I had a nice long response going to kkfootee, but my mouse has these buttons on the side, and when I accidentally depress one, its serves as page back in IE, and I lost it all. Bah. Anyway, my main point was that Americans do not live in a bubble, we are very much aware of especially Europe's opinion of us and our actions. I do not agree that our foreign policy has sucked, we have had many more successes than failures, and most of what people consider our 'bad foreign policy' i.e. our fight against communism was possibly our most important and correct fight of all. Yes we supported some shaky 3rd world governments that ended up going bad, especially afghanistan, but the reality of such warfare has dawned on few western doorsteps outside of America, and when you have to take sides, you obviously side with the afghanis who had been invaded and who repelled the soviets with minimal US physical involvement. So 15 years later they are using some of those same rusty rocket launchers against us as they run for their lives from US and Afghani troops, so what? Great lot of good its done them, and better that than for Russia to have succeeded in further conquering the middle east and controlling its oil. Our helping them repel the soviets did nothing to aid in the hijacking of planes on 9/11, as we did not give them airliners, teach them how to fly them, or tell them that God wants them to kill the jews and their co-conspirators (i.e. us). It just occurs to me that reality is not something that stretches too far beyond the cradling arms of over indulgent european governments. The world of europe is the world of month long vacations from work that are enforced by the government, of relativism, of such anti-judgemental thinking that right and wrong are bad words and holdouts on society of outdated religious thought. Europe cringes when an American soldier says flatly that the al qaeda terrorists are 'the bad guys', and when Bush uses the word 'evil', because these are embarassingly unsophisticated ways of thinking and speaking to them. The worship of society and intellectualism has rendered whole populaces impotent to confront real life situations of any import. How could europe ever raise a hand to defend itself when it can never be convinced that military action is justified in any situation?
I hate to say it, but Spain's election was horrifying proof that much of Europe has lost any resolve and courage it once had to the weakening, fattening glut of statist, authoritarian government. A pathetic bully struck a blow to a once mighty nation with a proud history and it fell over, begged for mercy, and offered its damn lunch money. I feel so bad for the people who died in that attack, and their families, but I cannot imagine the mindset that concludes from that attack to tuck tail and run from a band of merciless dogs into the arms of a government that promises everything will be okay if we just do what those people who killed your families want. Just leave them be, we should never have done anything to them in the first place. These vicious bastards would love to claim their lost kingdom of Andalusia back from you, finish what the moors could not, and what guarantee can Europe give that they won't be successful when a few men have toppled the military movements of one of the continent's largest nations? As it stands, 9/11 will serve to be their greatest defeat, but Spain their greatest accomplishment. For the thousands of lives they took in the US, it will cost them all their power, money, most of their lives and gain them nothing from us but destruction to their cause. For minimal cost and with comparatively less bloodshed, they have affected an election in their favor in Europe, and Spain is going to run away from the fight altogether to boot.
America's citizen's do not want our men and women to have to defend people and nations who bite our ankles and grow to resent us like a rebellious child. It galls us, especally those of us who have friends in the military or who grew up in a military household. All these years that resentment has stagnated over there while we have hung around, and perhaps our mistake was a lack of discourse with europe over just that, but I can not find fault in my own country for defending people who cannot and will not defend themselves. It is in the end not in our best interests to abandon europe, the world today being so close-knit and inter-dependent economically due to our advancements in technology, transportation, communication...as much as on a bad day americans would like to watch the rest of the world fall as we pull back behind our oceanic wall just to get that sense of satisfaction, it is not the prudent or just thing to do. The thing is, america wants to love europe, its where we came from, england, ireland, italy, germany. We grow up with the romantic stories of Lafayette and the alliance of France and America, and we wish we had such relations now, but so long as agood leader sits in that head office, we will do what is right for us and for the free world, even when its a hard, unfashionable decision to make. If we had followed europes poo-pooing, thought like them as President Carter did, there is no doubt that the 1980's would have seen a real war breakout between the USSR and the US, and I hate to say that I can't say we would have won considering how demoralized, underequipped, underfunded and derided our military was until Reagan came into office. The same thinking applies to the war on terrorism, but its execution is nowhere near as obvious. You may engage in diplomacy with a nation, but not with shadowy para-military groups, and why would you consider it when someone has made it clear their only goal is your death? We do not live in a bubble, we are not oblivious to your opinions, it only seems that way because we keep turning the other cheek to our 'allies' who keep smacking us.
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