Europe's Arm-Chair Warriors (...and Hypocrites)

[IsraelAdvocate]

I could not have written an article this good.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Oct. 8, 2002
Europe's armchair warriors BY MARK STEYN


Nelson Mandela says it's the United States and not Saddam Hussein who's "the threat to world peace." Canada's transport minister, in his contribution to September 11 observances, regretted that the Soviet Union was no longer around to act as a check on American "bullying." Sweden's Goran Persson wants to build up the EU because it's "one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination."

Sweden was scrupulously relaxed about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but sometimes there are threats so monstrous that even in Stockholm you have to get off the fence. In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is chancellor today because his party successfully articulated the great menace that George W. Bush poses to the planet. Feel free to insert standard "arrogant cowboy" imagery and other examples of rampant Texaphobia.

Let's suppose for a moment that these fellows are right. The question then arises: So what are you going to do about it? Well, Mandela's country has been busy selling aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Saddam. The first secretary of the South African Embassy in Jordan is serving as the local sales rep to Iraqi procurement agents. Thanks to these sterling efforts, they're bringing significantly closer the day when the entire Middle East, much of Africa and even Europe will be under the Saddamite nuclear umbrella and thus safe from Bush's aggression.

Way to go, Nelson! But where are the rest of the slackers? I don't pretend to have all the answers well, OK, I do, but only when I'm being interviewed on TV shows but I find it a bit odd that the anti-American crowd, once you strip away the moral preening, don't seem to have any answers.

Worse, in confronting the Bush terror, they've developed the curious habit of mistaking the Great Satan's strengths for weaknesses. A couple of weeks back, I wrote about "the innovations of the Afghan campaign, when men in traditional Uzbek garb sat on horses and used laser technology to guide US Air Force bombers to their targets." There followed the usual flurry of huffy e-mails from Europe insisting this proved absolutely nothing as the cowardly Yanks hadn't had the "guts" to send in ground troops.

I've heard this for a year now and I don't get it. So war's like cricket? There's only one correct way to play? The idea that it doesn't count unless it is the Battle of the Somme is most peculiar. Whether or not America has "no stomach for body bags," in Afghanistan there was no need for them.

THERE IS something a little bewildering about an anti-war movement suddenly pining for the noble sacrifice of the poor bloody infantryman up to his neck in muck and bullets. But, if the Rest of the World honestly believes the Pentagon are long-range, high-tech, sissy-boy warmongers, let me say again: Why not do something about it?

The fact that the United States is responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending pales in comparison to the really critical statistic: It's responsible for almost 80 percent of military research-and-development spending. The gap between America and its NATO "allies" widens every day. You think those unmanned reconnaissance drones high in the sky over Kandahar were mighty fancy? They've now got a five-pound computerized drone you can fit in your backpack.

In Afghanistan, a handful of prototype robots assisted in the cave-by-cave search for al-Qaida nutters. We can only guess at the new toys the Great Satan will have in five years' time, but, whatever they are, I'll bet my in-tray is still getting sneering missives from across the Atlantic: "So now the bloody Yank nancy boys are using flying nuclear cheeseburgers launched from the Diego Garcia Burger King. Not exactly the Bengal Lancers, is it?"

If Europeans don't like this scenario, there's only one way to do anything about it: Get back in the game. At the recent NATO meeting, Don Rumsfeld invited his colleagues to demonstrate their seriousness by setting up a Rapid Reaction Force. The Continentals bristled: The cost would divert valuable resources from social programs and might mean they'd have to cut back on welfare payments to Islamic terrorists.

So instead the plan is to diminish US hegemony by spending zip on defense and putting all their eggs in the UN basket case.
The anti-Yanks' fetishization of the UN's Cold War structures is consistent with their general retro approach to the geopolitical scene: The more obsolescent the concept, the more eagerly they embrace it.

Indeed, just to complete their embrace of the metaphorical Austin Powers Nehru jacket, the Left has finally signed on to the concept of "deterrence." In the Cold War, they wanted no truck with this repulsive theory: Why, the notion that "Mutually Assured Destruction" and a "balance of terror" would protect us was morally contemptible and consigned our children to live under the perpetual shadow of Armageddon. But with Saddam it'll work just swell apparently. He's a "rational actor": even if he gets nukes even if he has them now he's not crazy enough to use them.

