Quote:

posted by Animalman:
Quote:

Posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:

European governments are hostile to U.S. action because the European Union is struggling to take the U.S.'s place in the Middle East, both economically and diplomatically.
Arabs welcome this courtship by Europe, because they know that Europe would negotiate a Palestinian/Israeli peace deal more to the advantage of the Arabs than the Israelis.




That seems awfully simplistic. You don't think there might be a little more to it than that?





I find "simplistic" a rather insulting characterization for a view that is so widely held among pundits, scholars and Journalists writing about the situation in Europe and the Middle East.

There is little dispute that the European Union is a rising power, and that its rise to power makes it far less reliant, and increasingly less cooperative with, the United States.
France's obstructionism of the United States has been evident for decades. And now Germany has joined them for their own reasons, desiring greater power and influence for the European Union.
China is another rising power seeking to expand its political, economic and military influence.

Charles Krauthammer said the exact same thing I did in the January 12, 2004 issue of TIME magazine (page 45).

And I heard Robert Kagan voice the same perspective tonight on the Charlie Rose program.

There are other side issues, sure. But that's what it ultimately boils down to.





Quote:

posted by Animalman:
Quote:

Posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:


And leftists in the European and global media have their own self-serving reasons for bashing the United States for its middle East policy.







By "leftists", do you mean the liberal factions of the European government, or just the left leaning people in general?



I actually mean both.

I recall when Gerhard Schroeder was elected President of Germany, and Tony Blair had just become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, many pundits joked that it was somewhat alarming that (less than a decade after the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) the most conservative leader in the free world was now Bill Clinton !
And needless to say, Clinton was not a pillar of conservatism.
But relative to his fellow leaders in Europe, Clinton was conservative by comparison.

But more so in my comment, I was referring to leftist activist groups, and the left-leaning media, and the many pro-Muslim voices in The Guardian and elsewhere, which are obviously not leftist, but combine in a shared song of slanted anti-Americanism, that absolutely refuses to even give passing counter-perspective to the fact that the United States has a case for its war on terror, and an equal case for invading Iraq.

As Kagan said in an earlier interview(based on his observation, working in Europe), the case for invasion of Iraq is not even given token mention in European news, so of course the European public has a negative opinion of the Iraq War.