I suspect you’re right about the Dutch. Their history of providing refuge for the persecuted “up and out,” most notably Kaiser Wilhelm after World War One, has a hint of profitability about it. The former German Emperor brought a steady flow of money into their economy. It mattered little to them that the twit who liked to talk big bore more than a little rhetorical responsibility for a war that killed millions of non-Dutch.
Hirsch Ali, it may be noted, decided to take her money from a successful book and the cost of protecting her life to the U.S. That, in Dutch eyes, is one of the “crimes” that makes her unworthy of refugee status. Her crime is against the almighty Dutch economy, as well as making the outlandish claim that ethics might matter more than money. Ditto Europe’s policy toward the Middle East. Tyrants are OK as long as the oil flows.
And the Canadian editorial you mentioned seems to also be hitting on something important. The Europeans in general don’t seem to be willing to carry their share of the load in first the struggle against totalitarian communism and now that against a rather terrifying perversion of religion. In WWII, they (particularly the French) left all the hard work to the British, Canadians, and Americans. Now they seem content to let the U.S. bear the brunt of the load.
For the latter, I recently had a USAF C-17 pilot tell me that during the Cold War the Danes, perhaps the best of Western Europeans, insisted that the small force we kept Iceland had to be supplied by eggs and milk products flown in from Denmark rather than the (much less expensive) U.S. Money, money, money. For all too many Western Europeans money matters more than freedom. With the US bearing the cost of maintaining their freedom and serving as a sort of “baker to the world,” they can have their cake and eat it too.
The new anti-missile systems coming online offer a chance to reverse this unhealthy policy. We should by all means assist our friends, the Eastern European countries still recovering from sixty years of Nazism and Communism. But we should insist that countries such as France and Germany pay and pay well if they want to be protected from Iranian missiles. It’s time the US quit planning nanny, cleaning up after spoiled Europeans when have one of their temper tantrums.
More and more, the present fuss between the US and Europe is resembling the fights that take place between a mature parent and a spoiled teen who won’t keep his room clean or pick up a job to cover at least part of the cost of maintaining him.
