War). And the response? If we were looking for Churchill to step from the rubble, we got instead Daladier. The Spanish electorate immediately and overwhelmingly connected the horror with its present conservative government’s support for Operation Iraqi Freedom. If the United States went to Afghanistan in 26 days following the murder of 3,000 of its citizens to hunt down their killers and remove the fascists who sponsored them, Spaniards took to the streets with Paz placards and about 48 hours later voted in record numbers to appease the terrorists. By a wide margin the citizenry elected a Socialist cabinet that had previously promised to distance itself from the United States and its Iraqi operations. The terrorists, although they had childishly cited Spanish culpability from the Crusades to the Reconquista, vowed to keep striking until the Spanish people did in fact what they just did. Indeed the appeasement almost anticipated the formal terrorist communiqué itself, in what must have made even the ghost of Neville Chamberlain rise up from his grave. Since most interviewed on the street expressed greater anger with the United States than they did with Islamic terrorists, let us hope that their pique extends to asking American air and naval forces to leave their shores as well—but then so far that has not been one of the mass murderers’ demands. At about the same time, the Greek government, after receiving various terrorist threats and finding a bomb at a Citibank office, assured potential Olympic visitors that NATO will, after all, participate in ensuring its security. This is Orwellian. Both the government and the citizenry since September 11 have displayed nothing but opposition to American and NATO efforts in Afghanistan (no need to mention Iraq), and expressed real venom toward the United States itself—part of the ongoing fallout for its NATO-led operations against fellow Orthodox Slobodan Milosevic and his reign of terror in Bosnia and Serbia. What do these two diverse developments have in common? Inasmuch as the Spanish, like the Greeks, do not want any visible relationship with the Americans lest it bring them to the attention of terrorists, and inasmuch as neither country seems to wish the Americans off their shores or to leave an American-led NATO alliance in their hours of crises, we can only conclude that Americans are good for only one thing: providing unquestioned military support and assistance to those who otherwise wish nothing to do with them. These are serious developments. Apart from the shameful spectacle of appeasement, our allies are not really allies and are sealing the fate of NATO, an organization that has almost no public support here at home, and stations plentiful troops largely where there is no danger and no need of their use, while deploying few if any where they could make a real difference in facing danger. I can sympathize with the administration diplomats when they insist that we are not alone in Iraq. But they are only right to a degree. We, with the exceptions of some English-speaking allies and eastern Europeans, are in fact absolutely alone in our larger struggle for Western civilization and have been all along well before Iraq, which was merely the latest excuse for ongoing European appeasement. The Spanish will never go after the killers of their own citizens, much less the countries who provided them support and succor, just as the Western Europeans did nothing to stop Mr. Milosevic, just as they sent a token force to Afghanistan, and hardly any to Iraq, and just as the Greeks will do nothing if their Olympics are destroyed by waves of Islamic terrorists. We should not like all this, but we also should not deny that it is so. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #19 That also was Steven's entire post. Gotta be a record... |
| Posted by: Ptah 2004-3-15 7:04:11 PM |
| #18 Steven den Beste has a great quote at USS Clueless: "(Captain's log): The people of Spain marched in the streets on Friday. "Then they crawled on their knees into their voting booths on Sunday." |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-3-15 6:32:04 PM |
| #17 "I don't think most of us really, truly believed at the time that it was going to work." No, we didn't, but we were going to do it anyway. We used to joke about the prospect of such a "target rich environment"; black humor at its finest. FWIW, I think the German's would have fought, and fought well. Just my 2 cents worth. |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2004-3-15 5:38:26 PM |
| #16 Take heart. One year ago, Pres. Bush changed the history of the 21st century. All of the hand wringers and appeasers cannot change that. All of the politicos with their ostrich like avoidance of the Islamists war against the West cannot change that. Iraq was the one country whose leader wanted to be King of the Arab Nation. All the programs of WMD and his encroachments on Iran and Kuwait were ends towards that. If he ever attained the "Arab Bomb" he would in effect be the leader of the Arabs. And the AQ types and the fifth column of mullahs all over the world would have been waving green banners in his honor. George Bush put a stop to that scenario. Saddam and his sons are gone. Done. |
| Posted by: ted 2004-3-15 4:53:10 PM |
| #15 Fred, you kind of made my point. Let them do their own chores. I'd pull the hell out of Europe as well as S.Kor. Shit, let the islamonuts take europe, if the continental euros are too emasculated and impotent to handle themselves then let them fall - that's survival of the fittest imo - we'll have to smash the islamonuts sooner or later anyhow, might be easier just to pull them into europe to do it. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-3-15 4:35:48 PM |
| #14 Let them have Nato and try to finance it, they can't even finance their own pathetic militaries. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-3-15 4:30:59 PM |
| #13 I'll never go for a UN hq in France! Well, maybe if you put it Paris that would work. Lame jokes aside. US troops need to be out of western Europe. The Euros are bad ass enough to take care of themselves. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-3-15 3:26:25 PM |
