Ugly Americans R Not Us

Italians, Germans, and British welcomed me and Donna cordially as we traveled through Rome, Florence, Frankfurt, Munich, London, and Bristol the past couple of weeks. Obviously, of course, Americans spending tourist dollars are always pretty well received over there no matter whether NATO relations are warm or chilly, especially when it takes a wad of dollars to acquire the euro or pound as at present. I was reminded, though, how much more there is to bind us together with our cousins across the Atlantic than there is to divide us. Merkel leading Germany and Brown leading the UK are solid allies of the US in resisting Islamic jihadism, as the latter proved last week by staking his job on a close vote for extended detention of terror suspects -- the same day Bush and Congress were unable to get Supreme Court backing for related policies over here.

Weekend headlines after our return to Denver on June 13 had the American President and French President Sarkozy speaking with one voice to warn Iran on nuclear weapons. Before going to Paris, Bush was in Rome (arriving there just as we left), where Prime Minister Berlusconi, another of the right-leaning, pro-US leaders now steering Europe, said at an official ceremony:

Italians... will never forget that this is a country that has sacrificed many lives to save us from totalitarianism, communism, fascism, Nazism, and this is a country that has given us back our dignity and has ensured freedom and well-being for all Italians.

President Bush is an ally who has always helped our country have strong relations with the United States.... I also wish to thank him for all the efforts which he has undertaken during his administration in order to safeguard democracy and freedom.

I thank you very much, Mr. President, for your friendship between the two of us, on a personal level, your friendship shown to our country, and I thank you for the very courageous role that you have always taken as the leader of the most important country in the world, which is able to determine peace and freedom throughout the world.

Don't know much about history

I'm sure that Barack Obama's recent comments defending his pledge to meet "without precondition" with rogue leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were comforting to the MoveOn.org and Huffington Post crowd. It reaffirms the commonly held belief on the left that there are few issues that can't be solved through diplomacy and dialogue -- even with those who profess to seek your annihilation. In such idealism one finds such enduring myths of the "Middle East Peace Process", the on-going negotiations over Darfur and the persistent efforts of the IAEA and the UN to rein in the Iranian nuclear program. But fear not: Like many intellectuals who believe in the power of their ideas, Obama is convinced that he can bring terrorists like Ahmadinejad over from the dark side. Unfortunately, for those of us who understand the nature of this kind of evil, such misplaced confidence is yet another example of the risks inherent in an Obama presidency. It is also a depressing sign of his misreading of history, which is replete with examples of the false expectations of diplomacy with dictators and despots. It reminds me a bit of how Lyndon Johnson was convinced that if he could just sit down with Ho Chi Minh and offer him a huge public works program on the order of a "WPA for Vietnam", he could get the North to stop the generational struggle for independence and unification. LBJ was convinced that there wasn't anyone he couldn't cajole into a deal, believing that every man has his price. Little did he understand what motivated Ho and his fellow nationalists. It wasn't negotiable.

Of course, what Ahmadinejad seeks is also non-negotiable: the destruction of Israel, the pursuit of nuclear weapons, a destabilized Iraq, an exporting of terrorism to do damage against American interests. And, of course, like most Islamic fundamentalists, he wishes to do so from a nation that abuses its women, gays and other apostates with brutal repression. Much like Hitler, Ahmadinejad has a vision of the world that doesn't allow for diversity, and is based on a belief system that the ends -- however evil -- are always justified by the means. And for those idealists out there, that includes the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

It is difficult to understand what a President Obama would have to say to an Ahmadinejad that might possibly make a difference in these beliefs, or in the path down which he has chosen to take Iran. Does he think that the Iranian leadership doesn't really want to destroy Israel? Or they aren't really interested in killing American soldiers in Iraq? Or that they are only using the threat of nuclear weapons so that the world will listen to their myriad grievances against the West? Perhaps he believes, like LBJ, that everyone has their price. If we dangle more carrots, perhaps they will play nice. It has to be that simple, right?