I can't see it myself. To pursue the analogy, deterrence means allowing Saddam to turn the bulk of the Middle East into his version of Eastern Europe, a collection of neutered and subverted client states, beginning with Jordan. Millions of people beyond Iraq's borders will be informally conscripted into Saddam's prison and bequeathed to his even nuttier son.
If you believe, like Nelson Mandela, that Bush is the problem, not Saddam, then the above makes perfect sense. But I wonder if the rest of the anti-Yank set have thought it through.

They may routinely say (as Barbra Streisand does) that "Bush frightens me," but they're posing; their lack of action makes plain that the Great Satan doesn't frighten them at all. They know America could project itself anywhere and blow up anything, but it doesn't. It could tell the UN to take a flying leap, but it's not that impolite.

Imagine any previous power of the last thousand years with America's unrivaled hegemony and unparalleled military superiority in a unipolar world with nothing to stand in its way but UN resolutions. Pick whoever you like: the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, the Third Reich, Napoleon, the Vikings. That's really frightening.

Before September 11, most Americans tolerated the anti-Yank diatribes from Europe as a quaint example of the local culture. Filtered through the smoke of the World Trade Center, it's no longer quite so cute. The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe's anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe. Saddam's creditors in Moscow, his under-the-table trading partners in Paris and his kindred spirits in the thug states may yet team up to stymie America at the UN, and Nelson, Goran, Gerhard, Britain's bishops and the European "peace" marchers will cheer. Be careful what you wish for.

The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Incorporated.

[IamPalestine]

Originally posted by IsraelAdvocate
I could not have written an article this good.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Oct. 8, 2002
Europe's armchair warriors BY MARK STEYN


Nelson Mandela says it's the United States and not Saddam Hussein who's "the threat to world peace." Canada's transport minister, in his contribution to September 11 observances, regretted that the Soviet Union was no longer around to act as a check on American "bullying." Sweden's Goran Persson wants to build up the EU because it's "one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination."

Sweden was scrupulously relaxed about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but sometimes there are threats so monstrous that even in Stockholm you have to get off the fence. In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is chancellor today because his party successfully articulated the great menace that George W. Bush poses to the planet. Feel free to insert standard "arrogant cowboy" imagery and other examples of rampant Texaphobia.

Let's suppose for a moment that these fellows are right. The question then arises: So what are you going to do about it? Well, Mandela's country has been busy selling aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Saddam. The first secretary of the South African Embassy in Jordan is serving as the local sales rep to Iraqi procurement agents. Thanks to these sterling efforts, they're bringing significantly closer the day when the entire Middle East, much of Africa and even Europe will be under the Saddamite nuclear umbrella and thus safe from Bush's aggression.

Way to go, Nelson! But where are the rest of the slackers? I don't pretend to have all the answers well, OK, I do, but only when I'm being interviewed on TV shows but I find it a bit odd that the anti-American crowd, once you strip away the moral preening, don't seem to have any answers.

Worse, in confronting the Bush terror, they've developed the curious habit of mistaking the Great Satan's strengths for weaknesses. A couple of weeks back, I wrote about "the innovations of the Afghan campaign, when men in traditional Uzbek garb sat on horses and used laser technology to guide US Air Force bombers to their targets." There followed the usual flurry of huffy e-mails from Europe insisting this proved absolutely nothing as the cowardly Yanks hadn't had the "guts" to send in ground troops.

I've heard this for a year now and I don't get it. So war's like cricket? There's only one correct way to play? The idea that it doesn't count unless it is the Battle of the Somme is most peculiar. Whether or not America has "no stomach for body bags," in Afghanistan there was no need for them.

THERE IS something a little bewildering about an anti-war movement suddenly pining for the noble sacrifice of the poor bloody infantryman up to his neck in muck and bullets. But, if the Rest of the World honestly believes the Pentagon are long-range, high-tech, sissy-boy warmongers, let me say again: Why not do something about it?

The fact that the United States is responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending pales in comparison to the really critical statistic: It's responsible for almost 80 percent of military research-and-development spending. The gap between America and its NATO "allies" widens every day. You think those unmanned reconnaissance drones high in the sky over Kandahar were mighty fancy? They've now got a five-pound computerized drone you can fit in your backpack.

