The American and the European Left are committing moral and intellectual suicide before our very eyes and this is not a pretty sight… Their idiotic pronouncements over the last couple of years have forced me to move so much to the right of the political spectrum, that I now feel a sense of shame that I once considered myself a “liberal” (in the American sense of the word). I admit, I do feel a bit of Schadenfreude every time actual events make people like Susan Sontag, Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Gerhard Schröder, Jacques Chirac, and other viciously anti-American manipulators of public opinion, look particularly stupid. I also, however, feel a bit of sadness. One needs reasonable opposition in a democracy, but the way things have been going so far, the Democratic Party will crash and burn in November, and the “old Europe” will make itself so ridiculous in its hypocrisy that nobody will take it seriously any more[1].
It all started, of course, with September 11, 2001. First came the voices telling us that we should not fight the terrorists who murdered thousands of innocent people in a spectacular act of barbarism, but rather look inward, asking, “why do they hate us?” For it was us, the Americans (in particular, but the “West” in general), who brought the wrath of these brave, young Muslim men upon ourselves. (“These people were not cowards”, said Ms. Sontag, evidently appalled by G.W. Bush’s characterization of the terrorist attacks as “cowardly acts”.) The genocide of the American Indians, the war in Vietnam, the support given to Augusto Pinochet, the economic embargo on Cuba, the sins of the CIA during the Cold War, etc. – all this somehow culminated in passenger planes smashing into skyscrapers. The murderous fanatics became the Avengers, modern Robin Hoods wrecking the party of the arrogant Sheriff of Washington. After a very brief outpouring of solidarity and sympathy coming from Europe and the rest of the world, came accusations and hatred, because it soon became evident that America would not turn the other cheek or, better yet, roll over and die, but was going to hit back. And hard. That’s when I started to suspect that the moral compass of frighteningly many people was seriously screwed up[2]. I began to feel exactly like James Taranto: “If the rest of the world likes Americans only when we're dying, the rest of the world can go to hell."
Then came the war in Afghanistan and anti-American hysteria engulfed much of the world like a bushfire. There were the nonsensical accusations that the war was “colonialist” and “racist”, and the predictions that it would turn into a “Vietnam-style quagmire”. European “experts” were reminding the American “cowboys” that no other country ever succeeded in conquering the battle-hardened Afghans. Not the British Empire, not even the mighty Soviet Union. Defeat and humiliation of the US was inevitable and the terrible Afghan winter would turn the country into a humanitarian catastrophe. (The poor Europeans would be heart-broken seeing this misery and, once again, unable to do squat in order to alleviate it.) It was quite surrealistic to see American feminists[3] marching against the war alongside Moslem fanatics, who would happily stone them to death, if not for the rule of an entirely different set of laws in the US.)
There was no quagmire and no defeat of the US. The sadistic Taliban regime collapsed and the American soldiers were greeted in Kabul as liberators. There was a brief moment of confusion among the European “experts”, but not for long. Soon they were pointing out that the main target (?) of the whole operation, one Osama Bin Laden, escaped. (Personally, I strongly suspect that his DNA is scattered all over the stones of some collapsed cave in Afghanistan, but I’m not an “expert”, so what do I know…). The liberation of Afghanistan mattered little – Americans failed to capture Osama! (Heh, heh!) The Afghan women could get an education again? Well, yes, but Osama was still a free man, so all this effort was WASTED. (Heh, heh!) What the hell is wrong with these people??
Then, the “cowboy in the White House” (will the Europeans ever realize that the term “cowboy” is not an insult to Americans?) decided to go to war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. The world’s Lefties went berserk. Millions of people took to the streets to protect a murderous dictator. President of the United States was compared to Adolf Hitler (unfavorably, one must add. “Hitler at least could speak”, said one commentator, whose name now escapes me.) A few dozen particularly rabid nincompoops went as far as to travel to Iraq to serve as “human shields”, in the strangely inconsistent belief that the “fascist” United States would be humanitarian enough to call off the dogs of war in order to spare their pathetic lives[4]. Here are a few pictures from the orgy of anti-American hatred from that period:
Oh yes, the Ultimate Satan juxtaposed with the Three Good Men:
Marx, Stalin, and Mao... (Well, Stalin and Mao might have
killed millions, but at least not for Ooooooil!!!)
Right… Remind me, what was the outcome of World War II?
Good point. Buses, as we know, run on peanut butter.
This one - from London? – is precious. Did this moron know that he was
quoting Neville Chamberlain?