Obama seems to think so, and he has been consistent in saying so. He has taken a tremendous beating by John McCain (and Hillary Clinton) for his "naive" willingness to meet openly with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Assad, Kim and other despots around the world. And yet he persists in his claim that it is both a good and necessary thing to do. He often trots out the example of Kennedy meeting Khruschev in Vienna in 1961 as validation of his strategy. And yet, this again is a poor reading of history: Kennedy's meeting with Khruschev was an abject failure, putting the young president on his heels and leading indirectly to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- where Khruschev sought to press a perceived advantage. This perception was fueled by Kennedy's poor preparation in the meetings and the ability for Khruschev to bombastically dominate the discussions -- convincing Kruschev that Kennedy could be bullied. Kennedy was thus upstaged in Vienna and put on the defensive; he responded by showing that he wasn't to be underestimated by upping the ante in Vietnam. Historians now roundly agree that the Vienna meeting with Khruschev was among the more ill-advised decisions of the Kennedy presidency.

Barack Obama is, of course, no Jack Kennedy -- which only serves to make these examples even more alarming. Kennedy was a right-wing conservative by the standards of today's Democrat party, and together with his brother Bobby, had no compunction against using force in defense of American interests and ideals. Obama, on the other hand, proudly waves the banner of non-aggression that so animates the left-wing today. While JFK was willing to stand firm in the face of Soviet aggression in Cuba and a perceived communist threat in Vietnam, it is difficult to imagine Obama having the courage to defy the base of his party that is so central to his support. Obama sees the world in shades of gray, the way most of the Democrat party does. Such a view isn't well suited to the struggle between good and evil.

The response by Obama to criticism over his willingness to meet with the heads of terrorist states tracks closely to his anger over President Bush's statements on appeasement on his recent trip to Israel. Though Bush didn't name him specifically, Obama was enraged that the president would dare trot out the "politics of fear" to brand him as weak on the fight against terrorism.

French bread and circuses

If President Sarkozy’s sharp drop in popularity is anything to go by, then the land of l’exception culturelle may well be getting aberrantly fed up with circuses. Indeed amid complaints that Sarkozy has been fiddling while France’s living standards supposedly sizzle, many French people have been vociferously venting their Baudelairian spleen on their head of state for ostentatiously publicizing his whirlwind romance with Italian-born, ex-model-turned-singer Carla Bruni. However, now that news has come that Mr. Sarkozy tied the knot for the third time in an uncharacteristically private ceremony at the Elysee Palace last Saturday and has consequently returned the nation to humdrum protocol normalcy, the populace may finally be expected to cut the gripe and graciously give the French president his second political honeymoon since his election last spring as some kind of collective wedding gift.

Fat chance! As local elections loom next month, power-hungry lefties and their economically illiterate fellow travelers are salivating at the prospect of demanding their pound of electoral bread from those at the top. Cynics say France’s socialist-leaning First Lady might be tempted to parody Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI’s Austrian-born Queen consort, during the campaign and dismissively tell France’s latter-day sans-culottes to go and eat cake. Now that would send her presidential husband to the electoral guillotine and she would show herself for what she might well still be after all, a femme fatale.

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European and US politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Ruinous charade in the Middle East

The all-time record for lengthy conflicts has long been the Hundred Years War, fought between England and France in the late Middle Ages. However as the state of war, hot and cold, between Israel and its Arab neighbors approaches a sixtieth anniversary with no end in sight, that record may be in jeopardy. Just about as old as the war is the endlessly futile “Middle East Peace Process” that it spawned. Generally what the “peace process” has been about is efforts to compel Israel to give back at the peace table those lands which the militarily incompetent Arabs had lost on the battlefield during their three failed invasions of Israel (1948,1967, and 1973).

Not surprisingly, Israel has been reluctant to give back anything, since the Arabs are not even willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Americans came to know a lot about the Middle East conflict because during its first forty years it was a major arena in our Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. That contest has long been over but the problems in the Middle East remain as intractable as ever.

What has changed in recent years is the attitude of many participants in this long-running tragedy. In earlier days Israel could count on support from not just the U.S., but also the region’s former colonial powers Britain and France, and in fact most members of the United Nations. Today the U.N. is the absolute epicenter of anti-Israel sentiment, and Britain and France along with many other Western nations have decisively tilted away from Israel and toward the Arabs.

What explains this strange transformation? Has Israel become more villainous in its stubborn insistence on a right to exist? Have the Arabs become sympathetic nonviolent paragons of sweet reason? No, none of the above.

What has happened is a truly strange cultural-political transformation of Western elites so striking that they would be utterly unrecognizable to their counterparts of say, 1960.

