Erik

I suspect it depends on which country as to the motivations. I took the proxy war from a link above.

I think that the support for the PLO isn’t so much habit as it is that the leadership still have the same ideas that led them to support the PLO in the first place. For example, the German Foreign Minister was himself a Baader-Meinhof terrorist, so it wouldn’t be surprising that he would feel a sympathy for the PLO.

However, some of Europe is definitely wrestling with the US. In particular, France has tampered with our war effort in Iraq in ways that are close to acts of war against us – costing us many American lives. France is clearly, at this point, an enemy of the United States (which disappoints me – I used to live there and want to go back and visit some day). If I were president, I would be tempted to destroy the Force de Frappe (as a former submarine hunter, I know how easily we could do that – with no warninig). France is getting too dangerous to be trusted with thermonuclear weapons.

European news outlets, from what I have heard, are full of anti-American propaganda (the BBC was so bad that the crew on a British ship during the war switched from BBC to Fox News). European polls show majorities believe that Israel and the US (depending on the poll) are the greatest “dangers to peace” in the world, a truly bizarre result. I suppose that if you imagine there are no threats, then you would worry about people who initiate fighting.

I have yet to figure out what a peacekeeper is. I think its a person in a blue helmet, often with a gun but not allowed to use it, in an area where everyone wants to kill everyone else, or in an area where one side has already exterminated the other side. I can see Europeans doing that okay, but Kosovo would probably require some significant firepower, and I have had those in the know say that Europe does not have the capacity to handle the current US mission there.

The fact that most countries can call up a lot of soldiers doesn’t mean they can equip them or transport them. By the way, the US has that ability also, although it would be a callup of totally untrained personnel. Switzerland is famous for requiring citizens to keep a military assault rifle and ammunition, and for having substantial fortifications and civil defense capabilities, but again, it’s defensive.

One of the odder views you mention, and which was popular among the left in the US, is the idea of the US as imperialist. It is bizarre because we have had only one colony (the Philippines), which we won in the Spanish-American war, and which we turned loose long ago. But we are the imperialists? It shows how bizarre the Marxist logic is. Of course, Israel is also seen as imperialist, for which there is some slight justification (the advocates of settlements). How any human being can justify the types of attacks the Palestinians were making against innocents is beyond me. That the EU can support the PLO, which allows and encourages those atrocities, indicates a level of moral decay that is astonishing.