Victor Davis Hanson pens a piece that speaks to the folly of the current appeasers and apologists.
And the tens of thousands sleeping under their white marble crosses in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg from the Meuse-Argonne to Hamm would not agree that had we only been more reasonable and less bellicose we would have been more popular and liked. You see, they would not concede that millions followed Hitler because it was America's fault in not offering the German people an alternative to barbarism. In fact, they didn't much care why Germany hated America, only how to defeat it and then — but only then — to guide it on a new path away from its savage past.Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.
Read it all here
Posted by feste at July 31, 2004 05:01 PM | TrackBackHello savoir complex.
It is funny how many Americans still hang on to this 'we saved you' rhetoric.
Victor Davis Hanson should be much more careful how he draws comparisons. The only thing you can really compare about Hitler and Bin Laden is that they were both really not very nice people, that is about it.
America has it easy, as Muslims in the US are a relatively small minority and there is much prejudice against them from intolerant American's, however Europe's Islamic populations are quite large and so Europeans try and consider their rights as well.
Everyone in Europe can easily see how dangerous Pres. Bush's actions are.
Europeans remember what happened in Germany very clearly, where the US has never know and so can't remember.
The last thing that anyone in Europe wants is to incite the public against itself and to see leaders like those of the Vlaams Blok in Belgium rise to power. (The Vlaams blok the political party of racist purists from Flanders, think a very eloquent KKK).
It is not out of ignorance that the world worries about the US's actions, it is out of experience.
>Hello savoir complex.
Apart from your misreading of Hanson's piece, which I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not accuse you of deliberate obtusiveness. Wh y shouldn't americans expect gratitude?
Our fathers, husbands, sons and brothers are buried on their soil. Is it too much to ask that they remember that we gave our blood and treasure for their freedom and we did so expecting nothing in return? Then we rebuilt the catastophe they created.
Consider what Europe would be today had the US left in 1946 and reassumed it's prewar isolation.
>America has it easy, as Muslims in the US are a relatively small minority and there is much prejudice against them from intolerant American's, however Europe's Islamic populations are quite large and so Europeans try and consider their rights as well.
What rubbish, the majority of Americans are not racists, just as not all Europeans are anti-Semites. Oh...bad example.
I have relatives, friends and neighbors of all races, religions and nationalities and live in the SF Bay area where there is the largest population of Afghans living outside Afghanistan, and we live together peacfully, as we do with a significant population of African-Americans, Indians, Latinos and Asians. They are not relegated to satellite cities as those in France. How any Muslims do you suppose live in the 16th arrondissement? Germany has a population of more than seven million unassimulated Muslim auslanders. You aptly pointed out the simmering racism in the Lowlands as Eurocentricism has created aparteid for millions of muslim immgrants and their decendants.
The UK has draconian repatrition laws and a long-running debate on whether those who wish to live in Britain should be obliged to accept certain core values, Britishness, or be free to live their lives according to their own culture. London is festering with immigrant slums and segregated minorities.
So, in the words of Teresa Heinz Kerry, Europeans can "shove" the superior tone until their own racial house is in order.
Are Americans afraid of flying with Muslim men? You bet, just as Protestant Brits are uncomfortable in Irish Republican neighborhoods. In both cases the IRA and Muslims earned the reputation.
>Europeans remember what happened in Germany very clearly, where the US has never know and so can't remember.
You may correct in that our younger people do not because academia's PC police have rewritten the history textbooks, but there are a hundred million or more of of us who were witnesses to or decendents of WWII Vets.
My father was among the troops who liberated Buchenwald. He made sure his children understood exactly what he saw and how it came to be.
President Bush's polices are dangerous to Europe because Europe has done little to resolve the social issues arising from war, their imperialistic past and the resulting internal economic issues of importing milions of Muslim workers to implement their declining worker base, other than create new ghettos. Yes, I am fully aware of the meaning and historical baggage of that word.
You say you worry about American policies, yet Europeans did nothing about genocide in the Balkans, in Rawanda, slavery in Sudan, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the Taliban enslaving Afghanistan and destroying their heritage and culture. Not to mention Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1981.
Why was that?
>It is not out of ignorance that the world worries about the US's actions, it is out of experience.
Oh really?, you seem to be ignorant of the fact that it was not Americans who crusaded, purged, conquered, colonized and paritioned the Middle East as booty, creating today's artifical states and tribal emnity. It was Europe, Britain and the Soviets who lit the flame of Arab/muslim hatred and we're about done fighting their fires.