In Afghanistan, a handful of prototype robots assisted in the cave-by-cave search for al-Qaida nutters. We can only guess at the new toys the Great Satan will have in five years' time, but, whatever they are, I'll bet my in-tray is still getting sneering missives from across the Atlantic: "So now the bloody Yank nancy boys are using flying nuclear cheeseburgers launched from the Diego Garcia Burger King. Not exactly the Bengal Lancers, is it?"

If Europeans don't like this scenario, there's only one way to do anything about it: Get back in the game. At the recent NATO meeting, Don Rumsfeld invited his colleagues to demonstrate their seriousness by setting up a Rapid Reaction Force. The Continentals bristled: The cost would divert valuable resources from social programs and might mean they'd have to cut back on welfare payments to Islamic terrorists.

So instead the plan is to diminish US hegemony by spending zip on defense and putting all their eggs in the UN basket case.
The anti-Yanks' fetishization of the UN's Cold War structures is consistent with their general retro approach to the geopolitical scene: The more obsolescent the concept, the more eagerly they embrace it.

Indeed, just to complete their embrace of the metaphorical Austin Powers Nehru jacket, the Left has finally signed on to the concept of "deterrence." In the Cold War, they wanted no truck with this repulsive theory: Why, the notion that "Mutually Assured Destruction" and a "balance of terror" would protect us was morally contemptible and consigned our children to live under the perpetual shadow of Armageddon. But with Saddam it'll work just swell apparently. He's a "rational actor": even if he gets nukes even if he has them now he's not crazy enough to use them.

I can't see it myself. To pursue the analogy, deterrence means allowing Saddam to turn the bulk of the Middle East into his version of Eastern Europe, a collection of neutered and subverted client states, beginning with Jordan. Millions of people beyond Iraq's borders will be informally conscripted into Saddam's prison and bequeathed to his even nuttier son.
If you believe, like Nelson Mandela, that Bush is the problem, not Saddam, then the above makes perfect sense. But I wonder if the rest of the anti-Yank set have thought it through.

They may routinely say (as Barbra Streisand does) that "Bush frightens me," but they're posing; their lack of action makes plain that the Great Satan doesn't frighten them at all. They know America could project itself anywhere and blow up anything, but it doesn't. It could tell the UN to take a flying leap, but it's not that impolite.

Imagine any previous power of the last thousand years with America's unrivaled hegemony and unparalleled military superiority in a unipolar world with nothing to stand in its way but UN resolutions. Pick whoever you like: the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, the Third Reich, Napoleon, the Vikings. That's really frightening.

Before September 11, most Americans tolerated the anti-Yank diatribes from Europe as a quaint example of the local culture. Filtered through the smoke of the World Trade Center, it's no longer quite so cute. The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe's anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe. Saddam's creditors in Moscow, his under-the-table trading partners in Paris and his kindred spirits in the thug states may yet team up to stymie America at the UN, and Nelson, Goran, Gerhard, Britain's bishops and the European "peace" marchers will cheer. Be careful what you wish for.

The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Incorporated.

I see nothing special about this article, on the contrary, the writer is an angry man, worried the EU will one day become strong enough to stand up to American domination.
Proud is he with all the weapons and, technology and destruction the US have, this same technology and horror that will end our lives as we know it.
Notice how is at first name bases wit Rumsfeld, "Don Rumsfeld" he calls him. If anything, this only indicates he is another self centered, greedy, blood thirsty and a war criminal, just like "Don".
Donald Rumsfeld, the same man who shook hands with Saddam back in the Regan times, he is the one who provided Saddam with all the gases, germs and "weapons of mass destruction" to help him with his war against Iran. Saddam, who gasses his own people with the same weapons given to him by Rumsfeld. But it was OK then, now it is different, now we remember that he did that, and so we're going to bomb him and all his people.
I wouldn't be so proud of an article like that, nor of the writer of such an article. People like him and Rumsfeld, with their advanced technological horror that they own, is what will bring this life to an end. These people live for wars, they thrive on blood and they think power is going to keep them for ever.

[Mediocrates]

It's silly to resolutely stick to the same policy year after year regardless of reality. Why would one think that what made sense 2 decades ago would chain us to some course of action today? Is that how YOU behave?

[Miriam]

Originally posted by IsraelAdvocate
I could not have written an article this good.

A fact very much to your credit b/c the article is BS.

