France's Official Organ Disses Ayad Allawi (and Iraq's Suffering in the Process…)

Le Monde's article on Ayad Allawi's visit to Washington begins thus:

Ayad Allawi, head of the interim Iraqi government, behaved as an electoral agent of George W. Bush's Thursday Septrember 23, in Washington. Before the Congress, then during a press conference in the White House, and in a television interview, he lauded the American president, he repeated all the Republicans' arguments to justify the war, and he accused the media of "giving oxygen to the terrorists" by exaggerrating the importance of the insurrection.

Mr Allawi's visit was nothing other than an episode in the presidential campaign. …

And with that, the independent newspaper sweeps away any credibility not only of the visit, but of the character and independence of Iraq's president.

What Patrick Jarreau is saying, basically, is that unless you lambaste America, Dubya, and the fighting in Iraq, your credibility should be put into question. This harks back to the good ol' "anybody who does not oppose Washington is simple-minded, stupid, callous, and treacherous, and a poodle, a traitor, and a Judas who would do better to keep quiet."

Here is one quote Le Monde failed to pick up:

Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Here is another quote, sight unseen inside the independent newspaper which is always babbling on about political solutions to terrorist problems:

I am a realist. I know that terrorism cannot be defeated with political tools only. But we can weaken it, ending local support, help us to tackle the enemy head-on, to identify, isolate and eradicate this cancer.

Let me provide you with a couple of examples of where this political plan already is working.

In Samarra, the Iraqi government has tackled the insurgents who once controlled the city.

Following weeks of discussions between government officials and representatives, coalition forces and local community leaders, regular access to the city has been restored. A new provincial council and governor have been selected, and a new chief of police has been appointed. Hundreds of insurgents have been pushed out of the city by local citizens, eager to get with their lives.

Today in Samarra, Iraqi forces are patrolling the city, in close coordination with their coalition counterparts.

In Talafa, a city northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi government has reversed an effort by insurgents to arrest, control (inaudible) the proper authorities. Iraqi forces put down the challenge and allowed local citizens to choose a new mayor and police chief. Thousands of civilians have returned to the city. And since their return, we have launched a large program of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance.

Of course, why should Le Monde report all that? It's "nothing other than an episode in the presidential campaign"…

Here is another "episode" from the presidential campaign:

There are those who want to divide our world. I appeal to you, who have done so much already to help us, to ensure they don't succeed.

Do not allow them to say to Iraqis, to Arabs, to Muslims, that we have only two models of governments, brutal dictatorship and religious extremism. This is wrong.

Like Americans, we Iraqis want to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Half of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims already enjoy democratically elected governments.

As Prime Minister Blair said to you last year when he stood here, anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom not tyranny, democracy not dictatorship, and the rule of law not the rule of the secret police.

Do not let them convince others that the values of freedom, of tolerance and democracy are for you in the West but not for us.

Here is another:

For the first time in our history, the Iraqi people can look forward to controlling our own destiny.

This would not have been possible without the help and sacrifices of this country and its coalition partners. I thank you again from the bottom of my heart.

And let me tell you that as we meet our greatest challenge by building a democratic future, we the people of the new Iraq will remember those who have stood by us.

No wonder Le Monde, aka the organ of official opinion and of the ruling class, refrained from reporting that…

More objective material (or objectionable?)
from Le Monde on Ayad Allawi…

Faulkner on Moral Conscience

Today is the birthday of William Faulkner, the US novelist (1897-1962) who wrote that

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Whose Fault Is the Kidnapping of French Reporters? Why, That of Uncle Sam, of Course!

The campaign to put the blame for the kidnappings of two French reporters (Christian Chesnot et Georges Malbrunot) on Uncle Sam continues in the organ of official opinion and of the ruling class:

To not appreciate the means undertaken by the French authorities to free two of its countrymen is one thing. Putting spokes in their wheels is something else. One has the right to ask oneself questions: the offensive launched by the Iraqi and American forces against the strongholds of the Sunni rebellion, at the precise moment when negotiations with the kidnappers were just about to be successful, has not facilitated things. That's the least one can say… Is it a way to pay back in kind an ally who did not show up when called upon? That would be policy-making of the basest sort.

Elsewhere in their Le Monde piece, Robert Ménard and Pierre Veilletet mention Washington's "impatience" and "disapproval" and "the acerbic remarks" of the Iraqi prime minister. A choice of negative-sounding qualifiers, all of them.

We have already seen the beginnings of the campaign to put the blame on Uncle Sam. Notice how much is based on questions, on double-guessing, on the unknown, on wishful thinking, and on unproven statements ("That would be policy-making of the basest sort", "negotiations with the kidnappers were just about to be successful"). And notice what kind of images are brought up:

• Americans (or their leaders) and their allies (or those of their leaders) are eternally belligerant, callous, treacherous, and without an iota of common sense. One should always wonder what those hypocrites are (really) up to, second-guess them, and put their motivations into doubt.


• Everybody else — the French, the "insurgents", the kidnappers, and all the hand-wringing innocents behind them — displays nothing but rationality, reasonableness, sophistication, understanding, and the willingness to set down their weapons to discuss and negotiate in full peace and harmony. But then the uncouth Americans and their allies, deliberately or not — and in this case it is supposed to have been deliberate — butt in and cause total confusion and discord. (As usual. Vietnam, Chile, etc, etc, etc…)

This view of events might be understandable if the article had been written by Claire Tréan (although not forgivable, not by any means). What is worse here is that the authors are the secretary general and the president of the nominatively independent and objective group, Reporters Without Borders.

