Comments on: Euromania

By: Steve Browne

Steve Browne — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:45:51 +0000

You said: “We rightfully give the European Union credit for stopping the historic bloodletting for two generations.”

Do we?

For two generations Europe’s largest military force, more powerful than Western Europe’s put together, has been American.

A eunuch may not boast of his chastity. Lacking the means to war on their neighbors, and policed by an American occupying force, can the Europeans be justly credited with discovering how to live in peace amongst themselves?

By: TLM

TLM — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:16:43 +0000

I agree with the above comments. Our defensive umbrella for European and Asian democracies is a double-edged sword for us. It gives us some influence in the societies we protect, but at great expense to our own. It is a win-win situation, however, for them: low Defense costs and they are free to ignore our influence.

By: J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:58:33 +0000

We need to remember about Europe that without the security guarantees of the US, the EU could not have been formed as it exists today. If we had not kept forces in Europe after WWII, or formed NATO — measures which demonstrated our material stake in the political disposition of the continent — Europe’s longstanding patterns would simply have reemerged after the war. The reunification of Germany would have been essential to France and England, as a counterweight to the Soviet Union; and a reconstituted Germany would have seen herself insecure from all directions, and would have jockeyed against Russia for ascendancy over the continent, with England throwing her weight behind one or the other in the hope of preserving a power equilibrium. It is the presence of the United States, not the absence of history in modern Europe, that makes jockeying for each European nation’s own security unnecessary. Only because the US is the enforcer state can the nations of Europe embark on a union that posits between them an equality that quite obviously does not obtain.

The same is true of the Far East, where the Pax Americana obviates an otherwise inevitable power struggle between China and Japan, and to a lesser extent Russia.

The time for the US to look around for a great power, other than us, to enforce our own security structure, is now — not after we have succumbed to EU-ism. Not being located within a day’s drive of Moscow or Berlin, we have an ingrained national sense of invulnerability that can turn us silly on the subject of our own security. But the fact is that other nations can afford to not be at each others’ throats only BECAUSE of us. The EU has not done anything magical. It has made use of a security structure enforced by an outside party to create a more-butter/fewer-guns society.

We need not worry that we in America will even have the opportunity to try this. There IS no outside power enforcing our security for us. If America falls, we all fall — hard and fast.

By: M.E.

M.E. — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:34:26 +0000

To RuleTopia:

As an European I agree with you in substance. You exaggerate the number of Muslims in Western Europe. The highest Percentage is that of France (8.5% of Total Population) and Netherlands (5.0%). In any case the problem is very serious and show above all the weakness of European Governments that have always collaborated with the worst Asian and African dictatorships. Saadam Hussein was the best client of the French weapons industry. So it is comprehensible why France wanted to save the absolutely criminal Saadam Hussein’s regime protesting against the War in Iraq. All European politics can be reassumed in these words of the French foreign minister: “We have to talk with our enemies”. (Obama repeats the same. This is why this “European” that wants to become American President, is so popular in Europe.) Was this tendency completely inverted with the electoral victories of Sarkozy in France and Berlusconi in Italy? I am not sure, but French President’s wish to improve the rapports with the US is undeniable. Silvio Berlusconi was always a good ally of the US. Do not forget also pro-American chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. So it is possible to speak about some change in Western Europe. The Spanish case is anomalous in all senses. The electoral victory of the Spanish Socialist Party that used the terrorist methods to gain the power was a national suicide. Here my information is direct, but it is another topic. I hope in restoration of our Western unity. This hope is very uncertain, but I cannot do otherwise.

By: RuleTopia

RuleTopia — Sun, 25 May 2008 07:26:01 +0000

Let’s not mince words. Europeans as a group have grown much lazier, selfish/narcissistic, and cowardly in the last 100 years. They believe in nothing, and they stand for nothing but decadence. That’s why they are an afterthought in world afairs.

On their door-step in the Middle East and in their own ghettos sit hundreds of millions of resentful, intolerant, irrational Muslims who are more than willing to die for what they believe in. Guess what is going to happen?

By: TLM

TLM — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:44:05 +0000

VDH’s Grant and Sherman article at RCP got me wondering why candidates no longer give speeches on America’s battlefields, particularly our first African-American candidate (to be). Gettysburg, of course, would be off limits. But what about Shiloh or Bull Run? Imagine Senator Obama poised on a stage set high above the fields at Antietam, looking out at thousands of bright, shiny, innocent faces gazing up at him in adoration, waiting for him to speak his magic. Nah. Not even Obama could stomach the thought of that joyous throng trampling on such hallowed ground, the historical significance lost on the lot of them. Better to let McCain give that speech.