From news article:

Europe's armchair warriors BY MARK STEYN


Nelson Mandela says it's the United States and not Saddam Hussein who's "the threat to world peace." Canada's transport minister, in his contribution to September 11 observances, regretted that the Soviet Union was no longer around to act as a check on American "bullying."

Neither SA nor Canada lie in Europe

From news article:

Sweden's Goran Persson wants to build up the EU because it's "one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination."

Sweden was scrupulously relaxed about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but sometimes there are threats so monstrous that even in Stockholm you have to get off the fence.

Given Sweden's size, the noises it makes don't matter much. They can only be heard in an empty room

From news article:

In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is chancellor today because his party successfully articulated the great menace that George W. Bush poses to the planet.

Nonsense. Schroeder's party lost votes as compared to the 1998 elections. They remained in power b/c their junior coalition partner, the Greens, wound up with surprisingly good results and their opponents' putative junior partner (Germany has a funny political landscape: two big and two small parties, normally pairing up 1 big + 1 small: the Socialists with the Greens, the "Christian Democrats"/conservatives with the Liberals) suffered serious losses, apparently in connection with the so-called Moellemann affair. The American issue was marginal in the election campaign. IMO the Americans pay too much attention to some periphereal statements.

From news article:

Feel free to insert standard "arrogant cowboy" imagery and other examples of rampant Texaphobia.

The left-wing European image of Bush doesn't differ much from the left-wing American one. The attitudes of European left-wingers towards their own right-wing governments are rather similar. I've read worse things about Italy's Berlusconi. Or cf. "Ha'aretz" on Sharon

From news article:

Let's suppose for a moment that these fellows are right. The question then arises: So what are you going to do about it? Well, Mandela's country has been busy selling aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Saddam. The first secretary of the South African Embassy in Jordan is serving as the local sales rep to Iraqi procurement agents. Thanks to these sterling efforts, they're bringing significantly closer the day when the entire Middle East, much of Africa and even Europe will be under the Saddamite nuclear umbrella and thus safe from Bush's aggression.

Way to go, Nelson! But where are the rest of the slackers? I don't pretend to have all the answers well, OK, I do, but only when I'm being interviewed on TV shows but I find it a bit odd that the anti-American crowd, once you strip away the moral preening, don't seem to have any answers.

Arms sales in the ME are a serious problem in general. No one is innoncent of it. Some people here do muse about encouraging scenarios, like a coup d'état in Egypt with all these nice American weapons falling into the wrong hands... And while we are at it, it is mostly our very own European media that is busy uncovering arms sales - from whatever source - in the region and pushing for investigations and full prohibitions of them. Apparently, public interests do not always equal those of the private economic sector, bent on making good deals, come what may...

From news article:

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about "the innovations of the Afghan campaign, when men in traditional Uzbek garb sat on horses and used laser technology to guide US Air Force bombers to their targets." There followed the usual flurry of huffy e-mails from Europe insisting this proved absolutely nothing as the cowardly Yanks hadn't had the "guts" to send in ground troops.

The problem with internet activities, readers' letters, etc. is the same one you can observe on internet forums: why are people doing it? Many seem to have serious emotional/social problems and are looking for an external source of all their woes. To me, one thing is certain: my fellow countrymen (or how do you say it: fellow continent-wo/men? ) writing to someone like Steyn or posting on a forum like this one are not a representative average (fortunately!). On the ground, the range of different views is much broader.

From news article:

I've heard this for a year now and I don't get it. So war's like cricket? There's only one correct way to play? The idea that it doesn't count unless it is the Battle of the Somme is most peculiar. Whether or not America has "no stomach for body bags," in Afghanistan there was no need for them.

Criticism of American military tactics in Afghanistan is at least parially justified: remember how American pilots bombed Canadian ground troops?

From news article:

But, if the Rest of the World honestly believes the Pentagon are long-range, high-tech, sissy-boy warmongers, let me say again: Why not do something about it?

The fact that the United States is responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending pales in comparison to the really critical statistic: It's responsible for almost 80 percent of military research-and-development spending.

I wonder where these numbers come from. Countries like Russia and China are still spending a lot on both - I guess no one really knows how much. Maybe it's the currency rates?

From news article:

The gap between America and its NATO "allies" widens every day. You think those unmanned reconnaissance drones high in the sky over Kandahar were mighty fancy? They've now got a five-pound computerized drone you can fit in your backpack.