Now, of course, I will allow for some leeway, generally speaking, because the pro-journalist group is trying to win the release of their (and our) colleagues. But this article is simply more of the usual American-bashing coupled with its corollary, unlimited trust for the French government and its pro-Arab (dictators) policy.

Le Monde, the "organ of official opinion and of the ruling class"

In The Iraq War, John Keegan calls Le Monde, France's newspaper of reference, the

organ of official opinion and of the ruling class

The author variously described as "our greatest modern military historian" and "the most readable and most original of living military historians" goes on to say that

despite the cinematic sensation of the event [the fall of the Saddam statue on 9 April, 2003], many in the media resisted the impulse to exult. As representatives of the bien pensants in Europe and even parts of North America, many television and print journalists declined to celebrate the fall of the dictator the toppling of his statue symbolized. Monster though he clearly was, his humiliation at the hands of the capitalist system — the United States, the world's largest economy, Britain, the fourth — rankled. In Saddam's own world, many followed the media lead. Iraqis who had suffered under his selfish autocracy rejoiced. The beneficiaries were downcast, as was 'the Arab street' in general.

More on John Keegan and on his The Iraq War…

Eject! Eject! Eject!

Here is a website that should be visited regularly.

Most significant are Bill Whittle's Essays from a Democracy at War ("Silent America" in the right-hand margin), which he has been planning to issue in book form. There are soliloquies about strength, responsibility, confidence, courage, history, freedom, honor, power, celebrity, empire, victory, and… magic.

Last, but not least, is the essay devoted to war, which takes on special significance when Bill gets "get down to brass tacks", providing thoughtful replies to "some of the reasons why people oppose this war" (below cause # 5 for the war, about 13 clicks down the right margin).

UN Resolutions: "if the Iraq war was illegal, so too, and probably more so, was the 1999 war in Kosovo"

Roger Cohen has an article in the International Herald Tribune about the UN being at a crossroads. There is a lot of the New York Times viewpoint in the piece, not least the opening and concluding parts about Cohen's cheering Chris Patten's mocking of Americans' UN-bashing while not mentioning a single word about the (far more abundant) American-bashing throughout the world.

Perhaps Chris Patten, the European Union's external affairs commissioner, put it best: "If you want to get a cheap cheer from certain quarters in America, it seems that all you have to do is bash the United Nations."

Not as resounding a cheer as that you hear, Chris, when bashing Uncle Sam abroad…

The attacks of Republican hawks may be grotesque. Patten had every justification in lamenting that "multilateralists, we are told, want to outsource American foreign and security policy to a bunch of garlic-chewing, cheese-eating wimps."

Well, wicked American unilateralists, we are told, want to destroy humanity's last reservoirs of humanity, mutual understanding, and brotherly love.

Also, Cohen makes little of the "Investigations of widespread corruption in the UN-directed Oil-for-Food program in Iraq". The only thing he can come up with is a five-word sentence: "All of this is unsettling." So it is a scandal which Cohen effectively drops (just as quickly as he picked it up) as he segues to… "the startling declaration from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, that the war in Iraq was 'illegal'" (followed by a description of the ensuing row with Colin Powell).

Still, Cohen gets it right when he says:

I am not enough of an expert on international law to know if the war was legal, but believe a strong case can be made that it was. Good lawyers in good faith have disagreed. But I do know that if the Iraq war was illegal, so too, and probably more so, was the 1999 war in Kosovo, another fight not specifically authorized by a UN resolution. It is thanks to that war that Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia was stopped and sits where he belongs: in court in The Hague.

Chapter VII of the UN Charter endorses collective military action to counter "threats to international peace and security," and Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 on Iraqi disarmament were all adopted under this chapter. On this basis, the British attorney general, among other legal experts, determined that the war was legal to force a compliance that Saddam Hussein had been unwilling to demonstrate.

Cohen does end his article by making a pointed reply to Chris Patten's laments:

…it is also true that the cheese eaters need to set aside their Château Montrose and get real.

Does That Also Apply…

…to the words tolerance, generosity, equality, wisdom, solidarité, and lucidité?

Today is the birthday of Ray Charles (1930-2004), the visionary singer who said

Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it.
You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.

Shape Up, Shut Up, or Ship Out

Regarding the "Enlist or Shut Up" spiel…

In the comments section of the weblog, as in private emails sent to me, several times I have read that people refusing to join in the Bush-bashing and in the condemnation of the Iraqi war (i.e., people such as myself) should either enlist in the U.S. army and go physically over to Iraq to fight or shut up.

The point of view that these people (not all of them French) mention holds that unless somebody enlists, (s)he is in no position to judge. Here is my answer to this, part of which comes from an email I sent a good friend (a very hot dame she is too!).

In other words, unless the citizen meets specific criteria (of the peace camp's choosing!), the citizen cannot be heard. Offhand, it would appear that the criteria make sense...

