Some of you will love this Friedman editorial.

[Zen-like Todd]

http://nytimes.com/2003/02/02/opinion/02FRIE.html

Ah, Those Principled Europeans

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BRUSSELS -- Last week I went to lunch at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Davos, Switzerland, and discovered why America and Europe are at odds. At the bottom of the lunch menu was a list of the countries that the lamb, beef and chicken came from. But next to the meat imported from the U.S. was a tiny asterisk, which warned that it might contain genetically modified organisms ? G.M.O.'s.

My initial patriotic instinct was to order the U.S. beef and ask for it "tartare," just for spite. But then I and my lunch guest just looked at each other and had a good laugh. How quaint! we said. Europeans, out of some romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s ? even though there is no scientific evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes ? with their meals, coffee or conversation ? even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that smoking can kill you. In fact, I got enough secondhand smoke just dining in Europe last week to make me want to have a chest X-ray.

So pardon me if I don't take seriously all the Euro-whining about the Bush policies toward Iraq ? for one very simple reason: It strikes me as deeply unserious. It's not that there are no serious arguments to be made against war in Iraq. There are plenty. It's just that so much of what one hears coming from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac are not serious arguments. They are station identification.

They are not the arguments of people who have really gotten beyond the distorted Arab press and tapped into what young Arabs are saying about their aspirations for democracy and how much they blame Saddam Hussein and his ilk for the poor state of their region. Rather, they are the diplomatic equivalent of smoking cancerous cigarettes while rejecting harmless G.M.O.'s ? an assertion of identity by trying to be whatever the Americans are not, regardless of the real interests or stakes.

And where this comes from, alas, is weakness. Being weak after being powerful is a terrible thing. It can make you stupid. It can make you reject U.S. policies simply to differentiate yourself from the world's only superpower. Or, in the case of Mr. Chirac, it can even prompt you to invite Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe ? a terrible tyrant ? to visit Paris just to spite Tony Blair. Ah, those principled French.

"Power corrupts, but so does weakness," said Josef Joffe, editor of Germany's Die Zeit newspaper. "And absolute weakness corrupts absolutely. We are now living through the most critical watershed of the postwar period, with enormous moral and strategic issues at stake, and the only answer many Europeans offer is to constrain and contain American power. So by default they end up on the side of Saddam, in an intellectually corrupt position."

The more one sees of this, the more one is convinced that the historian Robert Kagan, in his very smart new book "Of Paradise and Power," is right: "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." There is now a structural gap between America and Europe, which derives from the yawning power gap, and this produces all sorts of resentments, insecurities and diverging attitudes as to what constitutes the legitimate exercise of force.

I can live with this difference. But Europe's cynicism and insecurity, masquerading as moral superiority, is insufferable. Each year at the Davos economic forum protesters are allowed to march through the north end of town, where last year they broke shop windows. So this year, on demonstration day, all the shopkeepers on that end of town closed. But when I walked by their shops in the morning, I noticed that three of them had put up signs in their windows that said, "U.S.A. No War in Iraq."

I wondered to myself: Why did the shopkeepers at the lingerie store suddenly decide to express their antiwar sentiments? Well, the demonstrators came and left without getting near these shops. And guess what? As soon as they were gone, the antiwar signs disappeared. They had been put up simply as window insurance ? to placate the demonstrators so they wouldn't throw stones at them.

As I said, there are serious arguments against the war in Iraq, but they have weight only if they are made out of conviction, not out of expedience or petulance ? and if they are made by people with real beliefs, not identity crises.

[Johnny Punani2]

Bravo!!! :laugh: :laugh: :cheers:

[Riggo-toni]

That is SOOOOO dead on target!!!!!

[Henry]

In today's Post. Some cracks in German opposition to our policies, perhaps?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16180-2003Feb2.html

Schroeder's Party Suffers Setback in State Elections

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, February 3, 2003; Page A18

BERLIN, Feb. 2 -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party suffered humiliating defeats in regional elections in the German leader's home state of Lower Saxony and in the state of Hesse today. Voters punished the national government for the country's economic stagnation and brushed aside Schroeder's attempts to capitalize on his opposition to a possible war in Iraq.

The conservative opposition Christian Democrats won 48 percent of the vote in Lower Saxony, according to exit polls, and would take control of the statehouse by governing in a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats.

Schroeder served for eight years as governor of Lower Saxony before becoming chancellor in 1998. His party, the Social Democrats, slumped to 33 percent, ending 13 years of party rule in the northern state. The conservatives' tally jumped 12 points.

In Hesse, home to the nation's financial capital, Frankfurt, the governing Christian Democrats surged 11 points to 50 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats had 28 percent, down from 39 percent in the last election, according to exit polls.

Today's results underscored the widespread unpopularity of the national coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens, which after winning federal elections by the narrowest of margins last September introduced a raft of new taxes to close a widening budget deficit. But the measures were widely seen as disastrous -- failing to improve Germany's economic growth rate, which at 1 percent is the lowest in the European Union, or to lower the unemployment rate, which has topped 10 percent.

The loss of Lower Saxony, where the Social Democrats were in coalition with the Greens, will solidify the opposition's control of the upper house of the federal parliament, where membership is determined by the strength of parties in the states. That will handicap the ability of Schroeder's government to pass legislation without the conservatives' approval.

Schroeder had galvanized voters last fall with his opposition to a war in Iraq, and his party continued to push the issue last week.

The leader of the Social Democrats in Lower Saxony, Sigmar Gabriel, suggested that the United States was motivated only by its thirst for oil. "I am not prepared to send boys and girls into a war solely for that purpose," Gabriel said in a televised debate. "I think that's wrong."

The opposition interpreted today's results as a rebuke of the government's foreign policy.

"It especially pleases me [that Schroeder] was not successful a second time in exploiting the fears of people with populism regarding Iraq," the conservatives' leader, Angela Merkel, said at a jubilant party headquarters in Berlin tonight. "This is also a very important signal for our allies."

Germans remain solidly opposed to war in Iraq, however, even if it is sanctioned by the United Nations, a recent poll showed. But as that cause faded as a campaign rallying point, economic issues returned to the fore, exposing Schroeder to the electorate's dismay.

Some German analysts say Schroeder will be forced into a de facto alliance with the conservatives to push through difficult welfare and labor market reforms.

"Disenchantment with the government is at an enormous high," Tilman Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Bonn, said in an interview. "Schroeder will have to function as a statesman now, above party lines. He will need to include the opposition, and he will move towards them."

Wolfgang Clement, the federal economics and labor minister, suggested last week that the government would soon make common cause with the conservatives. After the elections, he said, would be a good time to open "the window for reforms."

But such change is anathema to trade unions, a critical grass-roots base for the government. Clement, however, appears to want to marginalize the unions through an informal alliance with the conservatives -- if the suddenly ascendant opposition is willing to help shape policy.

"I'm optimistic when the election campaigns are over the government will put its foot on the accelerator and the opposition will cooperate," Michael Rogowski, head of the Federation of German Industry, said in today's Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company