I don’t know what was more disturbing: the hatred or the stupidity? Especially coming from Europe… For goodness sake, Europe was always so proud of her education. Where then all these ignoramuses came from? Oh, and let’s not forget the “experts”. I quote from a document (statement? report?) issued in March 2003 by SPD in Germany, entitled: “Eminent German Historians Predict U.S. Defeat” (sorry, I don’t have access to the German original):
Professor Manfred Messerschmidt, chief historian at the Research Centre for Military History (University of Freiburg) until 1988, who retired in 1999, is considered Germany’s top military history researcher. He believes it probable that the allies will be defeated if the Hussein regime holds on to power. The conquest of Baghdad is impossible unless the allies intend to burn and destroy the capital totally. World War II, and especially the 900-day siege of Leningrad, showed that street fighting always leads to complete destruction and the most horrible human losses.
Even the German wehrmacht had originally hesitated to conquer the major Russian cities, until Hitler ordered that they must either be totally destroyed or starved out. In Leningrad, as well as in Stalingrad, this concept did not work. A city of millions cannot be secured. At best, invading forces can hole up in certain locations. When streets are filled with rubble and ash, even tanks cannot move. [..] One cannot conquer a major city “cleanly.” One effect of the bombardment is that the population will support the dictator all the more. Nothing united the German population around Hitler more than the allied bombs.
[The military historian Bernhard Kroener of the University of Potsdam] recommends to British and American militaries a reading which, though old, nevertheless describes well how Iraqi commandos will behave in the defence of Baghdad: the collected works of Mao Tse Tung. The guerilla fighter moves within the sympathetic population like fish in water.
(One semi-related, semi-rhetorical question: will the Germans ever free themselves from the specter of Hitler and Nazism? Will this forever be their main frame of reference?)
If this kind of nonsense is being spewed by “eminent German historians”, one fears to imagine what is being produced by “lesser” minds in Germany. However, while the Germans appeared rather silly but benign, like an old, sclerotic uncle, who keeps repeating the same stories from his horrible childhood, the French were genuinely wicked, actively working to do damage to U.S. interests. The Germans merely wished that the U.S. would be defeated; the French did all they could to make sure it happened (including delaying American invasion as long as possible, so as to give Saddam a chance to prepare.) I hope this will not be forgotten. Alas, one definite problem America has had in the past, was that it often failed to reward its friends and punish its enemies sufficiently. Maybe she learned from her mistakes. We’ll see.
To be quite honest, when the possibility of the war in Iraq was first mentioned, I was rather ambivalent about it, to say the least. I really did not see Iraq as posing any imminent, or even mid-term danger to the US. I thought (and still think) that this whole “WMD” issue was a pretext. I don’t know about Tony Blair – maybe he truly believed that Saddam had WMD – but what G.W. Bush was after, was remaking the Middle East. He wanted to put the dictators and the fanatics over there on notice: “You better start behaving now, because our patience has run out and you may be the next ones we’ll be after”. It was a crazy idea, with not a very big chance of success. Nevertheless, it was a right thing to do, and much, much better than doing nothing, waiting for another September 11, whether in New York, Paris, or Berlin. Yet, this was precisely what the Europeans (and many others, to be fair) wanted America to do: nothing. This drove me insane. I could see clearly through the hypocrisy of the “old Europe” and became livid every time the statements coming from Berlin or Paris were taken at face value, as if these weasels really “cared about the Iraqi people”, while any idiot could see that they didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Iraqis. It was all about not allowing America to become even more powerful. If it means leaving the sadist in power and children in his prisons, so be it.
I felt I had no choice but to support this war and hope with all my heart that the “old Europe” would be, again, proven wrong. It happened. I can now say, after Voltaire, "I have only made but one prayer in my life: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And it was granted." For a moment, I was a happy man. Seeing the Iraqis topple the statues of the hated dictator right onto the heads of the European commentators (alas, in the metaphorical sense only) was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Then, the stories began to break out: about the torture chambers, prisons for children, mass graves of Saddam’s victims. The European and American “peaceniks” kept strangely quiet. Of course, not for long. Soon the shrieks: “You didn’t get Saddam, nyah, nyah, nyah!” became the dominant voice of the liberal press, right after the stories about bomb attacks on American soldiers (the hoodlums of the old regime planting these bombs became “resistance fighters” in the Newspeak of the European press...) The mood in Berlin, Paris, and Moscow soured considerably, but there was still hope that Americans may be caught in a “quagmire” in Iraq, after all.