In Afghanistan, a handful of prototype robots assisted in the cave-by-cave search for al-Qaida nutters.

And, to say smth. really mean, they never found the top nutter... A poor software design job?

From news article:

If Europeans don't like this scenario, there's only one way to do anything about it: Get back in the game.

I wonder whether he really means it. Imagine the job losses in the US military industry should the Europeans get serious about it.

From news article:

At the recent NATO meeting, Don Rumsfeld invited his colleagues to demonstrate their seriousness by setting up a Rapid Reaction Force. The Continentals bristled: The cost would divert valuable resources from social programs and might mean they'd have to cut back on welfare payments to Islamic terrorists.

"Welfare payments to Islamic terrorists"??? The guy is nuts!

From news article:

So instead the plan is to diminish US hegemony by spending zip on defense and putting all their eggs in the UN basket case.
The anti-Yanks' fetishization of the UN's Cold War structures is consistent with their general retro approach to the geopolitical scene: The more obsolescent the concept, the more eagerly they embrace it.

Indeed, just to complete their embrace of the metaphorical Austin Powers Nehru jacket, the Left has finally signed on to the concept of "deterrence." In the Cold War, they wanted no truck with this repulsive theory: Why, the notion that "Mutually Assured Destruction" and a "balance of terror" would protect us was morally contemptible and consigned our children to live under the perpetual shadow of Armageddon. But with Saddam it'll work just swell apparently. He's a "rational actor": even if he gets nukes even if he has them now he's not crazy enough to use them.

I can't see it myself. To pursue the analogy, deterrence means allowing Saddam to turn the bulk of the Middle East into his version of Eastern Europe, a collection of neutered and subverted client states, beginning with Jordan. Millions of people beyond Iraq's borders will be informally conscripted into Saddam's prison and bequeathed to his even nuttier son.

This is a scenario no one has ever mentioned before. How exactly should it come to pass? Iraq's neighbors, whatever they may be in other respects, are certainly wary of it - and most of them are armed to their teeth. The balance of power between Iraq and Jordan, Iran, Turkey etc. is far from the one between the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries it occupied after WWII.

From news article:

If you believe, like Nelson Mandela, that Bush is the problem, not Saddam, then the above makes perfect sense. But I wonder if the rest of the anti-Yank set have thought it through.

Mandela's glory days are IMO long past, but as for the saner politicians, it's hardly an either-or matter. The fact that one recognizes that Saddam Hussein is a serious problem does not automatically imply that one should agree with everything Bush says.

cont'd

[Miriam]

cont'd from above

From news article:

They may routinely say (as Barbra Streisand does) that "Bush frightens me," but they're posing; their lack of action makes plain that the Great Satan doesn't frighten them at all. They know America could project itself anywhere and blow up anything, but it doesn't. It could tell the UN to take a flying leap, but it's not that impolite.

Imagine any previous power of the last thousand years with America's unrivaled hegemony and unparalleled military superiority in a unipolar world with nothing to stand in its way but UN resolutions. Pick whoever you like: the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, the Third Reich, Napoleon, the Vikings. That's really frightening.

Hardly a good proof that the US hasn't got the capacityfor serious mistakes.

From news article:

Before September 11, most Americans tolerated the anti-Yank diatribes from Europe as a quaint example of the local culture. Filtered through the smoke of the World Trade Center, it's no longer quite so cute. The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe's anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe. Saddam's creditors in Moscow, his under-the-table trading partners in Paris and his kindred spirits in the thug states may yet team up to stymie America at the UN, and Nelson, Goran, Gerhard, Britain's bishops and the European "peace" marchers will cheer.

As I have mentioned above, it is also the political segment associated with "peace marchers" that is voicing the loudest protests against arms deals with countries like Iraq.

On the whole, an absolutely hysterical piece. Steyn has done much better in the past.

From news article:

Be careful what you wish for.

The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Incorporated.

It would be a good idea for a journalist in this position to check his sources.

To finish on a general note: someone has just mentioned the "false dichotomy" fallacy on this forum. The confrontation between good/bad Europe and the good/bad US is an artificial construct. Neither side's poitics are perfect, neither is run/populated by utter saints and geniuses or by utter villains and morons. Especially in the current precarious situation it is time to calm down and start discussing the substance - before it's too late. Heating up the atmosphere is the last thing anyone needs now.