But notice a couple of facts: first of all, the "argument" is similar (to use a simile of less far-reaching and less serious consequences) to saying that the customer of a bakery (I almost used a butcher's shop as an example!) cannot complain about a cake he or she bought unless he or she is willing to make (or capable of making) a cake him- or herself. Alternatively, it would mean that a car owner should not criticize a garage's repair job unless (s)he is willing to crawl under the vehicle himself and is able to produce the same results.

To use a less personal and perhaps more appropriate simile, the argument amounts to telling newspaper readers and TV viewers (within the United States or elsewhere) that they should refrain from criticizing, say, the Ford motor company for the four-wheel drive that kept turning over or for the wheels that kept blowing unless they go to Dearborn and start working in the Ford factory…

Second of all, and more importantly: notice how this position can be turned against the so-called peace camp.

If only a soldier can speak for the war, then how can somebody who is not a soldier speak against the war?

If it so happened that (a majority of) the soldiers in Iraq were/are against the war, then yes, the anti-war position might make sense...

In other words, my point is, shouldn't we be asking ourselves (and shouldn't the "pacifists" be asking themselves) what the soldiers themselves are saying about the war?

If the news reports and military blogs I have consulted are to be believed, you don't hear many servicemen saying that unless people in favor of the war enlist, they should shut up... I have never gotten a message from a soldier saying "Do not write in support of us (or the war) on your blog, unless you are with us in uniform" and I know of no other blogger who has recieved such a message... (They do tend to complain, however, about the peace activists, both individuals and nations, i.e., the people supposedly on their side, not to speak of alleged peace candidates — see below...)

More importantly: of course, they aren't thrilled with being at war, and being shot at, and being away from their families, and being in 130º heat, but still... for better or worse, it would seem that they overwhelmingly support the war. As something necessary. Certainly it cannot be denied that the administration feels comfortable that the soldiery will vote Republican in the elections.

Remember that back in July, John Kerry was having lunch with running mate John Edwards and his wife at a Wendy's in Newburgh, N.Y. — when the candidate approached four Marines to ask them questions.

"John Kerry's heavily hyped cross-country bus tour stumbled out of the blocks" reported the New York Post's Stefan Friedman, as the "group of Marines publicly dissed the Vietnam War hero in the middle of [the] crowded restaurant."

The Marines — two in uniform and two off-duty — were polite but curt while chatting with Kerry, answering most of his questions with a "yes, sir" or "no, sir." But they turned downright nasty after the Massachusetts senator thanked them "for their service" and left. "He imposed on us and I disagree with him coming over here shaking our hands," one Marine said, adding, "I'm 100 percent against [him]."

A sergeant with 10 years of service under his belt said, "I speak for all of us. We think that we are doing the right thing in Iraq," before saying he is to be deployed there in a few weeks and is "eager" to go and serve.

"I speak for all of us. We think that we are doing the right thing in Iraq." Certainly one can ask, with a smirk, how long these Marines — or the rest of the servicemen in the Iraqi Freedom contingent — are going to support the war, or one can opine that the soldiers are manipulated and don't know any better, or they are just loyal and used to following orders, or whatever, but notice that in that case the "peace camp" has upped the demands, raising the standards of the criteria.

First the peace camp chooses the criteria — single-handedly — and when it is not satisfied by the results, it ups them.

It used to be, "you may support the war (reluctantly or otherwise) but, in the final analysis, if you are not in uniform, you display a lack of judgment, and you should not even think of opening your mouth"

Now the following has been added: "You may be in uniform, but in the final analysis, if you do support the war (reluctantly or otherwise), you display a lack of judgment, and you should not even think of opening your mouth".

This is also known as changing the goalposts and, in the final analysis, as "heads I win, tails you lose."

Which all boils down to this: avoiding debate by what amounts to character assassination: "either you are smart and gentle and you agree with my wise outlook on events, or you are dumb (or blinded or simple-minded or callous or treacherous or lacking in judgment) and ought to keep quiet"...

And which also boils down to this: in all cases, avoiding (or dissing) the opinions of the people who just happen to be the foremost concerned by the presence of Uncle Sam's troops among the Iraqis, i.e.… Uncle Sam's troops and the Iraqis (!).

I cannot tell the number of comments on this section and the number of conversations I've had, where the "argument" boiled down to "well, they (or you) may support the war now, but do we really have proof of that, and how will they (you) be feeling about that a year from now?", my favorite being, "well, sure, in July 2003 an Iraqi couple named their newborn son George Bush, but… so what!" Followed by "is that still the name he wears today?"!

In other words — unless they agree with the Bush-bashers — the opinions, viewpoints, and feelings of those most directly concerned (to the point of being in the frontlines thousands of miles from home or of giving their child the name of a person of a different culture and religion) are… fundamentally irrelevant!

From which I draw this conclusion: it is not the people who are in favor of the allied intervention in Iraq who should go to Iraq. It is the people who are against the war who should do so.

Our detractors might be able to convince some of us that "Chirac was right on Iraq", the fact remains that our hypothetically strong agreement with that opinion hardly matters if an overwhelming majority of Iraqis believe that "la France n'était opposée à la guerre que parce qu'elle défendait ses propres intérêts, parce qu'elle était l'amie et recevait des cadeaux de Saddam." (This from Le Monde's correspondent in Baghdad.)

As it happens, the main reason that a number of us do not oppose the Iraqi war is not because we are blinded by patriotism and/or propaganda or because we are manic followers of Dubya, but because we listen to what others say once in a while, namely the people most directly concerned.

