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The Fundamental Role of Anti-Americanism

"In some European capitals, the sense of grievance has been raised to the status of an idée fixe, virtually the guiding principle of foreign policy. Thus the U.S. is charged with all the evils, real or imagined, that afflict humanity, from the falling price of beef in France to AIDS in Africa and global warming everywhere. The result is a widespread refusal to accept responsibility for one's own actions." Thus wrote Jean-François Revel, who passed away in April. "The fundamental role of anti-Americanism in Europe in general, and particularly among those on the Left, is to absolve themselves of their own moral failings and intellectual errors by heaping them onto the monster scapegoat, the United States of America. For stupidity and bloodshed to vanish from Europe, the U.S. must be identified as the singular threat to democracy (contrary to every lesson of actual history). Thus, during the Cold War, it was dogma among Europeans from Sweden to Sicily, from Athens to Paris, that the "imperialistic" power was America, even though it was the USSR that annexed Eastern Europe, made satellites out of several African countries, and invaded Afghanistan, even though it was the People's Republic of China that marched into Tibet, attacked South Korea, and subjugated three Indochinese countries. A similar dynamic applies today in the war on terror."  More…


Let's shout it to prisoners everywhere: If you're not harmed by an American, your suffering doesn't count

"The demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rights" states Ralph Peters, who is appalled by the lack of sympathy the left feels toward the victims of any regime other than the Bush administration. "They're about punishing America for our power and success. From our ailing domestic left to overseas America haters, no one really cares about the fate of Mustapha the Murderer or Ahmed the Assassin. The lies told about Gitmo are meant to undercut U.S. foreign policy and embarrass America. The … one thing the protests aren't about is human rights. … Terrorists, French and German neo-Stalinists, and our own democracy-hating intelligentsia aren't interested in facts. … What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers — from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea — get a pass from the political left. If terrorists behead defenseless captives on videotape, it's simply an expression of their culture. But if a handful of U.S. troops play an ugly round of Candid Camera, that's a new gulag" …  More…


The Litany of Lunatic Comments That Have Bedevilled Uncle Sam

There was also "our media's hysteria", writes Victor Davis Hanson as he lists the litany of lunatic comments that have bedevilled Uncle Sam since September 11. "Donald Rumsfeld should be sacked in the midst of war; Abu Ghraib was the moral equivalent of everything from Saddam's gulag to the Holocaust; the U.S. military purportedly tried to kill reporters; and always the unwillingness or inability to condemn the beheaders, fascists, and suicide murderers, who sought to destroy any shred of liberalism." Going unnoticed, meanwhile, were "untold 'minor' embarrassments that we were to ignore as the slight slips of the 'good' people — small details like the multibillion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal … or Rathergate … To put it into Animal Farm speak: elite New York Times, CBS News, and PBS good; populist bloggers, talk-radio, and cable news bad." Hanson goes on to ask: "What explains this automatic censure of the United States, Israel, and to a lesser extent the Anglo-democracies of the United Kingdom and Australia? "  More…


How the "Peace Camp" Betrayed My Country — Iraq

After many experiences with outrageous opinions, "we finally comprehended how little we had in common with these 'peace activists' who constantly decried American crimes, and hated to listen to us talk about the terrible long nightmare that ended with the collapse of the regime", writes Naseer Flayih Hassan in Frontpage Magazine. "We came to understand how these 'humanitarians' experienced a sort of pleasure when terrorists or former remnants of the regime created destruction in Iraq—just so they could feel that they were right, and the Americans wrong! Worse, we realized it was hopeless to make them grasp our feelings …  They were impossible to reason with. … their dogmatic anti-American attitudes naturally drew them to [Iraqis] who were themselves supporters of the regime. These Iraqis, in turn, affected the peace activists until they came to share almost the same judgments and opinions as the terrorists and defenders of Saddam. … You can imagine how … troubling it is to hear Jacques Chirac take satisfaction from the violence wreaked by the terrorists—those bloody monsters that we Iraqis know so well—because they justify France’s original opposition to the war…   More…


A Romanian's Ode to a United America

"Why are Americans so united? … What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer…" This is a reprint of the famous editorial printed by Cornel Nistorescu two weeks after the 9/11 disaster, an ode to "a spirit which nothing can buy" and which was subsequently disseminated all over the globe…   More…

Iraqi Violence: Merely Politics as Usual

Written by its correspondent in Iraq, the New York Times has published an article, the type of which you will never see in a French periodical. The Dexter Filkins piece has its share of pessimism and bad news, but the underlying message undermines pretty heavily the hand-wringing yak-yak about the Iraqi quagmire, the disaster in making, the "disgusting photos", the disappointed Iraqis, the violence and the insecurity, and other descriptions in the same vein. Many of the newspapers, the world leaders, the anti-war demonstrations, the war's opponents (the majority of the given country's population, we are invariably made to understand), and much of the "street" opinion raving and ranting about Bush's war against Saddam still don't get it. This some of the peace-camp sympathizers will say is unfair. In fact, many claim, they wish the coalition's tactics had worked. All they are doing is responding to the "dreadful news" coming out from Iraq every day, every week, every month. Is that so? Read on…   More…