| #12 As much as I dislike Nato, we have to stay in it. If we were to leave it, France would take it over and assert its will. The same goes for the UN - we have to stay in it if for no other reason then not letting someone else take it over. The only out for both would be to dissolve them completely. That won't happen. We are stuck dealing with our own success at creating both - just like social security here at home. |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2004-3-15 3:25:28 PM |
| #11 Dave - I disagree on the resolve part. If Bush had called for a million volunteers the week after 9/11 he would have gotten them. It's just that the people who would have volunteered never get quoted by the New York Times. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-3-15 3:19:46 PM |
| #10 "The US is basically in this alone, which is OK--we can handle it if we'll just stay united and keep our resolve." Uh, Jennie... seems to me we're staying anything BUT united, thanks to a Democratic Party which considers George W. Bush more of an enemy than the terrorists. And resolve? The number of Americans who have anything like "resolve" is dwindling fast. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-3-15 3:15:13 PM |
| #9 Fred: Would the Germans have fought? I assume we could have counted on the Brits. Any other likely company in the foxhole? (In my Fulda Gap hypo, that is.) |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-3-15 3:15:09 PM |
| #8 Jarhead: I dunno. The longer this goes on, the more we carry the war with only lip service from Europe, the more I'm thinking in terms of procurators and praetors and such. It's a pretty good racket if you can pull out of a war against civilization and still expect the benefits. You get to make faces and call names at the stoopid Americans, secure in the knowledge that for their own good they won't let the Islamists quite overthrow your country. When I was stationed in Germany, I can remember one fellow who had an 18-year-old son, who told me fondly that for every American in Germany that was a German who didn't have to get drafted. So now, after June, for every American who gets killed in Iraq, that's a Spaniard who potentially doesn't. B: They'd have needed tanks because 3rd Armored Division and 11th Cav and 8th ID and 1st Armored were there, among others, exercising scenarios that involved companies taking on (and destroying) battalions. Which, by the way, actually happened when many of the same units fought GWI. I don't think most of us really, truly believed at the time that it was going to work. |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-3-15 3:08:52 PM |
| #7 Boy, noone gives it to you straight like VDH. You just know he's right, even though what he says is like getting a wet mop in the face. The US is basically in this alone, which is OK--we can handle it if we'll just stay united and keep our resolve. But after all we've done for Europe--my God!--at great expense, for decades and with very little thanks. Screw NATO and I, for one, would like to see the U.S. pull out of the Olympics for starters. (They were kind of a UN-style circle jerk anyway.) |
| Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro 2004-3-15 3:07:24 PM |
| #6 geez, isolationism in itself isn't really stupid; it's how one executes or implements it that makes it stupid or not. I'd advocate global markets, commerce and trade while stepping back from "foreign military entanglements". |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-3-15 2:32:23 PM |
| #5 It is high time that NATO be left to wither on the vine. The original purpose of the organization was to stop soviet expansion. Done! Even when the threat to west europe was at it hieghtest the eurotrash didn't try to provide for thier own defense. The american cowboy was always there. Let them pay for thier own defense and still try and keep thier bloated social programs. Or they can just appease and pay tribute. Collective security???I say bullshit - only when it suits the eurotrash. The implementation of article 5 after 9-11 was a joke. Take our forces out of europe and put them where they will do some good in our war terror. Let the chamberlin's of europe appease these islamo fascists (eruope does have a long history of appeasing and tolerating tryants and facists) deal with it. They are dillusional if they think that terror attacks are related to supporting the US. The West is hated for larger reasons and in the islamo fascist view europe is just as guilty. So let them go on thier own and suffer the consquences. The United States needs to be just a little more isolationists and more self reliant. |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-3-15 2:31:07 PM |
| #4 Matt - why would they have needed tanks? |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-15 2:24:21 PM |
| #3 With everything we've seen over the last couple of years, you really do have to wonder how long NATO would have held together if 2,000 Russian tanks had come charging through the Fulda Gap, say in 1980 before Reagan's military buildup. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-3-15 2:18:34 PM |
| #2 Screw the Olympics, screw Old Europe... let's move the UN HQ to Paris already and get this thing over with. "No American blood for wine, cheese, chocalate or fast cars!" sez I. I'm pissed, as all VRWCers should be today. We should all be well-nigh fed up with taking hits from so-called friends when they get the crap beat outta them by the neighborhood bully. Isolationism, as inherently stupid as it is, begins to sound a little more palatable. I hope that feeling passes quickly. |
| Posted by: geezer 2004-3-15 2:15:54 PM |
| #1 At about the same time, the Greek government, after receiving various terrorist threats and finding a bomb at a Citibank office, assured potential Olympic visitors that NATO will, after all, participate in ensuring its security. This is Orwellian. Both the government and the citizenry since September 11 have displayed nothing but opposition to American and NATO efforts in Afghanistan (no need to mention Iraq), and expressed real venom toward the United States itself?part of the ongoing fallout for its NATO-led operations against fellow Orthodox Slobodan Milosevic and his reign of terror in Bosnia and Serbia. ...Actually, IMHO the reason the Greeks are so eager to bring NATO in on the security is because when something hits the fan, they'll have a scapegoat... Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-3-15 2:07:58 PM |