It is suggested that unless we oppose the war, we have no choice but to go enlist in the US army. I have a better idea…

Why don't you go to Baghdad (you, the peace activists) and start giving your spiel to Iraqis?

Why don't you go find this person's father and mother and tell them that "Chirac was right on Iraq"?

Why don't you go find this person's spouse and children and tell them how Iraq was better off when Saddam provided them with "schools" and "hospitals"?

Why don't you go find this person's friends and tell them that the soldiers in their presence are members of the KKK?

Why don't you go to this father and tell him that Saddam was nothing but a "toothless dictator"?

Good luck.

You will need it…

(Update: Jonah Goldberg and Jeff Jacoby also point out that the Chickenhawk charge is less an argument than an insult and a form of bullying; Ben Shapiro shows how the accusation is dishonest and, not incidentally, how it rejects the Constitution.)

Faraday on Blogging

For some reason, the craft of writing and blogging comes to mind when I read the sayings of Michael Faraday, the English scientist (1791-1867) whose birthday it is today:

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.

The World little knows how many thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator and have been crushed in silence and secrecy of his own criticism.

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

"The European Union Could Rename Itself the Community of Envy"

In the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur writes about how three American academics have tried to put Islam on Europe's agenda.

About nine months ago, Francis Fukuyama, the historian, said that one of the big things distinguishing America from Europe was that, while the United States had staged its great debate on race, Europe hid from dealing frontally with how much Islam it could live with inside its borders.

Now, Fukuyama, author of the celebrated essay "The End of History," has taken this message to the Europeans. In a speech in Germany about two weeks ago, he urged Europe to stop being intimidated about using its right to defend its own humanist culture. He even employed the expression "leitkultur," or leading culture — touchy among Germans because of its supposed elitist resonance — to describe the legitimacy of shoring up a distinctly European identity.

Fukuyama will return to speak in Europe this month and next. His desire to raise the issue of Islam and Europe is intriguing at the least, and surely intrusive for some Europeans. But it reflects a central concern of other leading American academics. Samuel Huntington of Harvard and Bernard Lewis, the Princeton emeritus professor and Middle East expert, men sometimes schematized with Fukuyama as conservatives (although Huntington and Fukuyama are tough critics of aspects of America's involvement in Iraq), have recently questioned the extent of Europe's stability over the coming century as a result of Islam's growing presence.

…Lewis is known to think that if Europe does not deal with its Islamic and Arab presence — confronting the arithmetic of Muslim population growth and setting guidelines for Muslim assimilation — then the control of the issue will fall into the hands of racists and fascists.

All this, on both sides of the Atlantic, involves entry onto treacherous terrain.

…In Europe, apart from its current focus on its relations with Turkey, there is next to nothing that could be described as coherent, pan-European debate about the more vast question of the parameters for Islam's possible integration.

In fact, Europe's circumstances are tortured. Beyond considering taking Turkey's Islamic population of 62 million into the European Union, its citizens must also must digest the idea of increasingly ceding their national identities to an elusive (or illusive) EU identity. It's here that the American academics think Europeans have to start actively defining who they are in relation to the Muslims in their midst.

…Lewis also went on to point out to Die Welt what he saw as ambiguous feelings among Europeans about Muslims and the United States, saying: "In this connection, the European Union could rename itself the community of envy. Europeans have reservations about an America which has surpassed it so clearly. And that's why the Europeans understand the Muslims — because they have similar feelings about America."

Lewis regards plans in France and the Netherlands to train their own French and Dutch imams with national instincts and loyalties as illusory. And although the United States supports Turkey's entry into the EU, other Americans consider na?ve the European elite's argument that a link to Turkey will be a bridge to Islam and an example to the Arab world. Rather, they say, the resentment lingering from the Ottoman Empire's historical subjugation of the Arab nation makes unlikely any Turkish secular role-model for the Arabs.

Although France's defense of its secular, republican tradition against Islamic head scarves was seen as an important development, and the Netherlands was cited for a rare level of political frankness in its national debate on Islam, there was concern among the scholars about how stubbornly Europe would make the case for its identity. Reality was also a report this summer from a French government internal security agency telling of 300 areas in the country where separatistlike situations, grouping Islamic fundamentalist preachers, contempt for France and the West, and violence held sway.

In a conversation here, Fukuyama said it would be a mistake, with dangerous exclusionary overtones, for Europe to hold up Christianity as its sole defining mark.

"There is a European culture," he said. "It's subscribing to a broader culture of tolerance. It's not unreasonable for European culture to say, 'You have to accept this.' The Europeans have to end their political correctness and take seriously what's going on."

H G Wells on Moral Indignation

Today is the birthday of Herbert George Wells, the English author (1866-1946) who wrote that

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

The Devil Is in the Details: How to Turn a Neutral Story into an Entirely Anti-American Article

From Warsaw, the AFP files an article about the leader of Poland's main opposition party making a statement concerning international relations. It is a pretty straightforward story, with the Civic Platform's leader saying basically that he would never use the Polish troops' presence in Iraq as an electoral ploy. And that, for no other reason than it would be the wrong thing to do, it would be the wrong message to send, and it would be wrong, period. (Gracias para Barcepundit).

Read the first four paragraphs below. Then read how the story was presented by France's independent newspaper.

