If's Friday, so that means it's Victor Davis Hanson day. He describes the sickening and cynical double standard among our friends in old Europe.

Millions are slowly learning how different the United States is from its critics in Europe. France will threaten the awful regime in Libya but only about matters of monetary recompense, in the same manner that money led both it and Germany to trade with Saddam Hussein after 1991 and haggle over oil concessions for the next half century. Neither state would remove a dictator, much less pledge lives and nearly $90 billion to create a democracy in the Middle East. All that is too concrete, too absolute, too unsophisticated for the philosophes, who would always prefer slurring a democracy to castigating some third-world bloody ideologue. The Europeans, remember, are now grandstanding about the need for American "transparency" in the distribution of their paltry few millions in Iraq in a manner that they never demanded of their billions once dumped onto a corrupt Palestinian Authority.

There are bombings regularly in Spain; over 10,000 died in France due to either a defect in its socialist government or indeed in its very national character; and Russia obliterated Grosny. But a single death or bomb in Baghdad alone seems to merit condemnation from the Europeans, whose leaders seem incapable of using the words "victory" and "freedom," much less "sacrifice" and "liberation." They may lavish awards and money on a Jimmy Carter or Susan Sontag, who criticize their own country's efforts in the midst of a deadly war; but the true moralists are those who risk taking on tyrants, not those who carp from the sidelines that such courageous efforts are sometimes messy...

...For some reason Paris and Berlin ? and their American admirers ? think that the reconstruction of Iraq should be perfect in six months, despite the fact that European and U.N. efforts in the Balkans are not perfect after a near decade. Yet it is likely that Saddam Hussein ? on the lam for six months ? will be found more quickly than the odious Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic who, under very suspicious circumstances, are still in hiding inside Europe five years after their hideous regimes collapsed beneath American bombs. And will the Balkans under the U.N. ? 13 years so far since hostilities commenced ? achieve stability more quickly than Iraq under American auspices? Instead, when the post-9/11 war is all over, all of the dead ? Americans, Afghans, and Iraqis ? in the first two years of fighting will prove to be a fraction of those slaughtered in the former Yugoslavia during the decade of European non-fighting. We have seen the European new world order, and its pacifist and socialist utopia leads to Sbrenica and an August of mass death in France.

RTWT

Thanks, Rand, for posting this - I never can remember to look at NRO.

Hansen is indeed a treasure.

>> "its pacifist and socialist utopia leads to
>> Sbrenica and an August of mass death in France."

Yawn -- so VDH is *still* whining about the French summer heatwave?

He sure is an amazing guy. He's basically been ranting and raving every week on NRO since 9/11. Talk about "post-traumatic stress disorder".

MARCU$

>Yawn -- so VDH is *still* whining about the
French summer heatwave?

Marcus, Marcus, Marcus, my Socialist comrade and fellow space weenie, tsk, tsk.

Surely you can do better than the tired old ad homenium approach so regrettably favored by our domestic liberals? My offer of aslyum is still on the table--join us!

Is it simplisme to wonder how/why you could wind up w/ enough deaths as to get ministers fired and investigations opened?

Or is it simplisme to simply forget about them, and brush off those who remind one of them as "whining"?

Whatever happened to the Finns who fought the Soviets to a standstill?

Truly, the days are long gone when one could proudly say the Mannerheim Line is the Finnish soldier standing in the snow...

VDH performs a valuable service in reminding people that we really are still at war against people who would kill us in the millions if they could--only two short years after 9-11, too. Hard to believe people are forgetting.

Good to see someone remember Europe's utter failure in Yugoslavia.

Taking a longer perspective, it's possible to see the U.S emerging as a democratic and revolutionary power at the beginning of the 20th century, only to be drawn into one hundred years of war and cold war thanks to the failure of Europe's undemocratic regimes.

THe 20th century is often called the American century. From another point of view, it was the century of European failure.

And now, the world is finally seeing the U.S. begin to adjust to the end of that bloody century. Threats persist, but we are now able to return to our true role as the advocate of democracy in the world. Democracy is as revolutionary today as it was in 1776. Many in Europe and elsewhere find it no less frightening.

Just a reminder to everyone here that 3,000 deaths on 9/11 don't seem to have been enough to get anybody to resign or get fired.

We're not smarter than the Europeans, only less stupid some of the time.

