EUROPE SOBERS UP

New York Post ^ | 3/23/04 | RALPH PETERS

[kattracks]

March 23, 2004 -- ON March 11, Islamic terrorism confronted Europe. Will Europe, at last, find the fortitude to confront Islamic terrorism?

Despite al Qaeda's stunning election victory in Spain, the answer is a resounding "Eventually."

Yesterday, European leaders reflexively attacked Israel for killing the founder of Hamas - a man bathed in the blood of innocents.

[Radix]

"...influential Europeans do understand that appeasement only buys time..."

Europeans are living on borrowed time right now. They have spent all of the appeasement that they ever had, and the consequences for that foolishness, sorry to say, will manifest soon enough.

[Kakaze]

" Furthermore, Zapatero's lurid anti-Bush rhetoric has embarrassed Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder & Co. They've been struggling to mend fences with Washington. Now Zapatero's raving like Howard Dean after a dozen bottles of Rioja. And the bad muchacho in Madrid expects Europe's leaders to embrace him for being naughty. "

Chirac, is anything but embarrassed. Schroeder, wants to mend fences only as long as he can lobby for a permanent security council seat.

These two have zero shame and less remorse for Spains plight or their collective stance against anything American.

[Cap Huff]

Here's an AFP summary of the measures being approved to combat terrorism in the EU:

http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040323022847.7576p9zo


"Here is a summary of the main points, proposed by interior ministers at emergency talks last Friday and approved by foreign ministers Monday:

-- appointment of a new "coordinator" to oversee the fields involved in the anti-terrorism fight -- including police and judicial work, intelligence-sharing and cracking down on extremists' financing.

EU diplomats, playing down talk of a "terrorism tsar", said the new post was expected to form part of the department of EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana, rather than become a new agency.

-- creation within six months of a new intelligence "clearing house" to pool information on extremists. But this will stop short of the "European CIA" demanded by EU members Austria and Belgium.

"That would not be useful ... We have to network the intelligence services that exist," said German Interior Minister Otto Schily.

-- a "solidarity clause" pledging all-for-one support if an EU member is attacked. The clause is already envisaged in the EU's draft constitution, but agreement on the document as a whole has been delayed.

-- new rules by December requiring Internet service providers and mobile telephone companies to retain information on their customers, as part of efforts to keep track of extremists.

The EU is also calling for accelerated work on other measures agreed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States:

-- implementation across the bloc of a new EU arrest warrant, which has yet to take effect in Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands.

-- use of "biometric indicators" such as fingerprints and iris scans in EU passports and identity papers;

-- reinforcing cooperation at the EU police agency, Europol, its judicial agency Eurojust and among EU police chiefs, who are met on Monday and Tuesday in Dublin;

-- further work on blocking extremists' financial networks;

-- bolstering transport security on land along the lines of measures already taken at sea and in the air; and

-- quick agreement on a proposed EU law to compensate victims of terror attacks."

I can just imagine how the terrorists are quaking in the boots and crying out for mercy! They will actually have to give a name and address when they buy a mobile phone!!!!

[Enduring Freedom]

GO SPANISH!

And run from danger like a girl!

[prairiebreeze]

ping!

I wondered if you agreed with the authors assessment?

Prairie

[rrrod]

Furthermore, Zapatero's lurid anti-Bush rhetoric has embarrassed Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder & Co. They've been struggling to mend fences with Washington. Now Zapatero's raving like Howard Dean after a dozen bottles of Rioja. And the bad muchacho in Madrid expects Europe's leaders to embrace him for being naughty. "......i dont want our fences mended...just fine the way they are....hey euroscum...you pick your side now sleep with them!

[Kakaze]

BTTP

[morque2001]

Very intersting article. Looks like they have no faith in Interpol.

[driftless]

One of the problems with leftists is that they think they can talk their way out of any situation. They're like the nuts who go out in the wilderness and try to talk to the bears. Well we know what happens to a lot of those nuts. They get eaten. The Islamo-terrorist are actually worse than bears. They're more like piranhas...they eat everything in sight. You can't "negotiate" with or "understand" a school of piranhas, and you can't do likewise with terrorists. Like Sheik Yassin, they must be destroyed where they're found.

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

Europe has just awakened. To find the plague of terror in its streets.

And they will continue to whine and wail until America spills its blood to fix it.

Let them rot in their own socialist feces.

[r9etb]

I don't know -- I just can't get all that worked up about the Spanish elections. While they may represent a symbolic concession to the salamikazes, I'm betting it will be no more than that.

I don't see Zapatero making much difference at all. In that sense it's similar to France's election of Francois Mitterand in the early '80s. The fear was that France had "gone Communist," and I remember all sorts of wailing in the op-ed columns about the possibility of losing all of Europe to the Russians.

But of course France did not "go Communist" (though it did remain lamentably French), and we didn't lose a step in the Cold War. I think Spain might bluster for a while, but it will still remain relatively firm against terror -- and it certainly won't aid Al Qaeda.

[Utah Girl]

Ralph Peters ping.