Posted on 11/07/2003 12:52:53 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Edited on 11/07/2003 12:53:40 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
FEATURES
Europeans are worse than cockroaches
There is a Cold War between the US and the EU, says Mark Steyn, and it will end with the collapse of Old Europe New Hampshire
Heres a round-up of recent items from the worlds press you may have missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airlines service to Pearson International Airport might be ended.Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up. Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles in pristine condition, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly. In other words, theyre not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles from the French rather more recently.
Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, Daprès un questionnaire de la Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent quIsraël est le pays le plus menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.
Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this weeks column on the mounting American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: Iraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an opposition.
On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the days events would be the Western alliance: The US taxpayers willingness to pay for the defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of Americas so-called allies, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned. The West was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month, for everyone but America the free world is mostly a free ride.
Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators, at least in the mainstream press, still dont believe the relationship between America and its allies is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of stories and you can find equivalent items any week illustrates why it cant be put back together.
One: Mr Collenettes response to terrorists is to take it out on their targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, well get rid of El Al. Thats a great message to send. How soon before similar threats are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon El Al wont be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv at least until a couple of anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.
The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem: you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet Union because now there is nobody to check Americas bullying.
Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption; Canada, like many other allies, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two strategies are incompatible.
Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz. One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American differences over Iraq is that its an argument about the means, not the end. If only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only hed been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.
Not the French and Germans. Theres too much evidence suggesting the main reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that theyd already signed on to the other team and theyd decided, in the sort of ghastly vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. Theyre being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction. It was never about the means, only the end.
Lesson: America and Old Europe have different objectives in Iraq, and those objectives are incompatible.
Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world peace. Only 59 per cent? Whats wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, dont worry. In Britain, its 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent; the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel wont be a threat to world peace much longer, at least not if Irans nuclear programme carries on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for all.
Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street saying Nukes? We Got Em! And You Wont Believe Our Prices! The fact is that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of children in Holland i.e., the population under 18 will be Muslim. What do you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent? Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think its difficult getting the Continentals on side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in the coalmine.
Lesson: Americas and Europes world views have diverged significantly, and those world views are now incompatible.
Four: Tariq Ali may not be the most representative political commentator, but its still quite something to find the house journal of the United Kingdoms leftie establishment printing the assertion that Americans and Britons can only envy the vigour of the Iraqi opposition. So thats what Iain Duncan Smith was doing wrong! He should have been loading up ambulances with rockets and firing them into hospitals. Thats the way to draw attention to the problems of the NHS.
The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldnt say that. But Tariq Ali and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike. In fact, T. Ali sounds more Baathist than T. Aziz these days. When I was in the Sunni Triangle, I met many Iraqis who were grateful to the Americans; some who wanted a more visible US presence on the ground, a few who resented the infidel occupier but not one who was as gung-ho for the Saddamite holdouts and Syrian and Iranian opportunists as Tariq Ali. For him, and for Mr Collenette, and for Goran Persson and Nelson Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never terrorism; the issue was always America.
Lesson: Washington and Europe do not agree on the problem, so theyre hardly likely to agree on the solution.
Tariq and co. are right to this extent: in the scheme of things, its not about Islamic terrorism. The Islamist goal is a planet on which their enemies are either dead or Muslim converts. Thats not going to happen. But Islamism is sufficiently disruptive to rupture permanently the old Western alliance. A lot of things have been said on both sides, but whats impressive about the Europeans is the palpable desire for America to fail, and Bush to fall.
I cant see that happening. On election day next November, the Democrats have no chance of taking back the House of Representatives and theyre all but certain to lose seats in the Senate. Bush is likely to be re-elected: with that 7.2 per cent growth in GDP, its hard even for the BBC to keep pretending Americas in the middle of some sort of recession; and whatever happens in Iraq its difficult to see the Democrats, running on a foreign policy of Cut & Run, being the beneficiaries. But the trouble with a war on terror is that the victories go unreported the plotters who get foiled, the bombers who dont make it through. All you hear about are the defeats. Lets say theres a terrorist attack in the US in the next 12 months and it kills several hundred people. On the one hand, you could argue that this shows the soundness of Bushs judgment in making terrorism the priority of his administration. On the other, you could argue that this proves he never learnt the lessons of the failures of 11 September. Knowing the American media, Id bet on the latter line being the one they settle on.
