File 911: The European Front
Note: The World Wide Web is, like the web of a spider, ephemeral. Links shown below may have blown away, but, before giving up on them, be sure to check whether the articles can be located elsewhere via Google or have been preserved in the amber of the Internet Wayback Machine.
Adriana Stuijt, "International Terrorist Support Groups Thrive in Belgium and Netherlands" (9/24/01). "Top international anti-terrorism experts have identified two of Europe's most legally tolerant regions – namely, the Dutch-language areas around Europe's most important west coast harbors, Antwerp and Rotterdam – as the main breeding ground for Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist groups." Recent events in the Netherlands highlight this article's pertinence.
Mark Steyn, "War Between America and Europe" (12/27/01). Divergent views of Israel and the Arabs reveal much about the differences between the two halves of the West.
The Daily Telegraph, "Having It Both Ways" (2/3/02). The European Union "will not spend enough on defence; it happily lets the Americans take up the slack; and then it gripes at them for doing so."
Jo Johnson, "Down With Oncle Sam!" (2/21/02). The Financial Times' Paris correspondent analyzes the historical and psychological reasons why the French are such refractory allies.
Charles Moore, "Continental Drift" (3/10/02). "Just as we now know how important were the madrassas in Pakistan in poisoning young minds against the West, so we should recognize that a similar process, though less extreme, will take place in Europe, unless America leads the public advocacy of Western values."
Tod Lindberg, "America Knows Terrorism" (3/11/02). European pretensions of superior experience in dealing with terrorism don't stand up to scrutiny.
Michael Barone, "Europeans for the U.S." (4/11/02). "Europe is more with us, and wants to be more like us, than many American journalists would have you think."
Robert Bartley, "Engaging the Irritating Europeans" (4/22/02). "Perhaps the greatest lesson that Americans have learned from September 11 is that with power comes responsibility. A sole superpower can't escape involvement in the world; when Islam cannot resolve its own quarrels, the U.S. gets attacked. If this is the potential of the new century, Americans are now resolving to shape rules of behavior that fit it. Yes, the Americans should engage the Europeans and the rest of their critics. Yes, they should say, we are replacing the old rules with new ones, and the world will be better for it."
Mark Steyn, "Who's Ugly Now?" (5/4/02). Europeans display the faults that they attribute to America.
Tom Gross, "Jeningrad" (5/13/02). "Now that even the Palestinian Authority has admitted that there was no massacre in Jenin last month . . . it is worth taking another look at how the international media covered the fighting there." Pretty disgracefully.
Fred Barnes, "Why Bush Has Given Up on Europe" (5/24/02). "America in the George W. Bush era sees Europe a bit like Canada. It is mostly friendly, occasionally annoying and seldom worth worrying about." Unlike many other conservatives, the author is not sure that dismissing Europe from consideration is unequivocally wise.
Robert Kagan, "Power and Weakness" (5/26/02). "The current situation abounds in ironies. Europe’s rejection of power politics, its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations, have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. Europe’s new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important. And now, in the final irony, the fact that United States military power has solved the European problem, especially the 'German problem,' allows Europeans today to believe that American military power, and the 'strategic culture' that has created and sustained it, are outmoded and dangerous."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Belgium Is 'Launch Pad for Terrorists'" (6/4/02). A secret report of the parliamentary intelligence committee indicates that Islamofascists, supported by Saudi money, have constructed a pro-terrorist state within a state.
Alice Thompson, "Why Does Everybody Suddenly Hate America?" (7/5/02). Europeans "should celebrate the fact that America hasn't been suffocated by the dust from September 11. If the Queen can play the Star-Spangled Banner at the Changing of the Guard, we can wear the Stars and Stripes alongside the St George's Cross."
Christopher Caldwell, "Allah Mode" (7/6/02). An analysis of the infiltration of radical Islam into French society.
Evelyn Gordon, "A Bond of Hypocrisy" (7/16/02). The European Union doesn't single out the Palestinian Authority for its favors; "it turns out that the EU simply loves all oppressive Middle East dictatorships indiscriminately".
Charles M. Sennott, "Exposing Al Qaeda's European Network" (8/4/02). "To this day, Europe remains Al Qaeda's forward position for logistics, financing, and recruitment in Osama bin Laden's war against the United States and the West."