By: TLM

TLM — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:23:40 +0000

Hope to read more VDH postings from Europe over the next few weeks. I basically agree with Paules “trust fund babies” metaphor for Continental Europe. However, with the opening up of Eastern Europe the family is a little bit bigger, the funds won’t go as far and some Europeans may actually change their ways. I don’t think the new Administration under John McCain will be as dismissive of “Old Europe”so the level on the invective meter may be turned down. Under an Obama regime, the Europeans might want to start paying a little more attention to, and putting more money into, their Defense budgets. Unfortunately for them, Left-leaning Europhile American politicians would rather waste our tax dollars at home.

By: M.E.

M.E. — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:08:43 +0000

For me Europe is a painful topic, because I am European, though I was born in Moscow, but Moscow was always an European capital, even in the worst communist days. I lived many years in Italy. I know well Spain, France and Germany. And I feel myself in this Europe as an ancient Roman who sees his World destroyed by barbarians. This Europe doesn’t create more. All is tired here: even anti-Americanism is tired, automatic and repetitive like phrases uttered by an electronic puppet.
Dr. Hanson relates a very good example of European (not only French) mentality: “Today the French here are striking over threats to raise the retirement age back up to 62, and to reconsider the 35-hour work week.” What does it mean? The Western Europe (the Eastern Europe is another topic) is “la planète des singes” where people don’t want to work, to think, to defend themselves. With Obama the US risks to become “la planète des singes” like Europe. I don’t believe that this squalid individual has any chance to win. I am not fortune-teller. A fortune-fate is something irrational. There is the “theory of probability” that deals with irrationals factors. But these probabilities or irrational factors are a deviation from the fundamental laws. And when deviations substitute laws we have pure chaos.
So only an ill society can “freely” elect an irrational personage like Obama as its leader. I return always to J.-F. Revel’s books on the US. He tells that all liberals and leftists in the US and Europe were sure of McGovern’s electoral victory, and when Revel expressed some doubt, all considered him a fool. I haven’t sufficient elements to judge Nixon as politician and personality, but McGovern’s defeat had very clear meaning: the American society rejected, like rotten meat, this cheap demagogue. Carter was an absolute nonentity, but his election had rational explanation. The liberal media was hysterically anti-Bush in 2004, but the majority of the Americans had sanity to elect great Bush and not insignificant Kerry.
Does a history repeat? On the base of historical precedents, we can say yes, but in what concrete form it’s impossible to predict. There are same new factors that make this new-old story extremely dramatic. I believe that the American society will reject also this new McGovern. I have seen a documentary film about private inventors of new means to travel in the Space independent from NASA. I was enchanted by the creativity and originality of these men. You can find nothing like this in Europe. This America of bold pioneers and inventors is that I love and admire. For me it is the real America, not a surreal of demons’ worshippers like Farrakhan, Wright and so on.

By: TLM

TLM — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:36:30 +0000

John McCain seems to be testing the water for the fall campaign by focusing his latest attacks on Barack Obama’s inexperience in foreign policy, the test case being, of course, Obama’s ill-advised strategy to talk to our adversaries without preconditions and apparently at the highest levels of government. Obama’s position on this matter originated as a gaffe made by him multiple times late last summer, and which he now prefers not to disown. We could probable beat this one to death (does he plan to hold discussions with Osama bin Laden? If not, why not, etc), and I hope McCain does. But if this works for McCain, I would suggest another foreign policy Obamism be revived for public consumption. Recall a few months back, Senator Obama said, as president, in the event of actionable intelligence he would be willing to insert Special Operations Forces into the NW Frontier of Pakistan to take out Al Qaida leaders (I guess, only the ones he doesn’t want to talk to). Go back a few months earlier and you can read in the NYT that this same option had been vigorously debated at the Pentagon back in 2005 and rejected. In discussing his plans for withdrawal from Iraq, Obama has assured us that as president he would set strategic policy and leave the tactical considerations to his generals. Killing Al Qaida’s leaders has been part of our strategic policy in the GWOT since about 12 September, 2001. So, nothing new here, other than a feckless 47 year old junior Senator with no military experience wanting to dictate tactics to the Pentagon. General Obama’s apparent willingness to risk young men’s lives to accomplish a task more experienced military officers would assign to a lifeless drone, like the Predator, should be added to McCain’s growing list of naive and arrogant Obamisms

By: ~Paules

~Paules — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:37:39 +0000

Europe has become decadent. There’s no other word for it. They are like trust fund babies living off the capital accumulated by previous generations. And why not consume it all? If demographic trends continue, there won’t be a next generation of Europeans anyway.

America for all her faults still leads the world in all the social and economic metrics that matter. Rather ironic that we get no credit for being the only true multi-racial, religiously tolerant, open and free society on the planet. We are the utopia, as far as such a thing is possible, that other nations aspire to be.

America hasn’t finished her run in the great marathon of history. We are Rome in the middle years of the republic. Young and bold, sometimes arrogant, but always resiliant. Innovation, free enterprise, and liberty count for much. We hold the hand in spades. Oohrah!