Essential Victor Davis Hanson casts a skeptical eye on the never-ending "harangues" directed at President Bush from candidates in the Democratic primary campaign. One of his many useful observations concerns Europe:
What is strange about our new European relationship is not that it has deteriorated, but that its Orwellian premises had not been questioned long ago. The Iraq war woke us from a deep, dangerous coma, and raised questions unasked for decades: Why defend a continent larger and more populous than our own? Why consider the German and French governments staunch allies, when, by any measure of their rhetorical and diplomatic anti-Americanism, they appear no different from — and indeed, far worse than — what emanates from a China, Brazil, or Middle Eastern "moderate" nations?Posted by Alan at January 24, 2004 07:42 PMEurope, not America, has proved most interested in Iraqi oil over the last decade. Europe, not America, is apt to tolerate massacres in the Balkans or Iraq. Indeed, the victory in Iraq emphasized that our greatest sin is in being cumbersome and often acting belatedly to stop autocratic killing — but this is a far different moral quandary than never acting at all. When you look at Iranian fascists being wined and dined in Paris, count up all the corpses from the August heat wave, and contemplate the explosive issue of school scarves, France, not the United States, is the real sick puppy.