Euro Opinion

In this opinion piece masquerading as news, we find the depths to which the Euros really, really despise us as part of their worldview.

This is necessary, in order for them to draw attention away from their failing social systems and reassure themselves that their clearly disastrous path is the right one:

One will surely ask, Katrina and German politics? Most Americans fail to grasp how deep anti-Americanism now runs in Europe and how the slow response to Katrina - and the poverty it exposed - could trigger almost fanatical anti-American sentiment in Europe.

In Britain, an opinion columnist in The Guardian encouraged his readers to withhold hurricane aid: "America needs [political] change not charity." In Germany, it was worse. Columnist Philipp Mausshardt of the German Tageszeitung felt "joy" that Katrina "hit the richest country in the world" and "would be even happier to know that it destroyed the homes of Bush supporters and members of the military." Andreas Renner, a German state minister (of the conservative party, typically more sympathetic to the Bush administration), claimed that "Bush should be shot" for his delayed response to Katrina victims. German Environmental Minister Jürgin Trittin suggested that Katrina was America's due retribution for not signing Kyoto.

Enter Gerhard Schröder on a bid to win reelection. Mr. Schröder was faced with the dual task of diverting attention away from his already painful economic and social reforms and justifying the still malfunctioning German economy (0.6 percent growth, 11.8 percent unemployment). Not one to shy away from emptying his anti-American quiver, Schröder apparently felt that Katrina was the perfect distraction.

Really pathetic stuff.

What was most striking was not simply the unsympathetic coverage of Katrina. It was the fact that a purely American domestic issue - a natural catastrophe, no less - provoked such a political display of schadenfreude, anger, and German pride. For decades, anti-American political rhetoric in Europe had been the stuff of wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It was triggered by the neutron bomb and deployment of Pershing missiles to Europe. In short, US foreign policy, not American domestic matters, was the fodder.

They didn't mind those Russian nuclear SS-21s pointed at them, apparently, that were the cause of the counter-deployment.

What miserable useless ingrates.

Schröder's bid to make American domestic politics an issue in his election - far beyond his previous comparison of American investors to locusts - marks a watershed. In light of the recently failed European Constitution also deemed too neoliberal,

Here, "neoliberal" means "American Capitalism" -- oh, that's rich!

the German case is only symptomatic of a broader trend in Europe. Since 2001, most Europeans had become convinced that US foreign policy was the greatest hazard to their welfare. This year, American-style capitalism is being taken on as an equally formidable adversary.

Are they demented?

At least what should be clear is that no amount of appeasement will ever make them like us, unless we destroy ourselves.

Then we might have, at best, their pity.

I'd rather have their envy and hate.

I enjoy getting up every morning and thinking, "George W. Bush... Still President!"