If Poland decides to withdraw its troops from Iraq it will appear to be surrendering to terrorists, Poland's largest opposition party, which tops the country's popularity polls, said on Monday.

"To decide to stop participating in a war because there are casualties means, de facto, surrendering," Donald Tusk, head of the liberal Civic Platform party, told public radio a day after three Polish soldiers were killed in an attack south of Baghdad.

His comments came on the same day Iraq's interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar arrived in Warsaw for an official visit.

"The idea is to withdraw the Polish troops from Iraq in agreement with other allies so as not to give the impression that the Poles are surrendering to terrorism as the Spaniards did" last spring, said Tusk, who is considered a potential presidential candidate for the elections set for the end of 2005. …

Now check out the article which France's organ of official opinion and of the ruling class wrote about this straightforward news event. (Le Monde, you will recall, was the newspaper that said that the theory about Spain's March 13 vote amounting to another Munich should meet nothing but scorn and which failed to mention the diplomatic row between Madrid and Canberra after the Australian foreign minister said Spain's socialists had allowed themselves to be exploited by terrorists.)

The article is entitled The Anti-War "Sensibility" Is Rising in Poland, with the subhead reading "President Kwasniewski is more and more critical of America's policy".

Christophe Châtelot starts out by painting the portrait of an anti-war "militant" (except the man was apparently unwilling to have his last name used). A retired pensioner, a former bureaucrat in the state apparatus, and the member (if I'm not mistaken) of a neo-communist formation, Mieczyslaw is proud of the day's progress made by the petition demanding the immediate withdrawal of Polish troops: "Thirty people have signed in four hours, that's not bad". Indeed. Châtelot continues:

[The campaign] illustrates the rise of doubts in Polish public opinion and in a number of political parties, opportunistically or ideologically. … According to the latest polls, over 70% of Poles are opposed to their soldiers' presence in Iraq …

"We have nothing to gain from our policy of submission to the United States. It is a war of occupation … " explains Dariuz Wojciechowski, the head of a small party…

The small party is never identified and we never learn its name! No matter. The quote is so good, how couold you imagine not using it?

Besides the PSL, the ultra-Catholics of the League of Families (LPR) and Samoobrona's populist nationalists criticize President Aleksander Kwasniewski of the Social Democrats (SLD) half-heartedly for having engaged Poland on the Iraqi theater without the OK of Parliament. Filling the spot of the pacifist leftists, the Workers' Union (UP), a member of the ruling coalition, also denounces the engagement in Iraq.

"also denounces the engagement in Iraq"? "Also"? Didn't Châtelot just write that the criticism of the two former parties was "half-hearted"? Now he uses a journalistic trick to make it sound like the strong opposition of the latter party should be applied to all.

Wait, it gets better:

But all those parliamentary and minority parties cannot wake an apathetic public opinion up.

Oh this is good! This is good! We're back with that good ol' charming opinion of self-evident charm and sophistication. Yeah, you know which one. It's the good ol' "If you're not against Uncle Sam, it means you are apathetic, stupid, blinded, simple-minded, etc, etc, etc…"

Isn't that depressing! Isn't that sad? All those lucid, intelligent, humanistic, pacifist, reasonable groups (like the former communists), wanting to wake the Poles up to the reality of the US war, and those apathetic beings, not listening to them. Ohlalaaa…

Are [those parties] having trouble decrypting [the Poles'] mood? … No formation is strong enough to reverse the alliance with the Americans, as Spain's Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) did after its victory over José Maria Aznar's conservatives last Spring.

Ah yes, good ol' Zapatero, he is our true hero. Didn't French media call his victory a "blessing"? But wait a minute. Maybe, if we're lucky, some terrorists will set off a couple of bombs in Poland, for if a few hundred, or a few thousand people are killed, we can get some people with humanistic policies to enter government and pull Poland out of the coalition of the willing. That's it. "Trouble decrypting [the Poles'] mood": a trick of some sort should be able to put the Poles on the right track.

Only at that point in the article, and following a subhead reading "American Domination" (quotation marks included), we get some of the above excerpts from the speech of Civic Platform's Donald Tusk: two sentences by the free-market leader, which are important enough to take up… one entire paragraph!

Then it's back to critical comments about the Yankee partnership, with Châtelot finishing his piece with a quote by the pensioner with whom he opened the article.

Mieczyslaw has reached his own moral : "We are nothing but cannon fodder for the Americans."

If only that "lucid" message could reach the apathetic Poles, ce serait une véritable bénédiction…

Go to the comments section to read
a Polish citizen's take on the Monde article

Johnson on Effort and Vigorous Minds

Regarding the content in some of the comments we get on this site, it is probably not useless to remember that today is the birthday of Samuel Johnson, the English author (1709-1784) who said :

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

But?!… What Is that Ugly American Really Doing to that Little Innocent Girl?!

Was Abu Ghraib not enough? Not enough to make the world understand?! There is more! There are more! More horrid photos from Iraq! More, I tell you… More!…

Wherever Uncle Sam passes in his arrogance, only tears and blood flow in his bootsteps — will he never learn to keep out of other peoples' (countries') business?

Thank the Expat Yank for discovering this revolting photo from Iraq.

"I was bored from the middle…"

"It sure is a great country…"

But, but, but… where's the enthusiasm?!
The welcome given Michael Moore's flick is much different in "Axis of Evil" countries (both present and former members) than it is in countries whose citizens delight in mocking and castigating America for George W Bush's Axis of Evil speech.