The Peace Camp's UN-Based Humanitarian Scam in Iraq

We've all heard all the disgust and cynicism about how America's "neocons" were unscrupulous warmongers who wanted war in any case, haven't we? We've also heard about how Bush and his ilk are liars and how they missed a chance to "give peace a chance". We have heard how, basically, by bringing every actor on the international scene into the equation, discussion would have ensued that would have guaranteed a peaceful outcome that would have pleased everybody. We have heard how the failure to do that simple thing brought anger against Washington and fury over its "arrogance". We have also all heard all about how principled a number of leaders were, who tried to make the UN system work. Well… guess what? It sounds totally unbelievable, but… it turns out that… the "Peace Camp" members working "to give peace a chance" were not as disinterested and altruistic as they would have us believe. It turns out that the UN is not as beneficient as its supporters would have us believe. In fact, to be quite honest… those leaders' main reason for opposing Washington seems to have been to profit from "grand larceny" with one of the most blood-thirsty dictators born in the 20th Century…   More…

Iraq: A View From Baghdad

"It was not a war." So writes Mohammed Fadhil, the eldest of three Baghdad brothers, in a moving soliloquy on one of the finest weblogs to emerge from a free Iraq: "Let everyone and especially the pacifists and all who opposed the coalition that what happened was an operation to free the Iraqi people and eliminate a criminal gang … It hurts my ears to hear the stupid statements about the 'death of innocents' and the 'tragedies' that are happening now because everybody knows that these are nothing comparable to the tragedies and losses we suffered in the past … And let them know that we're ready to sacrifice more if that is the price needed to secure and maintain our freedom. Where were those paid off voices when we were murdered in thousands? … That was not a war but a hope we were all dreaming of and we will never forget the sacrifices of the others and what they offered in the sake of our freedom. …A heart felt greetings to the heroes of this brave and just operation"…   More…

Iraqis Complain of Western and Arab Journalistic Practices

A sculptor in Baghdad's Shabander Teahouse definitely takes a low view of French journalists. "They come here and talk against the U.S. in a stupid way. They don’t care about the crimes of Saddam Hussein." And it’s not only the French, notes a friend: "European and Arab journalists talk to us, but they don’t care about our happiness in being liberated. They only want us to make anti-American comments." After spending five to six weeks in Iraq, Steven Vincent wrote an article for Reason concerning his experience and his discussions with "as close to a full panoply of current Baghdad life as I could". He heard many stories about foreign correspondents staging news events to discredit the U.S. One Spanish photographer had posed an Iraqi woman in a nearby pile of rubble looking plaintively toward heaven, as if seeking deliverance from U.S. bombs. "These journalists come here with their minds already made up," a Baghdad painter groused. "They’re not interested in anything that contradicts their anti-American viewpoint"…   More…

Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak

Voilà que paraît un livre excellent, qui devrait figurer sur les listes de lectures obligatoires de toute école de journalisme qui se respecte. Dans Guerre à Outrances : Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak, "Alain Hertoghe a décrypté la façon dont cinq quotidiens français (Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, La Croix et Ouest-France) ont couvert la guerre d'Irak", explique le dos du livre. "À la lecture des articles qui leur sont consacrés pendant les trois semaines de conflit, il est flagrant que les quotidiens ne peuvent pas ou ne veulent pas maintenir une distance raisonnable avec l'atmosphère passionnée qui s'est emparée de la France. … Planter le décor idéologique dans lequel la presse française rend compte des opération militaires en Irak est indispensable. Car ce triple prisme partisan — diaboliser l'administration Bush, adhérer à la ligne du couple Chirac-Villepin et communier avec les opinions publiques antiguerre — témoigne de l'état d'esprit qui règne dans les rédactions au moment de couvrir le conflit. Il va provoquer un dérapage journalistique collectif à la mesure du climat passionel qui a régné autour de la crise irakienne"… Lire la suite…


"le pays des droits de l'Homme n'a rien fait pour délivrer l'Irak du totalitarisme"

"La comédie des faux culs : celle des « anti-Bush » se félicitant … de l'arrestation de Saddam Hussein et s'empressant de donner leurs conseils sur les modalités de son procès." Voilà ce qu'écrivait Ivan Rioufol dans Le Figaro suite à la capture du Raïs. "Ceux-là furent pourtant protecteurs du tyran, en s'opposant opiniâtrement à la stratégie américaine de démocratisation de l'Irak par la force. Que cela plaise ou non : la France, pays des droits de l'Homme et des libertés, n'a rien fait pour délivrer l'Irak du totalitarisme et de son dictateur. Si elle avait été écoutée, Saddam terroriserait toujours son peuple." Une présence française en Irak "l'oblige, il est vrai, à corriger des clichés laissant entendre que Bush est l'homme qui menace le monde. … Or son affrontement systématique avec les États-Unis ajouté à ses relations bien-veillantes avec des despotes arabes l'a fait paraître comme adversaire de son propre camp"…  More…


How About Discussing the Truth Behind France's Pretexts for Once?