Andrew Sullivan, "Memo to Europe: Grow Up on Iraq" (8/11/02). "If a person who refuses to lock his door at night starts complaining about the only cop on the beat, sane people should wonder what has happened to his grip on reality. Does he actually want to be robbed or murdered? Similarly, it is one thing for Europeans to say that they are ceding all military responsibility to maintain international order to the United States. It is quite another for Europeans to then object when the United States takes the Europeans at their word and acts to defend that world order."
Mark Steyn, "Put Up or Shut Up" (10/3/02). So long as Europe won't spend money on the military, its "fear" of American unilateralism is as silly as it is futile.
Christopher Hitchens, "Message Full of Hypocrisy" (10/4/02). A left-of-center commentator fisks Bill Clinton's bizarre speech to the annual Labour Party conference.
Paul Johnson, "The Ostrich Position" (10/17/02). "Against this background of nervous depression and debility, can anyone wonder that Europe's response to Mr. Bush's war on terrorism has been spitefully critical? It is worth recalling that the dispirited democratic societies of the 1930s were similarly reluctant to take arms against the growing dictators of the period. They behaved like ostriches, and the mentality prevails today in countries emotionally drained by lack of economic dynamism."
David Frum, "America in the Dock - The Truth: America Is Indeed Subverting the Middle East" (10/25/02). "The American determination to root out terror - to put a stop to the game where Arab regimes direct their people's anger outward at America and Israel, to eliminate the ambiguity that allows terrorist groups to raise funds more or less openly in states that pretend to deplore them - threatens to upend a system of government to which many in the West have become comfortably accustomed."
Mark Riebling and R.P. Eddy, "Jihad@Work" (10/24/02). "It may be natural for Americans to obsess more about a sniper in the suburbs of their own capital than about Chechen rebels in Russia's. But the U.S. embassy has announced that two unidentified Americans are among the hostages half a world a way. And if 9/11 has taught us anything, it's that half a world away is not so far anymore. If the developing pattern holds, hundreds more Americans or Europeans may be hostages or victims of another suicidal jihadist attack along the lines of the Moscow event. Like the jihadists' 1994 plans to crash planes into the Eiffel Tower or CIA headquarters, the Moscow-theater attack may portend the shape of looming evil."
Fred Barnes, "Taking the French at Their Word" (3/12/03). "The French answer to American criticism is that their opposition is not based on anti-Americanism but on sincere differences. They are wary of using military force, fearful a war with Iraq and regime change will create instability in the Middle East, and dubious of American plans to install democracy in Iraq. So the differences between the United States and France turn out to be philosophical and deep. With the gulf this wide, it may simply be a mistake to think of the French as the ally they once were."
John Fund, "Hit the Road, Jacques" (3/20/03). "By slightly loosening immigration rules, we could punish France by allowing more of its talented citizens into America. Immigration policy also could be used to open up trade in computers and medical technology and even help toughen patent and trademark protections."
Michael Ledeen, "How France Blocked U.S. in Ankara" (3/26/03). If true, this account of Franco-German pressure to derail Turkish cooperation with American military efforts is beyond shocking. It suggests that M. Chirac and Herr Schröder have moved definitively into the enemy camp.
Guy Millière, "France is Not a Western Country Anymore" (3/31/03). An alarming (perhaps alarmist) report from a French economist. "[S]six million Muslims live in France, at least ten per cent of them are radical Islamists poised on the edge of violence. And these radical Muslims have allies on both the extreme Left and the extreme Right. France is not a Western country anymore, it is now the leader of the Arab/Muslim world. Israel has to know France is its main enemy. The United States has to understand they have nothing to expect from today's France except nastiness, treason, and cheating."
Colin L. Powell, "Interview on ZDF-TV of Germany" (4/3/03). In the course of discussing the reconstruction of Iraq, the Secretary of State confronts and obliterates the interviewer's anti-American clichés. "Have we decided to make Afghanistan an American colony? No. We spent a huge amount of money and we are putting our young men and women on the line, every day, to put in place a form of government that was decided upon by the Afghan people. And we are helping them to rebuild and reconstruct their society. That pattern is the American pattern. We’re very proud of it. It’s been repeated many times over, and it will be repeated again in Iraq."
Todd J. Weiner, "Not the Best of Intentions" (4/14/03). A pessimistic look at European polling data that suggest that most respondents realize that the liberation of Iraq was good for the Iraqi people but are nonetheless opposed to any good deed done by America.
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