Yahoo News:

Cinemagoers in the Iranian capital were given their first glimpse of Fahrenheit 9/11 this week, but appeared to enjoy more the rare chance to watch an American movie than its assault on their regime's arch foe George W. Bush.

Michael Moore's Bush-bashing polemic may have cruised through Iran's unforgiving censors thanks to its indictment of US policy, but the premiere of the film also had the side effect of making some viewers relate the same questioning to their own state of affairs.

"The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good," quipped one of the hundreds of mainly young people who flocked to Tuesday night's opening screening.

The prize-winning documentary has been allowed out on release here [in Tehran] to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States — which kicked off a chain of events that has seen Iran surrounded by US troops and lumped into an "axis of evil".

"They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour," said Hirad Harandian, another cinemagoer at the uptown Farhang cinema. …

On Tuesday night the film was sold out and the theatre packed with close to 380 people, most of them young. Many admitted they were just out to watch an American film, and not that one in particular.

…Sima Gharavi, a 24-year-old dressed in a short bright blue coat rather than the more conservative all-black attire … hastened to complain that "out of all the films people would love to see, the authorities had to go for this one — just because this film is in line with the view of the Islamic regime."

And despite sporadic laughs here and there, most of Moore's sardonic humour appeared to fall flat. The end of the film was also greeted with some half-hearted clapping.

"The problem is the subtitles," said Sogol Zand, an English teacher. "The jokes are not as funny."

Others, obviously out for a rare taste of Hollywood entertainment, disagreed.

"It was just too political. I was bored from the middle, and I wished we had gone to see Kill Bill instead," said one young man, referring to the trendy Quentin Tarantino flick also being shown.

…[Even though a twenty-something man] quipped in to say he was "disappointed" by the film and asserted "politics is not as important" for Iran's younger generation, he did envy Moore's position.

"It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it — and makes so much money!" he laughed.

Another woman said she was impressed with the scene where Moore chases US congressmen to ask them if they would send their children to Iraq.

"How many top officials here sent their offspring to fight in the Iran-Iraq war?" asked the woman, one of several who directed their frustrations at Iranian authorities — and not President Bush.

(Thanks to Gregory Schreiber)

Burger on Free Speech

Today is the birthday of Warren Earl Burger, the Chief Justice of the United States (1907-1995) who said

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

He also said

Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?

A Fahrenheit 911 Movie Review …from Iraq

I have already written that Fahrenheit 911 would probably be far more credible if Iraqis themselves were to acquiesce in the movie's message. As it happens, that does not seem extremely likely, if one is to read how Michael Moore's film was recently described by one Iraqi on Iraq the Model:

…the best part goes when he suspected that the war against Taliban was to build a pipeline through Afghanistan!! With this level of assessment I won't be surprised if future wars will happen for building a bridge or maybe paving a road!! And I really was shocked when he pictured Iraq like peaceful country where children play and people laugh happily, guess what Mr. Moore you are wrong coz I live in Iraq and children weren't playing they were working to live and people weren’t smiling they were either afraid of getting killed or arrested for no reason or just because they don’t like Saddam and they dared to say so.

I really don’t know why you have to cheat to make the people believe you coz the whole world knew how the Iraqi people suffered from Saddam and you try to show that they were happy with him! In the same superficial manner you used to show that Iraq was a happy place, one could use the pictures of children singing around Stalin celebrating his birthday to show that people loved Stalin and they were happy.…

By the way… don't forget to bookmark Iraq the Model…

Take a Peek at the New Michael Moore Documentary

The Michael Moore Story
(Winner Best Picture / Any French Film Festival)

Bushwhacked in 30 Seconds

Bush Is Hitler and Worse

That's Not Funny, That's Sick (I)

George Harrison meets his new band mates in the hereafter

That's Not Funny, That's Sick (II)

Kabila and Death Squad Find New Targets

That's Not Funny, That's Sick (III)

The Pope Apologizes to Yasser Arafat

That's Not Funny, That's Sick (IV)

The Sultan of Brunei Leads Nation in Prayer

More

Here…

Leftist Spain's Homage to the Victims of September 11

See what kind of homage the brave Spaniards of the left
— the brave, the tolerant, the humanistic, the wise, the peaceful, the lucid, the understanding, the visionary Spaniards of the left — display towards the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Once the last traces of vomit have been cleaned up, you can try to relax by reading the Polish opposition's homage to Spain's leftists. (It sounds a lot like the Australian government's homage to Spain's leftists.)

As Franco Aleman points out, the Poles' message

is exactly the opposite to what our Zapaterlain told when he was in opposition, and to what he did once he took office. Some people think that it was his anti-war stance which invited the attacks, by putting a giant target into our backs saying "Hit us". And I can't say I blame them.

At the time of the diplomatic row with Canberra, the Aussie foreign minister's comments "caused great offence in Madrid". Which ought to prove to everybody just how careful the intelligent and reasonable leftists in power are in following the tenets of civility and good manners.

Taft on Enthusiasm for a Cause

Might some Europeans benefit from heeding the advice of William Howard Taft, America's 27th US president and 10th Chief Justice (1857-1930) whose birthday it is today?

Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents — but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.

Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment

John Kerry Through the Republican Lens

Since Frenchmen and -women are always telling me I should go see Fahrenheit 911, I will suggest that they go check out this short film on John Kerry. Although the Republican Party's film is obviously partisan (although hardly as much as Michael Moore's is), it will not only teach them how their hero hardly displays only heroic qualities, but, more generally and more importantly (and I say this in a nonpartisan way), how they should not expect that once the campaign rhetoric is over, a Kerry presidency will automatically heed the voice of the "peace camp" and the United Nations.

As an aside, and since all the clips come from TV interviews, I would suggest that the French — those who claim that in America, the press (and the people) are always blindly following whoever is in the White House — should check out how American journalists challenge politicians (and yes, I do mean all politicians)…

And while we are on the subject of films, here is the documentary that Disney chose to distribute instead of Fahrenheit 911. (Don't expect to see it in French theaters, though.)

Wishful thinking as foreign policy	Ils ont la mémoire qui flanche
Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine makes a lame attempt to explain why things are not going well for Kerry, much to the dismay of their readers who have been fed a completely different line for quite some time.	Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine fait une tentative pathétique afin d'expliquer pourquoi ça ne marche pas trés fort pour Kerry, au grand dam de leurs lecteurs qui, jusqu'ici, gobaient des pseudo-reportages qui prétendaient le contraire.

Und Goud Dey Jhow ein Schymbadedig Vilm Apout Chorge Push in Europe?

Vun muscht dry do unterschtand him…

Der Untergang obens in Chermany on D'urstay.

Vrom dee New Yorg Dimes ardigle py Mark Landler:

"For me as a historian, the Hitler subject is finished," said Lutz Hachmeister, a professor of media studies at the University of Dortmund and a documentary filmmaker. "Every aspect of Hitler has been shown."

That does not mean, he said, that the Third Reich should not be explored in films and other media. Mr. Hachmeister is completing a documentary about Goebbels, the sinister propaganda man whom he describes as the first media-age politician. In 2002, German television broadcast a somewhat leaden comedy, Goebbels and Geduldig, which portrayed Hitler's adviser and a Jewish concentration camp inmate who looked enough like him to be his twin.

In a media age, Mr. Hachmeister said, Goebbels has a relevance to modern times that Hitler lacks. With both, however, it is historical distance that has finally made them pop-cultural fodder.

"When people talk about propaganda," he said, "they always point to Goebbels. Of course, the German government we have today is the least conscious of propaganda of any government I could imagine."

Arab press dumps on France	La presse Arabe chie sur la Fwance
Chirak is just a fly to dogshit.	Chiraq n'est qu'une mouche à merde parmi d'autres.

The Problem with Places Full of Thoroughly Decent People

Roger Cohen discusses how America's "greatest nation" rhetoric alienates many foreigners and how Bush's "sense of God-given mission, especially its military manifestation, has proved maddening to many Europeans".

"Everything divides us: that is what I keep hearing," said Ezra Suleiman, a professor of politics at Princeton now working at the American Academy in Berlin. "Religion, the death penalty, ecology, the use of the military. It is as if people have forgotten all we have in common."

In a recent speech on European values, the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, used the word "peace" several times, with "solidarity" and "equality" not far behind. The war on terror did not figure.

The stuff of the European Dream is not, it seems, the stuff of the current American Dream. As a result, the Bush rhetoric is widely viewed in Europe as "delusional and arrogant," Suleiman said.

The problem, of course, is that the Netherlands and Belgium and Luxembourg, to name three founding members of the European Union, are very nice places full of thoroughly decent people but they are not going to stop Al Qaeda, prevent terrorists from gaining access to nuclear weapons, oust the Taliban, assuage Central European concerns over Russia, police the Korean Peninsula, watch over Taiwan, disarm Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, or, in general, assume the cost of defending free societies. Nor are France and Germany.

Operation deep throat	Opération gorge profonde
France declared enemy of Muslims. Guess they still haven't given enough satisfaction to Hamas-Hezbollah. Time for the French to go for the money shot.	La France déclarée ennemie des musulmans. Ils n'ont toujours pas soulagé leurs potes chez les Hamas-Hezbollah. Il est temps pour les fwançais de passer au consciencieux suçage de bite.
UPDATE: Zek hits the nail on the head.	DERNIERES INFOS: Zek le tire droit dans le mille.
Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, Paris. Here are your hosts.

More Revolting Photos from Iraq

When will it ever end?

Iraq and the 2004 Elections: Reality Check

John Vinocur is back in fine form, writing about "an increasingly obvious reality: Whatever the heat of the presidential election campaign, in terms of U.S. realpolitik, Iraq has become a basically consensual issue. There is no get-out-now or get-out-soon candidate available to Republican or Democratic voters; both parties acknowledge the necessity of long-haul U.S. engagement in Iraq; their minimal and shared aim is to re-establish some kind of palpable stability there." When are France's mainstream newspapers going to start taking notice?

Joseph Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's senior Democrat, described America's two overriding security challenges this way last week: "Win the death-struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism, and keep the world's most dangerous weapons away from the world's most dangerous people."

…This is not to say that the who's-fault game is over or could be. But if Iraq's National Security is the essential election issue, then at the heart of things the two candidates track each other, mission accomplished speeches on aircraft carriers or pledges to cozen Europe into joining the Yanks in combat canceling one another out as dopey rhetoric.