Jay,

But that's all one can hope for.

Cupidity, greed, stupidity, those are the constants. The RARITY, the UNCOMMON is truly honorable, valorous, or intelligent behavior.

The question is how often the latter occurs (in general), and how often it has a chance to make a difference.

Jay,

I don't know about people getting fired post-9/11, but there has certainly been a HUGE shakeup in the nation's intelligence, law enforcement and defense communities. Whether that leads to improvements in cooperation and efficiency remains to be seen, of course (and will be difficult to determine from out here in the peanut gallery), but I don't think you can reasonably claim inaction.

Responding to all this stuff would be a waste of time, but I will ask you a question:

If you *really* think Iraq is about 'the future survival of Western democracy' and 'the battle of our lives' as Lileks (approximately) put it a few weeks ago, why the hell didn't you work harder at obtaining international support/approval before embarking on a hugely controversial military campaign such as this one?!?!?! For example, would the German Left have been quite as vocal if the Administration had signed (a further compromised version of-) the Kyoto Protocol? Would the French & Belgians have been more positive if the US had dropped its opposition to the International War Criminal Court? Would the Democrats have been quite as angry if the GOP had not run negative attack ads accusing Sen. Max Cleland (a Vietnam amputee) and others of being un-patriotic opponents to national defense during the 2002 elections?? Or what if the President had agreed with Senate Democrats that future juridical nominees would be considered only if they enjoy the bipartisan support of 60 senators? Surely making less essential, unrelated concessions to show your good will and commitment to national/international unity at home and abroad (in return for political and economic support) would have been worth it now?
---
You guys keep telling me the deep divisions (between Red Americans and Blue Americans, or between this Administration and the European Union) were in place long before the Iraq war even started. Maybe, but you cannot deny the Administration's lack of finesse has made things a *lot* more difficult than when Bush v.41 was running the show.

MARCU$

P.S.: Memo for Rand:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A14545-2003Sep28¬Found=true

Data Reveal Inaccuracies in Portrayal of Iraqis

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A14
[...]
The poll also found that 29 percent of Baghdad residents had a favorable view of the United States, while 44 percent had a negative view. By comparison, 55 percent had a favorable view of France.

Similarly, half of Baghdad residents had a negative view of President Bush, while 29 percent had a favorable view of him. In contrast, French President Jacques Chirac drew a 42 percent favorable rating.

Marcus, this post is an hilarious view into the clueless European mind.

First of all, Chirac was not going to allow Saddam to be removed under any circumstances, if he had anything to say about it.

But what you're asking is, why doesn't America give up its sovereignty, trash its Constitution, and wreck its economy over junk science (note that Kyoto was appropriately rejected by a 100-0 vote by the US Senate during the Clinton administration, so to blame it on Bush is ridiculous), so that some people overseas might like us a little more?

As I said in another post, diplomacy isn't about popularity--it's about achieving results in the perceived national interest.

And as for Baghdad polls, even if I believed that one, it's a Baghdad poll, not an Iraqi one. One of the untold stories is that most of the country outside the Sunni triangle is working much better than it has in decades (since Saddam starved the other regions to provide services in Baghdad), and the "occupiers" remain quite popular.

And as for Baghdad polls, even if I believed that one, it's a Baghdad poll, not an Iraqi one. One of the untold stories is that most of the country outside the Sunni triangle is working much better than it has in decades (since Saddam starved the other regions to provide services in Baghdad), and the "occupiers" remain quite popular.

Actually, Baghdad's population is mostly Shi'ite; rural-to-urban migration overwhelmed what might have been an originally Sunni population. See Steven Vincent in NRO for one take.

> give up its sovereignty, trash its
> Constitution, and wreck its economy over junk
> science
...

C'mon Rand -- who is being "clueless" here. So the U.S. is "giving up its sovereignty" by signing on the ICC?? Heck -- you won't find a more pro-American, pro-capitalist mainstream mag on this side of the ocean than THE ECONOMIST and *THEY* have been harshly critical of this Administration's stubborn refusal to consider making even the slightest concession on this issue.

MARCU$

So the U.S. is "giving up its sovereignty" by signing on the ICC?

Of course it would be. To not understand that is to either not understand the implications of the ICC, or to not understand the meaning of the word "sovereignty."