Agreed - and I think don is right about people using images and allusions to dispense cheap shots. It's dead wrong.

I'll admit to trotting out the sharp stick to deal with similar overblown hatred sent west, but I don't care for the foolish untruthful truisms that "a militaristic Germany" slight would fit into. For one thing, it's a lie. That's not disagreement or verbal retaliation, it's mendacious abusiveness, and no German deserves it. Period. Ever.

When I see a small story from Goober Gulch, USA that I see people abroad taking a kind of adulatory delight in, I feel no guilt in doing the same back - but to depart from reality, and drop verbal daisy cutters on a whole national culture is sad and wrong, and is at the core of my truc with anti-Americanism.

To let someone call Germans "miltaristic" is no better, and deserves confounding, if not a sharp stick or an emotional arrow shot through his statement.

To quote P.J. O'Rourke: "I don't get worked up when someone calls me a Nazi. After all, when have you ever heard about a woman fantasizing about being ravished by a Social Studies teacher?"

This whole thing is just cracked, and in a way it speaks to Joerg's other current blog about punching bags. One way the US is a good useful distraction is for just this kind of thing: the traditional emnities about cultural images that Europeans have always slighted one another as a personal insult.
Just think of all the times you heard as a kid some Frenchman calling Englishmen effeminate, Germans calling all Spaniards lazy, some national calling everyone of some other nationality all pederasts. v.d.Galien carries around that same sad common prejudice that makes people say that the Dutch would sell their granny for a nickel and care more about their pets than their children. It isn't necessarily true, but that doesn't seem to stop the small-minded.

Everytime I drop in from across the pond, one does get a sense of determinism among a great many northern people, which doesn't help if you have a minor disagreement over something. The other issue is that unless you're talking to younger people generally, not much of a premium is placed on plain old friendliness. Friendliness is the grease that rids the works of most of the screeching sound, and everyone knows that it isn't meant to be deep conversation but a way of signaling accomodation and civility. Those pointless "howdy dos" that people do is key to the functioning of civilization, and brings us all into a common human plane.
When in the Netherlands or in most exceptionally "cosmopolitain" seeming places and just about any Euro-city and some north American cities, I've noticed that this doesn't come naturally to a lot of people, especially in cities - and it's a shame. This might be a trait of higher achieving people, but it makes for a sucky existence.

Northern determinism doesn't help either, but language is the main problem. Because not everyone knows the languages of their neighbors fluently, not only does it give opportunity to show a dislike for one another, but it also leads to conversation (and ultimately thought) on the part of many that is very, very, VERY basic. Uninspired, pedestrian conversations about the universality of being tired, broke, or horny seem to pervade. It's like trying to chat with people between flights using a handful of words you know, but without the glamor and thrills of travelling for pleasure.

Based on the help the US is getting, I'm not sure the white house really wants it. You'll recall in late 2001, the pleas on the part of Fischer, Villepin, etal not to be "left out". Even then it would seem to have been for symbolic reasons that would give the EU a chance to "have its' moment" and become a real player in something.
Harsh as that sounds, it was followed with serious domestic anti-terror focus throughout Europe, but that was mainly because it represented a domestic and international threat, not necessarily as a favor to thier old friend America for who they've had more passive-aggressive an attitude since their role in the integration of eastern Europe was done.

Look - to say that America should have carried the ball in Rwanda, and any and everywhere else in the world is specious. European criticism of America not doing enough for "the world" has largely to do with America not satisfying all of the Europeans' desires in the world.

A reminder: Europe is not "the world." It is a semi-organized aggregation of a population 1-1/2 times larger than the US which beyonf the PR does comparatively little in the way of humanitarian aid (concidering state and private aid), military intervention in the way of anti-priacy, dealing with rogue states, dictators, and peacekeeping.

That the funds spent by the US government don't do everything they can is disappointing, but to say that it's ineffectual is to imagine that the outcome of every other course of action that could have been taken is even knowable, or even thorize about what sort of mish-mash of results would have come from a variety of courses of action. You know from reflection on every major and minor diplimatic or stratecic failure reviewed in history that it isn't possible. If you did, you sure as hell wouldn't have to work at an policy institute, and we'd be referring to you as "dear leader" or bribing you for tomorrow's horse-racing results.

Were we to take on any and evey crisis in the European view, how many minutes would it have taken before the old "golbal hegemony" argument? This can only be said because much of the world does so little to tend to rogue states, dictators, and globally dsisruptive and inhumane disorder.

It most certainly makes large parts of the world and the EU free-riders. It's made worse by being parasitic in the way European governments, NGOs, "public intellectuals", and the main of the media trained public dispense criticism. What's telling and frightening about them is the ubiquity and uniformity of opinion among so many people. That we're hated for doing their will in a way that they don't wish doesn't disturb me one bit. In fact as the years go by, it's seems like a signal that we're doing something right.

That jihadists sympathisers world and europpe-wide poured into the places off their patch to fight Americans most certainly HAS made Europe less volatile.

Germans and large swaths of the European public are NOT on the wrong side of history, but the temprement of a very large number or people is clearly more willing to indulge whatever it is that makes them imagine America as an "authority figure" feel good to hate, and willing to adopt whatever position it takes to require no effort on the part of their societies to be resolute about anything uncertain.

To suffer from periods of confusion and indecision in historic transition is one thing, to attempt such passivity over a lifetime is called feebleness.

No-one called you "evil", just horribly wrong and with a misplaced of what or who is "yours'". On top of that, using Counterpunch agit-prop is totally and completely inapproriate even if it was related to the subject of discussion.

Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy
The Family Released a Statement...

Gillespie also finally notices something those of us who do not hate our country have always been aware of because aren't suddenly trying to notice what the world outside our little bubble looks like.

If you've been paying attention to the exclusively local media coverage of the funerals of the mostly young American servicemen and security contractors killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, you will have noticed that the families are increasingly finding it necessary to make public statements declaring the goodness and decency of their loved ones who have given their lives in the line of duty or in the service of the corporations that provide manpower to meet the Pentagon's still growing demand for private security contractors.

One thing I've observed about these people who "suddenly notice" something because it is being reported with intent, is that they never paid any attention to or knew anyone in the military before in their lives.

Do you actually take this kind of thing for "news"? or even "factual information"? It's opinion based on random, selective observations by a man who is shocked that people say things about their dead relatives - something we hear whenever the news actually covers a private funeral, including those of a firefighter or policeman.

Do you also blanketly accept the theories of someone who is trying to emotionally exploit the dead and their grieving families? I think you need to reflect on your own preceptions a little bit.

He said that in his last few months in office. What was he supposed to do? Just hold power after his term ended?