2007-09-29 08:37:42 UTC
The United States is cast in the role of a doctor during a plague. No matter how hopeless the situation may seem, the crisis demands our courage and perseverance. The risks we take are the only hope for avoiding a greater disaster for humanity. Despite the errors we have made in the middle east, the vitriol spit in our direction by the regions inhabitants isn't really about us, its about them. The middle east has grown so inhumane and weak that it craves a "great satan" to explain away its ineptitude. The greatest power on earth will have to do. Indeed the middle east remains the world's sick civilization. Because of our virtuous efforts, Iraq may become the Middle Easts beacon of liberty. Or it may end as another Arab pyre. The Iraqi's, not us, will determine their ultimate fate. Their choices will shape a civilizations future.
Of course there is much more to the world than the struggling Muslim heartlands. Europe is in the midst of an identity crisis of its own, haunted by a brutal past and insulted by Americas upstart success. The old powers are still far from forgiving us for supplanting them in the strategic arena - or for our generosity toward them in the last century. Had we only been as cruel as Europeans themselves in the wake of the twentieth century's great wars, we would be much better liked. The primary intellectual goal of Western European societies for the past half century has been to prove that the United States is as cruel and corrupt as they themselves have been. When your heritage is genocide, wars of aggression, or cowardly surrender, the record of the United States can be hard to bear. The old powers cannot avoid measuring themselves against us, but the disparities they discover are so great that europes moral delinquents cannot resist comforting themselves with lies about our naivete, our purported clumsiness, our violence and our crudity ( without pausing to ask themselves how such pathetic mediocrities could have built the richest, most powerful, most desirable and exemplary society in history). Indeed when it comes to self examination, the heartlands of Europe are simply the middle east lite.
Yet Europe is likely to be good for a number of surprises-surprising not the least to Europeans themselves. With our short historical memory (one American quality Germans welcome), we thoughtlessly accept that, since much of Europe appears to be passive, so it shall remain. But no continent has exported as much misery and slaughter as Europe has done, and chances are better than fair that Europe is simply catching its breath after the calamities it inflicted upon itself in the last century.
We last saw widespread pacifism just before 1914 and again during that half time break in that great European civil war that lasted until 1945 (or 1991 east of the Elbe).
Europes current round of playing pacifist dress up was enabled by Americas protection during the Cold War. We allowed our European wards to get away with a minimum number of chores. The United States did (and still does) the dirty work, seconded by our direct ancestor Britain. Even NATO merely obscured how little was asked of Europe. For almost a century the work of freedom and global security has been handled the great Anglo lateral alliance born of a struggle against tyranny of Continental European philosophies hatched on the Rhine and Danube. Our struggle continues today - against fanaticism and terror.
It is unlikely that Europe's present pacifism will last. Indeed, there are many different Europe's. The new Europe in the east understands that freedom has a price and cannot be purchased with appeasement. Southern Europe is undergoing a complex second renaissance. The United Kingdom, for all its grump resentment of the United States, will always align with us in a severe crisis: Our mutual values are far closer than any Briton shares with France or Germany. Anglo-American sparing can be vicious, but outsiders fail to grasp that it’s a family feud. And the family closes ranks to outsiders. France and Germany are Europes starkest problems (They are also vehemently anti-American). They wish to lead but lack the vision, power and generosity required to build enduring alliances. Germany and France are sick inside, having gobbled up immigrant populations they are unwilling and unable to digest. For all their fabulous criticism of American society ( where their calendars stop at around 1954), th extent of racism and bigotry in Continental Europe rivals that of a long gone American South and threatens to exceed it.
Meanwhile, "Old Europe" is rapidly becoming, truly, old Europe. With aging populations, bankrupt retirement systems, arthritic economies, educational stagnation and punitive taxation, it appears at first glance that the continent is headed for senility, for conditions under which its dwindling youth will neither be able to man the continents already enfeebled militaries nor support the overhang of the elderly.
Don’t bet on a weak, pacifist Europe doing nothing as the immigrant time bombs with explode, while demographic pressures stress its outer borders. Behind all the American scolding and empty swagger Europe is uncertain of its future. And afraid. And when Europe is uncertain and afraid, its impoverished immigrants and neighbors had better start worrying.
The most laughable predictions of the past two centuries have been those forecasting the decline of the West (especially the US). The formal empires may be gone, but the Anglo lateral world enjoys power, wealth and freedom without precedent, while continental Europe has never lived so safely or so well as under the Pax Americana. The last half century has been the most prosperous and peaceful in European history and Europeans don’t want the party to end. But its long past midnight. Europe can no longer afford the lavish social welfare systems it constructed over the decades while America paid the strategic bills without demur.
The trouble with Europe is of course, its dark side. If its racist populations feel sufficiently threatened by its Muslim millions within their divided societies and by terror exported from the Islamic heartlands, Europe my respond with a cruelty unimaginable to us today. After all, Europe is the continent that mastered ethnic cleansing and genocide after a thousand years of practice. We Americans my find ourselves in the unexpected position of confronting the Europe of tomorrow as we try to restrain its barbarities toward Muslims.
This should be the true American century where we move at last beyond the poisonous European divisions of the world and help create a genuine"new world order" - although not one based upon the murderous nonsense of the left.
America is the most revolutionary state and culture in history. Now its our turn to export revolution.
Since the end of the Cold War every conflict in which the United States has been involved has been to some degree a legacy of Europes colonial era - including the liberation of that frankenstein's monster of a country Iraq. We are cleaning up the messes left by Paris, Berlin and even London, while Europeans chide us self-righteously. We need to lead the world away from continental Europes cynical approach to human rights, which consists of theatrically mourning the dead but doing nothing to protect those still alive and threatened. Weakness never saved a human life!
In an age of global pessimism and fear, Americans still believe that change is not only possible, but likely to be good. Weather we wish it or not, we lead humanity. At times we will have to lead with bayonets,but, more often, we will lead through our ideas. If remain wise and just, as well as resolute, ever more of our fellow human beings will follow willingly.
And never forget, America is the worlds essential force for good. No amount of fashionable anti-Americanism will ever change that.