French politicians, media outlets, and citizens regularly join in denouncing and mocking the Iraq war, calling Washington leaders murderous egomaniacs, ridiculing George W Bush, and sputtering that the war's real cause was an unholy lust for oil. And weren't America's citizens smart enough to see through lies that were that obvious?! How moving that in a world of war, hate, terror, and oil-hungry leaders with no love for their fellow man, there are saintly figures in this world who will stand up for principles. This is why it's scandalous, preposterous, and outrageous that books and periodicals like the International Herald Tribune and The Economist have dared to suggest that Paris's attitude may have served as "pretexts" to hide some shameful secrets of its own. (And, by the way: no, France is not alone among the members of the so-called "peace camp" in this — far from it)…  More…


"Income Is Determined Not by Society Distributing, But by…"

The idea of (re)distributing wealth seems to suggest that income is determined by an interstellar spaceship flying down every month or so to hand out arbitrarily predetermined wads of cash. But either because the aliens are too devious or else because they are too stupid, they decide to hand out a bundle of money to a some individuals but only a pittance to others. On the international level, they would hand out untold billions of dollars to Western countries like the United States and only a sorry handful of coins to countries such as Yemen and Burundi. This underscores the world's belief in what Michael Kinsley calls "the central committee of the universe": A relatively small group of people is pulling the strings of the entire planet. And because they are either too stupid or too devious, they cannot see the obvious : that it is a monstrously unfair situation, that could be corrected relatively easily. In his Joy of Freedom, David R Henderson looks at this fairy tale with uncommon common sense…  More…

"We'll keep trying to separate Guantánamo facts from fiction"

Responding to an article calling the fate of the Guantánamo detainees a "monstrous failure of justice", the permanent representative of the U.S. to the UN in Geneva points out that it "wasn't by presidential decree that they were denied status as prisoners of war under the Geneva conventions, it was by their failure to do the things lawful combatants are required to do, such as distinguishing themselves from the civilian population (to avoid endangering legitimate noncombatants), following the rules of war, and operating within a system of accountability … [Moreover, many] detainees have made it unmistakably clear they will mount more attacks if let go"… More…

Iraq: A View from… Iraq

Those who have been priding themselves as peacemakers looking towards a brighter future in the face of Yankee war-mongering came in for a surprise at the normally diplomatic UN on December 16. Taking the floor, Iraq's foreign minister lashed out at those whose main purpose, admitted or not, is "settling scores with [Washington and] the United States-led coalition" rather than "helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people": "One year ago, the Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable", said Hoshyar Zebari to the astonished delegates. "The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure"…  More…

Bush's Real Sin: That He Has Been Too Honest

Bush's sin is that he has been too honest, writes David Brooks in the New York Times. "The United Nations passed resolution after resolution condemning the government of Iraq, without committing the faux pas of actually enforcing them. The leaders of France and Germany announced their abhorrence of Saddam Hussein's regime, and expressed this abhorrence by doing as much business with Saddam as possible. ... Russia was also willing to let the Iraqis rot in their slave state ...Then came George W. Bush, the cowboy out of the West, and all good manners were discarded. Bush scandalized the world by announcing his desire to enforce the UN resolutions on Iraq... Instead of merely taking out Saddam while pretending to abide by the inherited rules of conduct, he actually announced what he was going to do before doing it. This was honesty taken to a reckless extreme. ... Things are wildly out of control"…  More…

Iraq: The View from Downing Street

Updated! With outtakes from Tony's latest speeches. "Try not to believe that myself or President Bush are sort of badly motivated people who want to do the worst," Tony Blair said on Veterans' Day, "just try and look at it from the perspective that we are taking on and recognize that were it not for the conflict, those people in Iraq would still be under the lash of Saddam and his sons and their henchmen". Decrying "resurgent anti-Americanism", Britain's prime minister said that Europeans should drop their caricatured view of U.S. policy. "Is America simply exercising its power in a selfish way without regard to the interests of the wider world, or is America correctly identifying on behalf of the world the key security threats of the 21st century and dealing with it in a balanced, measured and just way?"…  More…

"Old" Europe: Pro-UN and pro-Iraq or… Simply Anti-U.S.?