The deaths of American soldiers were mounting. Over 80 in November, the worst month so far. (There are approximately 50 murders per month in Chicago alone, and as far as I know the city is not under military occupation… There are also no calls for getting the UN more involved in running the affairs of Illinois. J This perspective, however, is never taken in the comments made about the situation in Iraq.). In December came the biggest blow to the Axis of Weasels (as the Unholy Alliance is known here): the mighty Saddam Hussein was found cowering in a hole in the ground. (I didn’t see it, but I heard from people who saw the French TV news report of Saddam’s capture that the commentator was visibly unhappy and tried to deflect the power of the images with some lame, anti-American sarcasm. How pathetic.) Of course, it did not take long for the Idiotarians to find a way to spin this off as another error of the Americans:
"The same men who are going to carry on attacking the Americans will, of course, be making a secret holiday in their heart over the capture of Saddam. Why, they will argue, should they not rejoice at the end of their greatest oppressor while planning the humiliation of the occupying army which seized him?" — Robert Fisk in the Independent.
What’s the point of even paying attention? It is pretty evident that there is nothing that can change the minds of some people. Ideology, after all, is false consciousness and once you learn that reality can be bent to fit your viewand not the other way around, what’s going to stop you? It’s intoxicating. One could argue (and some people do) that this is out of desperation, that the Left seems so embattled and bruised that it is starting to behave like someone who has nothing to lose and only wants to vent his anger and inflict as much pain as possible on his enemy, even if this means going down in flames. Hence the Democrats here are likely to make Howard Dean their presidential candidate for this year’s election. They know they have little chance to beat Bush, so they just want to have this angry man speak for them, even if this means offending and alienating a lot of independent voters. This is not a strategy – this is political suicide. As much as I came to disdain the Democrats for their spiteful rhetoric, I’m not looking forward to a one-party system in the US. I’m afraid, however, that this is what we’re going to get.
In (“old”) Europe, slightly different dynamic is at play. I can’t put it more eloquently than Sylvain Galineau:
"In a way, the U.S. position today is that of a geopolitical Microsoft : hugely successful, rich, powerful, sucking up the best talent, fast and nimble despite its massive size, ruthlessly efficient in crushing its opponents. Hated, insulted and derided more for it successes than its failures, the favorite subject of conspiracy theories, urban legends and other lunacies. Surrounded by lesser powers and interest groups all vying for its attention and a piece of the action. Harassed, stalked and sued by a constellation of once great dwarflings who will never admit their diminished position has at least as much to do with their own stupidity and mistakes as it has with the giant's deft cunning. Feeling entitled to greatness and influence on the sole basis of their past, they claim what should be theirs has been stolen from them. The U.N. is their Department Of Justice. Chirac fancies himself as their David Boies. With more expensive suits. And he loves the attention."
I don’t mean to imply that all Europeans (“old” or “new”) think alike. In fact, there was (and is) a lot of public opposition in Poland against Polish soldiers’ participation in the peacekeeping in Iraq. There are also quite a few rational voices being heard from Europe, although some of these voices are having a difficult time trying to break through the lock-step of the political and cultural elites controlling the media. Here’s a good illustration (from the International Herald Tribune, December 29, 2003):
Alain Hertoghe believes that in covering the Iraq conflict, French newspapers recreated "the war they would have liked to have seen." That meant concentration on the Vietnams and Stalingrads that didn't take place, he said, and so many more accounts of U.S. difficulties rather than advances that it was "impossible to understand how the Americans won."
.
For making assertions like these in a book called "La Guerre ŕ Outrances," subtitled "How the press disinformed us on Iraq" and published by Calmann Lévy, Hertoghe was fired this month from his post as deputy editor at the Web site of La Croix, a respected Roman Catholic daily newspaper.
These elites are largely out of touch with the “common man”. I’d go as far as to venture that these elites feel quite a bit of disdain for the “common man” they fashion themselves to be champions of. As it was for the communists, for these people the “working classes” are stupid and need to be governed and directed by those who know better what’s best from them.[That’s why most of the ordinary Europeans may long for the death penalty for some crimes, but they will never get such a law passed, because the elites (who are much less in danger of violent crimes) decided that it was “barbaric”. Same with gun ownership.
This makes me very worried about countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic entering the EU. They have recently shown that they have enough guts to disrupt the show as run by the French and the Germans and assert themselves. How long will this last, however? I’m afraid that the EU bureaucracy will eventually grind their resistance down and they will become just a few more cogs in the giant scheme to produce a European version of socialism. (The idea that Marxism was right but only poorly implemented is still very much alive among European elites and the resentment that the “wrong” side won the Cold War drives a lot of their actions.) I’d be much more in favor of establishing some sort of TAFTA (Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement) and inviting the Eastern European countries to join. I think they would benefit much more from this than from putting on the straitjacket offered by the EU. Alas, Washington has enough on its plate at the moment to worry about this sort of thing. Besides, splitting EU before it (inevitably) splits itself from within would create just more anti-American venom.
Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not seeing this in black-and-white terms: good guys (the Americans) vs. bad guys (the Europeans). The United States is no paradise on Earth, a country that can do no wrong. But neither is it a Great Satan, an Evil Empire ruled by Hitler-like G. W. Bush, the “greatest threat to peace”, whose defeat and humiliation is worth making alliances with enemies of civilization (or at least rooting for their success). But I also don’t believe that “truth lies in the middle”. In fact, I abhor moral equivalency that proclaims: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. This is bullshit, invented by liberal “intelligentsia” in order to confuse. Bush was ridiculed for including in his speeches “simplistic” references to evil (axis of evil, evildoers), a concept long banned from the language of the chattering classes, in whose relativistic, postmodernist world, evil does not exist. (“It’s so… I don’t know… preachy…”) Yet he was much closer to the truth and much more dignified than the BBC honchos, who, in the name of “objectivity” ordered their reporters to refrain from calling Saddam Hussein a “dictator”, and instead refer to him as the “former Iraqi president”. (Why not “democratically elected former Iraqi president”? – one might ask. After all he obtained 99.9% of votes in an “election”, didn’t he?)
We’re in the middle of not one, but two civilizational wars: one with the Islamic fanatics, who dream of destroying the West and establishing a caliphate ruled by sharia. The second with those elements in the West itself, who, because of a variety of grievances, would also like to see the West destroyed. They are too weak to do the destruction themselves, so they are perfectly happy with letting the murderous thugs of Al Quaida do the job. (What these idiots don’t realize, is that because they often represent ideologies particularly hated by religious fanatics, like Marxism or secular humanism, they would be the first to be slaughtered when sharia rules the world.) The second war, I’m afraid, will be longer and more difficult to win than the first one. It also can move from hateful words and posters to Molotov’s cocktails and bombs, just like it happened in the 70’s, where the most radical elements of the “student revolution” of 1968 decided to form underground groups like RAF in Germany or Brigate Rosse in Italy. Years of mayhem followed.
The current schism between (“old”) Europe and the United States is making both wars, but especially the second one, more difficult to fight. I put the blame for this schism squarely on the European leaders like Chirac and Schröder, who try to deflect their respective countries’ attention from domestic problems by riding the wave of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism that has engulfed much of Europe like sewage from a backed-up drain. (It’s so convenient to get people so worked up about America’s “hegemony” that they forget about rising unemployment, growing crime, restless Muslim immigrants, etc.) Unfortunately for them, you can’t ride this wave for long – sooner or later it will deposit you on the beach, exposed and vulnerable. The day of reckoning for these leaders is coming, and faster than they realize. It will be interesting to watch. Not without Schadenfreude, of course.
[1] “As events since 9/11 have shown, in much of Europe the fire in their souls has gone out, and the steel in their spines has been replaced by a yellow stripe. But they proclaim this as a demonstration of their superiority to us; our attitudes are atavisms, dangerous artifacts of a terrible past which they have now transcended. They claim to have gone beyond that to a new level of sophistication beyond our violent and primitive directness. They've found a better way, and don't understand why we don't agree with them or choose to follow them. They think they have risen to an entirely new plateau of sensibility and sophistication. I think most Americans think they're rationalizing their own decadence and decline, if Americans even pay any attention to them at all.” – Steven Den Beste
[2] “My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I'm wrong--the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we're both right.”. – Katha Pollitt, a columnist for the lefty magazine “The Nation” soon after September 11. No they are not “both right” – the daughter has much more sense that her mother.
[3] "As far as I'm concerned it's equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive." – Jill Nelson. Yes, no difference whatsoever, Ms. Nelson…
[4] I bet it never occurred to these people that their actions were fundamentally racist. They believed that their lives were much more important than the lives of Iraqis. So much more important, that their presence in Iraq would deter the United States from going to war. I feel a bit sad that these “brave souls” decided to bail out before the action began. Stupid as they were, they must have sensed that the Iraqis they wanted to “protect” would love to slash their throats once the opportunity presented itself.
[5] The Bias-R-Us Broadcasting Corp. (otherwise known as the BBC) recently gave its radio listeners a chance to express their will, but did not want to hear the result. The great unwashed mass, who cough-up the license fees which pay the Beeb’s freight, were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.
Listeners to BBC 4’s Today program (the very same show which claimed that intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had been “sexed up”), responded with a suggestion that would allow homeowners to defend themselves against intruders, without facing legal liabilities. The winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament. – Based on a piece in The Independent, January 2, 2004