Henry Clay famously said “My country, right or wrong”. Today, Western elites have flat-out reversed that to read “My country, always wrong.” In the U.S. this attitude is well exemplified by prominent Democrats and other left-wing luminaries who have fawned over a series of tinpot Latin dictators from Castro, to Daniel Ortega, and most recently the clownish Hugo Chavez.

In the Middle East context, Bill Clinton established a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization by inviting the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat to the White House; a little later Hillary was giving Mrs. Arafat a big hug at the U.N. Of late Jimmy Carter went Clinton one better in declaring Israel to be an “Apartheid State”.

In post-Christian Europe the loathing for Israel is even more pathological and often indistinguishable from outright Anti-Semitism. Recall the French ambassador who described Israel as “a sh____ little country”.

All of which brings us to the recently concluded Middle East summit at Annapolis, Maryland, sponsored by the U.S., which the elites instantly transformed into another festival of Bush-bashing. Why had he “waited seven years” to hold a summit? “Why hasn’t he done more?”

In the view of the elites, U.S. policy should have but one goal: strong-arm Israel into conceding everything to the Palestinians.

Actually President Bush has done quite well. Early on he concluded that strong support for our only reliable ally in the Middle East was a no-brainer and he therefore refused to have any dealings with the terrorist Arafat, who died pining for a White House invitation that never came.

This support enabled Israel to effectively defend itself against the Intifada, and ultimately it provoked a useful split in the Palestinian ranks between irreconcilable fanatics (Hamas) and a group that would at least talk to the Israelis.

No peace process in history has succeeded unless “conditions on the ground” were favorable to that result. The best and most moral position for the U.S. is continued strong support of Israel while we await the emergence of such conditions.

Sustaining a slavish adherence to the illusory Middle East “peace process” is a charade that risks the ruin of Israel and a mortal blow to U.S. interests throughout the region.

Long before being Colorado Education Commissioner (1997-2007) , Dr. Moloney did graduate work in Russian and world history at Oxford and the University of London.

France bleeds from Sarko's cuts

France's dirigiste president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is just back from a state visit to China, where he unscrupulously traded French opposition to Taiwanese independence for billions of euros in lucrative contracts for thankful French “national champions”. He may also, for all we know, have obsequiously thanked his hosts for giving the world ling chi -- although it is doubtful whether even the totalitarian Chinese leaders enjoy being reminded of that barbaric form of execution which we know in English as the death by a thousand cuts, a practice not abolished by the country until 1905.

If they ever feel the need to take a refresher course in the technique, though -- in order to, say, subdue Taiwanese aspirations -- Mr. Sarkozy is the right teacher for them. After all, he has already had Hugo Chavez for lunch at the Elysee Palace, and Muhamar Khadafi is popping round to Paris in a few days’ time.

Why do I speak ling chi? Well, ever since his election as President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy has actually been mercilessly wielding his knives, and democratic rule in France has been bleeding to death.

Can't the world see the blood flowing as transit workers, students, civil servants, hospital interns, police officers, magistrates, tobacconists and thugs in the Paris suburbs successively take to the streets, go on the rampage and pillage the French Department of Treasury with impunity.

See the gashes on France’s body politic as mindless tribalism and mob rule trump democratic institutions like opposition parties, and democratic mechanisms like free and fair elections, as conduits for problem solving?

See the lacerations as President Sarkozy himself deliberately hollows out the Socialist Party by co-opting some of its more responsible leaders into pointless blue-ribbon commissions -- while dispatching others like Dominique Strauss-Kahn to international agencies like the IMF, creating in the process a vacuum which retarded Marxist outfits are only too happy to fill in order to plunder the nation’s hated wealth-creating bourgeoisie?

See the slits as the French President mangles the mandate trustingly given to him by a solid majority of supposedly reform-minded French voters, by rewarding vile behavior with sugary sweeteners that will only feed demands for more, and counterproductively fatten Leviathan as well?

See the wounds as students get solemn pledges from the government that anemic tuition fees will not rise, that slumbering universities will be soothingly shielded from any kind of invigorating competition, that an extra budget-busting 15 billion euros over five years will be poured into buildings and state-of-the-art equipment that future generations of students will eagerly smash to get what they want, as they take a leaf out of their predecessors’ Little Red Books?

But then, having seen all this, please look away as some of us, French conservatives, humiliatingly tear up our voter cards. Because, you see, our hearts are being skewered by this president's lamentably weak leadership. We feel less and less hope of ever seeing, here in France, "a city shining upon a hill."

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.