"Before the war France and Germany were obsessed with the lifting of UN sanctions on Saddam's regime — in the name of easing the suffering of the Iraqi people", writes Thomas L Friedman in the New York Times after Paris and Berlin pledged not a single dollar in new loans and credits for Iraq at the Madrid conference. "Well, the United States has removed Saddam, the source of Iraqi suffering, and yet that seems to be worth nothing to Germany and France. So there we have it: Pretending to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people — by calling for the removal of sanctions but keeping Saddam in power so he can buy lots of stuff from Germany and France — is priceless to them. But easing the suffering of the Iraqi people by removing Saddam's regime is worthless to them … If their real concern was empowering Iraqis to run their own lives, wouldn't they be in there helping Iraqis get their act together faster?"…    More…

La France : onusienne ou antiaméricaine ?

Preuves à l'appui, Jean-François Revel explique que contrairement aux apparences et aux démentis variés, "La France n'est pas onusienne, elle est antiaméricaine!" Grâce à la politique étrangère de Paris, le pays s'est mué "en centrale de propagande antiaméricaine". Par ailleurs, "L'expression « camp de la paix » m'a toujours fait sourire", dit l'immortel de l'Académie française dans Le Figaro. "Avez-vous vu les manifestants qui en font partie se mobiliser contre le génocide qui se déroule au Soudan depuis près de 20 ans … ou contre les massacres … en Sierra Leone ou au Liberia ? Ce ne sont pas des manifestants pour la paix mais des manifestants antiaméricains"…  Lire la suite…

Un Sheikh qui n'évoque pas les malheurs des Irakiens...

On a peine à y croire. Le Monde qui laisse s'exprimer une personne qui ne fasse pas partie des anxieux, des moqueurs, et des outragés, de ceux qui se tordent les mains en répètent toutes les litanies habituelles contre la politique de Washington. Mieux, le sheikh — car c'est bien d'un sheikh qu'il s'agit (et pas des moindres, puisque cet Irakien se trouve être la plus haute autorité religieuse chiite d'Amérique du Nord) — démolit systématiquement tous les préjugés qu'on entend à l'encontre des Américains, tant dans le monde des "humanistes" français et des "pacifistes" occidentaux que dans le monde arabe et/ou musulman. Sans doute les rédacteurs du quotidien du soir n'ont-ils pas pris conscience de l'ampleur des paroles de Fadhel Al-Sah Lani, ou ils ne les auraient jamais publiés… Lire la suite…

Iraq: A View from Madrid

"I don't know whether it's to the advantage of the United States and Britain to invade Iraq, but I am convinced that most Iraqis, Saddam Hussein's victims for 24 years, will breathe a sigh of relief when the British and U.S. troops liberate Baghdad" wrote Carlos Alberto Montaner before the Iraqi war started. "It is odd that today's European demonstrators — who fill the public squares with their anti-American slogans, Che Guevara posters, and alleged love of humanity — care so little for the fate of the Iraqis"…  More…

Iraq: A View from Kosovo

"The argument [concerning Yugoslavia] were similar to today's [regarding Iraq]", writes Kosovar editor Veton Surroi in the International Herald Tribune: "'Give peace a chance.' 'Bombs cannot bring democracy.' 'A military attack will threaten regional stability.' 'The United States is using its military muscle to establish domination.' Each of these arguments was proven wrong in the case of Kosovo. … Though peace was given a chance through European-sponsored negotiations, Milosevic only used those talks to entrench his position in Kosovo. In the end, it was the bombing of Serbia that stopped genocide of Kosovars and ultimately allowed the return of almost a million refugees to their homes. Bombs alone, of course, did not bring democracy, but they were a precondition for it"…  More…

"J'accuse certains Français…"

"J'accuse certains Français de jalousie mesquine envers ce pays qui semble ne jamais donner assez, en termes de vies humaines ou d'aides de toutes sortes", écrit Paule Zapatka dans Le Figaro quatre jours après les attentats du 11 septembre. "J'accuse surtout les journalistes français de bâcler leur travail. De donner des États-Unis une idée complètement erronée des événements ou de jeter sur eux une lumière si crue que le reste du tableau est laissé dans l'ombre. Pas une semaine et guère un jour sans que la presse francaise, ou le journal parlé de 19 h … ne se fasse les dents sur les États-Unis. Tout est bon à discréditer ou à caricaturer"…  Lire la suite…

Why Do They Hate Us?

"Anti-Americanism … is very different from opposition to some specific American policy; it is a systematic view of the United States as a danger to all one holds dear", writes Walter Russell Mead in his Foreign Affairs book reviews of L'Obsession antiaméricaine and L'Ennemi américain; "anti-Americanism is, as both [Jean-François] Revel and [Philippe] Roger convincingly argue, a self-referential Franco-French phenomenon largely untroubled by larger questions of fact"…  More…



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