Posted on 02/09/2005 3:30:45 AM PST by billorites
“THERE IS nothing Europeans want to hear from George Bush, nothing that will change their minds,” wrote Thomas Friedman of The New York Times recently after he spent 10 days in Europe. “Mr. Bush is more widely and deeply despised than any U.S. President in history.”
Well, I have just spent eight days in Europe, and I couldn’t disagree more.
Sure, many Europeans still caricature and despise President Bush (just as many Blue Staters do), but European policymakers are excruciatingly interested in what he will be saying on his trip here in less than two weeks.
The truth is that, on the eve of Bush’s visit, the United States and Europe are drawing closer together — but not because Americans are acceding to the wishes of Europeans.
Why the difference, in such a short time?
First, Europeans are realists. They have finally come to understand that, with his re-election, Bush is here to stay.
Second, the elections in Iraq have had a profound effect. Le Monde, the left-leaning newspaper of France’s intelligentsia, headlined: “Franco-American Rapprochement After Iraq Elections.” My dictionary says a rapprochement is “an agreement between two opposing groups.”
Friedman wrote his piece on Jan. 27, before the vote, but it’s a different Europe today. No, the French and Germans aren’t sending troops to Iraq just now, but they are getting actively involved in security and reconstruction. The election gives them a rationale: It’s the Iraqis who seek their assistance, not the Americans. Europe now sees the same path to success in Iraq as we do.
Third, the President has formulated his foreign policy with more clarity, especially in his inaugural speech. It’s a combination of principle and prudence, which, rather than being a destabilizing break with the past, is actually a continuation of American tradition.
Woodrow Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy. Bush wants democracy to make the world safe.
This clearer, more powerful formulation of policy would have been welcome before the Iraq war, but it’s better late than never, and it is being treated with respect among Europeans who previously saw U.S. policy as simply naive and cynical.
Fourth, the new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is seen, unlike her predecessor, as speaking for the President. While the message she’s bringing Europe in her visit this week is a continuation of policy she helped set in the first term, her tone is friendly.
Fifth, the European Union itself is different, with the accession last year of 10 new countries, mainly from Eastern Europe. Members of the European parliament from such countries recognize the role the United States played in freeing them from Soviet domination. Ronald Reagan is their hero.
Also, the EU has new leaders. The European Commission’s president is Jose Manuel Barroso, former conservative prime minister of Portugal. He is pushing for U.S.-style liberalization of European economies, with allies like Charlie McCreevy of Ireland for internal markets and Neelie Kroes of the Netherlands for competition. Europe’s economy is stagnating, and it is losing industries like pharmaceuticals because of price controls, taxes and regulations that restrict the movement of labor and the access of consumers to information.
But be clear: Europeans are not drawing closer to the United States because we’re changing our policies to suit them.
As my American Enterprise Institute colleague, Danielle Pletka, wrote last week in the Financial Times: “Washington is setting not only the agenda but also the terms of debate.” She says that Europe has moved toward the U.S. position on Iran as a nuclear threat, and on new leadership and democracy as preconditions for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Left Bank intellectuals will still ridicule Bush, but, in this new world, they are becoming just as irrelevant as their counterparts in Manhattan and Hollywood
The funny thing is if peace does come about in the middle east, the Europeans will not give Bush an ounce of credit, they will probably spin it to give the credit to Arafat. And when Kyoto proves to be a total failure, Europe will not appologize to Bush for the 8 years of beating that gave him over it. The great thing about being a leftist hate-monger is never having to say you are wrong or sorry.
Do the nations who have commited troops to the war on terror count amongst the nations of old europe ?
Or just the ones that haven't ?
We weren't wrong, we're not sorry, and we're probably going to do it again.
What was Reagan's quip about how much one could achieve if you didn't care about who received credit?
If they do spin to give the credit to something else, it's the death of Arafat. In my experience the majority of Europeans didn't like Arafat at all, at least during the last few years.
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live...work without expecting immediate reward...love without instantaneous satisfaction...exist without special recognition."
Odd though, European leaders treated Arafats death like it was the death of some great hero.
The Europeans cannot be trusted until they totally dispose of their radical leftwingers and other anti-semites.
We don't need the Left to apologize, we don't need their "yes, but 's". We need to give our voices and energies to the results of a strong US and a strong President, GWB!
Make that every time.
Great line!
Would it be envious to point out that that last apostrophe was wrong; or perhaps arrogant, I can't decide.
they sure as hell did.
The Eurosponges have to absorb two elections that showed that their assumptions were wrong.
1. George Bush was reelected. The America that they know, the New York, LA, DC America isn't the real America. And that is hard for them to know since in France everything of any importance happens in Paris. There is a red state heartland that they know nothing about and George Bush represents its values and beliefs. There are no "multilaterlists" lurking in the wings. The next GOP president will have no more respect for Old Europe than Bush does. And the weakness of the Democratic Party shows that they cannot expect someone who worships Europe as devoutly as Kerry does in the Oval Office any time within the forseeable future.
2. The success of the Iraqi election proves that the insurgents have lost the war. They will still kill and create mayhem. But they have lost the war. Europe has to accept the new Iraq.
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