But other than that, the arguments over the next few years are going to be between conservatives between those who think it is worth pushing on with an ambitious programme to bring the Middle East within the non-deranged world, and those who figure thats doomed to fail and we should settle for something less. This project is in the national interest of the United States but, in the end, the fate of the worlds hyperpower does not hinge on it.
Now lets turn back to Europe. The Telegraphs Adam Nicolson got irritated the other day because Denis Boyles of Americas National Review had dismissed the Europeans as cockroaches. Boyles is wrong. The Europeans are not cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under their own rubble.
Europe is dying. As Ive pointed out here before, it cant square rising welfare costs, a collapsed birthrate and a manpower dependent on the worlds least skilled, least assimilable immigrants. In 20 years time, as those Dutch Muslim teenagers are entering the voting booths, European countries, unlike parts of Nigeria, will not be living under Sharia, but they will be reaching their accommodations with their radicalised Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the tolerance of pluralist societies.
How happy whats left of the ethnic Dutch or French or Danes will be about this remains to be seen. But the idea of a childless Europe rivalling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and whats left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Thats the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to. Japan faces the same problem: in 2006, its population will begin an absolute decline, a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if its populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Possibly. Will Germany if its populated by Algerians? Thats a trickier proposition.
Last Sunday, recalling the USSoviet summits that helped ease the tensions of the Cold War, the New York Timess Thomas Friedman proposed we hold regular US-Franco-German summits. Implicit in that analysis is the assumption that France and perhaps other Continental countries now exist in a quasi-Cold War with America. If thats so, the trick is to manage the relationship until the Europeans, like the Soviets, collapse. Europe is dying, and its only a question of whether it goes peacefully or through convulsions of violence. On that point, I bet on form.
Chriac should be arrested and tried in the world court for supporting terrorism.
Chirac should be removed via US action and the government of france reformed. The world court is a bogus left wing attempt to steal our sovereignity
(The rest of your post was accurate however.)
Agreed.
Crawling from the Wreckage ("Europeans are Cockroaches" article) ^ |
||||||
Posted by Sir Gawain On 11/06/2003 12:32 PM CST with 4 comments NRO ^ | Dennis Boyles Crawling from the Wreckage When I was a child, in the '50s, I used to sit on the floor under my school desk during civil-defense drills wondering what the world would be like after the Big One. My impression of atomic-bomb blasts, shaped by having seen some photos in Life, was that they left everything pretty much flattened, so I figured the postwar world would probably be something Gobi-like big, sandy, dry. I used to try to imagine what kind of creature (other than me and my mom and dad and my friends, of course) could survive such devastation.... |
||||||
|
||||||
US thinks Europeans are cockroaches ^ |
||||||
Posted by Pokey78 On 11/03/2003 6:58 PM CST with 205 comments The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 11/04/03 | Adam Nicolson Perhaps the world that has been familiar for the past 50 years really is falling apart. Listen to this, the opening salvos in a column published within the past couple of weeks in the American political journal National Review. The author is a freelance journalist, Denis Boyles, and he is discussing the recent history and present condition of Europe: "Let's say you take a chunk of real estate the size of a small continent, devastate it with two of the biggest wars in the history of human conflict, then add a couple of massive genocides, a near-total collapse of most... |
||||||
|
||||||
Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence ^ |
||||||
Posted by Pikamax On 11/02/2003 9:30 PM CST with 15 comments Guardian ^ | 11/03/03 | Tariq Ali ---------------------------------------- Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence This is the classic initial stage of guerrilla warfare against a colonial occupation Tariq Ali Monday November 3, 2003 The Guardian Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited to a special in-house showing of an old movie. It was the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's anti-colonial classic, initially banned in France. One assumes the purpose of the screening was purely educative. The French won that battle, but lost the war. At least the Pentagon understands that the resistance in Iraq is following a familiar anti-colonial pattern. In the movie, they would... |
Mark Steyn: Europeans are Worse than Cockroaches ^ |
||||||
Posted by quidnunc On 11/06/2003 10:31 AM CST with 72 comments The Spectator ^ | November 8, 2003 | Mark Steyn There is a Cold War between the US and the EU and it will end with the collapse of Old Europe Heres a round-up of recent items from the worlds press you may have missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airlines service to Pearson International Airport might be ended. Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown... |
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.