American Future has a link up to a article written in yesterdays Houston Chronicle. It describes how the European Governments look to be changing their tune in regards to President Bush. Why you ask?
But there is arguably more to this sea change than just a grumpy acceptance of the status quo. From a European perspective, three things are making it easier to warm to the Bush White House.
One is the death of Yasser Arafat. No issue divides Europe and the United States more keenly than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. For the last few years, Europeans have criticized Bush for failing to put enough pressure on Israel to get out of the occupied territories and for refusing to deal with Arafat.
That another reason why I respect Bush so much, his refusal to acknowledge that windbag terrorist Arafat. May he rot in hell.
But since Arafat’s death, Europeans and Americans have been able to find common ground: supporting Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza, putting pressure on Israel to let the Palestinians hold elections and, covertly, backing Mahmoud Abbas to become the next Palestinian leader.
A second reason is Europe’s growing worries about Islamic terrorism. The murder in November of Theo van Gogh, a provocative Dutch filmmaker, at the hands of an Islamic militant has been called Europe’s 9/11. Though the two events are obviously not fully comparable, it is certainly true that American conservatives, such as Francis Fukuyama and Bernard Lewis, have found a wider audience recently for the idea that radical Islam is inimical to European traditions of tolerance.
You mean those radical muslims can be kinda nasty sometimes? Get outta here….Keep doing business like the cowards in Spain and they will more then likely have their very own 9/11 to cry about.
The third force is the reappearance, albeit in a milder form, of the threat that kept the trans-Atlantic alliance together for half a century. The Russian bear is growling again. The Ukrainian election ? complete with its KGB-style poisoning of the opposition leader and heavy-handed electoral fraud ? has reminded European diplomats of Vladimir V. Putin’s determination to control his “near abroad.”
They should be very worried about this item, I believe Putin is slowly sliding Russia back to what it once was. Hopefully our Government isn’t asleep at the wheel with this situation either.
There is a personal edge to all this. Just as the snooty continentals eventually came to admire the gormless Hollywood actor, there is a grudging willingness to rethink some prejudices about the inarticulate Texan.
Many European leaders once swallowed the Michael Moore version of history: that Bush was an ignorant interloper who stole the White House. His thumping re-election, however, shows that he represents a large body of conservative American opinion.
In short, Europeans are getting used to the idea that it is not Bush who is the exception, but the U.S. itself that is exceptional ? and that if they want to deal with this exceptional superpower they need to humor it rather than rile it. Strangely enough, this has been Tony Blair’s strategy all along; it is rapidly becoming the Continent’s strategy, too.
Couldn’t of ended that article any better myself. Get used to it France, we ain’t going nowhere.
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