This time, Europe's hatred justified: Greeley

[jbfam4]

http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi
This time, Europe's hatred justified

June 4, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY


COLOGNE, Germany -- There were American flags all over the house I visited the other day in the suburbs of this lovely city. Two of the children of the house -- two German kids on the edge of what we would call young adulthood -- had studied in the United States and learned to love the country. What about the Iraq war? I asked their father, a social science colleague. They are able to make the distinction, he replied, between the war, of which they strongly disapprove, and the United States, which they admire.

In other words, between the country and its present leadership. It is not a distinction that everyone in Europe is ready to make. Hating America is the anti-Semitism of the European intelligentsia. It always has been. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has poured fuel on the flames of that hatred.


Now hatred for America is so strong that in countries like Germany and Spain political losers can become winners simply by running against George W. Bush. President Jacques Chirac, a corrupt and incompetent man, rises to new heights of popularity because he filibusters against the invasion of Iraq. One hears that he believed that would be his legacy. He stood up to the United States and saved Saddam Hussein, an ally of France. It would also appear that Saddam believed that the United States would not invade because France and Russia would save him. He had not read the writings of the neo-conservative intellectuals who had infiltrated the Bush administration and were determined to invade Iraq, and indeed preferred a unilateral invasion.

It is galling that, in retrospect, Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin were right. Saddam was a bad man whom the world had to watch closely. But he did not have those weapons of mass destruction and had not participated in the World Trade Center attack. Indeed, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the prince of darkness of the neo-conservatives, admitted that the weapons were a bureaucratic pretext for a war that was desirable for other reasons (like ''reshaping'' the Middle East).

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. He's right. Unfortunatly Bush has made us....

the most hated nation on the planet.

And yes, Bush has given S.O.B's such as Chirac and his "Gaulist Mafia" an excuse to do whatever they want.

[wryter2000]

2. Now..

There's a religious person, not like Falwell and his ilk.

[amber dog democrat]

3. I tell people I am from Canada

when I go abroad to Europe or say, Turkey.