The Republican presidential candidates demonstrated some suspicion and negativity towards Europe, concludes the Atlantic Community:

Huckabee claims Europe is (unintentionally) to blame for some of the US' biggest terror threats, Romney is using an anti-European stance to further his campaign, Giuliani is turning away from Europe to focus on Asia, while McCain, appears committed to revitalizing transatlantic relations.

What do you think? Is that a fair assessment of the candidates' statement on Europe? And if yes, is their suspicion and negativity towards Europe justified?

The good news is certainly that John McCain is the frontrunner. For Europe he would be better than any other Republican candidate.

I appreciate your comments here and on Atlantic Community. Full disclaimer: Atlantic Community is my day job as editor-in-chief. Registration is required for commenting, but is real fast.

"With American goods already flooding Damascus, analysts say lifting restrictions will help counter Iran's influence," writes the Christian Science Monitor:

Provided that goods are not manufactured in the US or produced with more than 10 percent of American content, both increasingly the case with the globalization of production, American companies are not restricted from selling goods in Syria although the goods are not then classified as American. "Typically you have Ford cars inside the market. When they opened the showroom you had people from the US embassy attending. Ford cars are manufactured in Germany, not the US, so they are not banned from being exported here," says Syrian economist Jihad Yazigi.

The Washington Post describes Michael Vickers' plan to build a global counterterrorist network. The plan is focused on a list of 20 "high-priority" countries. According to the Post, "Vickers hints that some European countries could be on it."

The plan deploys a variety of elite troops around the world, including about 80 to 90 12-man teams of Army Special Forces soldiers who are skilled in foreign languages and at working with indigenous forces.

Vickers is Assistant Secretary of Defense and used to be the principal CIA strategist for the paramilitary operation that drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The movie "Charlie Wilson's War" portrays Vickers in that role.

I appreciate very much the many smart and insightful comments on Atlantic Review. (Thank you all!) Once in a while, someone leaves a stupid comment. Yesterday someone called Ahmed left such a comment on "Racism in Germany" posted in May 2006. His comment starts with "Racism in Germany is an inborn error, from which every German citizen suffers." I wonder whether Ahmed realizes that this statement is racist? The comment is so stupid that it is funny.

Asked by the BBC (video) where he sees the biggest threat coming from, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff answers that the US is increasingly concerned that "Europe will become a platform for terrorists." Chertoff said he had seen "home-grown terrorism begin to rise in Europe".

The Homeland Security officials have been increasingly concerned for a long time now. In July 2005, Atlantic Review quoted a Brookings Fellow writing in Foreign Affairs: "The growing nightmare of officials at the Department of Homeland Security is passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahideen coming from the United States' western European allies."

Apparently the nightmares have not been all that bad in the last two and a half years. Business is considered more important. That's why the US is not canceling the the visa-waver program for Europeans. The Bush administration is not as tough in the war on terrorism as they present themselves.

Related posts: "Terrorists on Honeymoon" in Lower Saxony and WSJ: Russia and Jihadists Target America's "Giant Aircraft Carrier with Sausages" and NYT's Correspondent Mark Landler's Shrill Coverage of Germany

Meanwhile, Germany is preparing to send 250 combat troops to northern Afghanistan as part of NATO's quick reaction force to join in the search for and fight against terrorists. This marks a departure from the Bundeswehr's current mission. To date only stabilization forces have been deployed to the main German base at Masar-i-Sharif, reports DW World.

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is right this time (via: Andrew Sullivan):

None of us would write a check to Osama bin Laden, slip it in a Hallmark card and send it off to him. But that's what we're doing every time we pull into a gas station.

The same is true for Europe, which is even more dependent on oil from the Middle East than the United States. Related posts in the Atlantic Review: The US-Saudi Relationship: Oil Supply at the Expense of US Security and Moral Values and Chicago Tribune: "Germany says 9/11 hijackers called Syria, Saudi Arabia"

SuperFrenchie presents the picture that says all about President Bush's latest Middle East tour. I am not aware of any European head of government having kissed Saudi princes. Bush does not just kiss the Saudis in their own country as a gesture to cultural customs, but even kisses the Saudis, when they visit him in the US. He also holds hands with them. And yet, Europeans are supposed to be the softy weasels from Venus that do anything to get cheap oil.

Another example for increasing tension within NATO: Karen DeYoung describes in the Washington Post how unnamed European and North American officials praise their troops' contributions and highlight their sacrifices in Afghanistan, while criticizing their NATO allies:

The United States supplies about half of the 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, they say, but the British, Canadians and Dutch are engaged in regular combat in the volatile south. "We have one-tenth of the troops and we do more fighting than you do," a Canadian official said of his country's 2,500 troops in Kandahar province. "So do the Dutch." The Canadian death rate, proportional to the overall size of its force, is higher than that of U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq, a Canadian government analysis concluded last year. British officials note that the eastern region, where most U.S. forces are based, is far quieter than the Taliban-saturated center of British operations in Helmand, the country's top opium-producing province. The American rejoinder, spoken only in private with references to British operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is that superior U.S. skills have made it so. (...)

U.S. and British forces have long derided each other's counterinsurgency tactics. (...) Britain, with a higher percentage of its forces deployed worldwide than the United States, is stretched thin in Afghanistan. Not only did the British have insufficient force strength to hold conquered territory, but the reconstruction and development assistance that was supposed to consolidate military gains did not arrive. "It's worth reminding the Americans that the entire British army is smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps," said one sympathetic former U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

J. Carter Wood recommended this interesting article (Thank you!) and points out in his blog Obscene Desserts that "someone at the Washington Post seems to think the German capital is still on the Rhine:"

Both President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have toned down their public pressure on allies. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Bush at his Texas ranch in November, U.S. and German officials said, she told him that while Bonn would step up its contribution in quiet northern Afghanistan, any change in Germany's noncombat role would spell political disaster for her conservative government.