Something rather significant enters here. For a country endlessly, and sometimes recklessly, described as polarized or divided, there really is ecumenical ground on Iraq.

…A country polarized and divided? The question went to a European whose days in Washington involve making nontheoretical, dispassionate judgments on America for the home office.

For him, a polarized-and-divided characterization of the United States would be an easy shot, because it points to the supposed destructiveness of the George W. Bush presidency, an idea with strong appeal in Europe, and suggests that half the Americans, in a sudden burst of peasant wisdom for some, have finally caught on to the fool.

But the dispassionate emissary found the United States "assembled in a common front" on foreign policy and Iraq. Where America was divided, he said, was in issues like abortion, gay marriage, gun control, etc.

…Gallup, meanwhile, said that over the last weeks voters moved from a standoff on whether it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq to a 57-38 percent margin justifying their dispatch.

(This, you realize, is another poll we won't be reading much about in Europa.)

Frances Burwell, who directs the Transatlantic Relations program at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council here, says she often encounters European visitors who get the Iraq equation in U.S. politics wrong.

"Europeans ask, when is the administration going to accept its failure in Iraq? I don't think that's accepted as fact either by the administration or the body politic. A lot of people who support the Democrats don't regard Iraq as a failure. There's a risk of failure, of course. But to accept it?"

…If America, someplace, seethes about finishing the job in Iraq, it all the same has produced two candidates for president whose message is, plus or minus continuous recalibration: we will soldier on.

What If the U.S. Hadn't Invaded Iraq?

How would the world be different had the Bush administration heeded the "peace camp's" calls, had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, had there been no war, and were Saddam Hussein still in power? Unlike the majority of Europeans, Ralph Peters and Gordon Cucullu don't think that the world would necessarily be a better place, that Iraqis would be happier, that Dubya would be less criticized, and that world peace would be on hand…

Panty-waists	Pédaloïdes
The chocolate makers get together for some serious fudgepacking.	Les fabricants de chocolat se réunissent pour se contempler les pétales de rose.

Good thing their anti-depression meds are reimbursed	Les médocs antidépresseurs sont remboursés par la Sécu, ça tombe bien
Buried on page 37 of today's edition, Libération PropagandaStaffel goes into serious back peddle mode and informs its readers that Bush might win. Look for copy-and-paste to start up real soon now among Old Guard French bloggers.	Enfoui à la page 37 de l'édition d'aujourd'hui Libé PropagandaStaffel pédale dans la choucroute (en sens inverse) pour informer son aimable lectorat que Bush pourrait gagner. Attendez-nous à voir sous peu des copier-coller chez la Vieille Garde de la blogosphère franchouille.

Samira Bellil
Who? Why?	Qui? Pourquoi?

What the Hell Are We Doing in Iraq? (IV)

Ronald Dominick Winchester, US Marine Corps:

Better that I go over there. Because if I don't, they're going to come here.

Winchester, a 25-year-old first lieutenant with the United States Marine Corps (who used to admire a drawing of a firefighter in the rubble of the Twin Towers handing an American flag to a marine, who is saying "I'll take it from here"), was killed in western Iraq in September 2004.

I guess he'll plead 'humiliation'	Je suppose qu'il va plaider 'humiliation'
Disgusting football hooliganism, and the far right isn't even involved.	Hooliganisme répugnant, et il ne s'agit même pas de l'extrême droite.

What the Hell Are We Doing in Iraq? (III)

George W Bush:

Our strategy is clear. … We are staying on the offensive striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. …

Americans, you are hated here. Jews, you are hunted here	Les américains, vous êtes détestés ici. Les juifs, vous n'êtes qu'une proie ici
On the walls of Vaulx-en-Velin (French shithole suburb outside Lyon), 'Death to America' has replaced 'Fuck cops'. Vaulx-en-Velin has already produced authentic Grade A French terrorists. The anti-Semite Willem prefers to look for terrorists elsewhere.	Sur les murs de Vaulx (lieuban trou à merde de Lyon), 'A mort l'Amérique' a remplacé 'Nique la police'. Vaulx a déjà fabriqué de vrais terroristes franchouilles pur porc. L'antisémite Willem préfère chercher les terroristes ailleurs.
If Kerry is elected, there is a risk of terrorist attack.

September 11 (VII)

Davids Medienkritik, Expat Yank, Barcepundit, and Dodgeblogium, among others, have beautiful memorials to September 11. Check out Franco's link to United We Stand, and notice that David and Ray have posted photos of the six Germans who died on that date.

I would love to do the same for France, but I would have no idea where to start looking (tips, anybody?). (Which goes to prove, if need be, that the French media is just as forgetful about its murdered citizens as the Germans are.)

Update: Rest In Peace, Jérôme Robert Lohez

What the Hell Are We Doing in Iraq? (II)

Rudolph Giuliani:

President Bush will make certain that we are combating terrorism at the source, beyond our shores, so we don't have to confront it, or we reduce [the chance] of confronting it here in New York City, or in Chicago or in Los Angeles or in Miami or in the rural areas of America.

That's what it means to play offense with terrorism, and not just defense.

Asymetrical attack on mass media	Attaque asymétrique contre les médias grand public
By US bloggers. Old Guard French bloggers continue to copy-and-paste from their Political KKKommissars Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine and Libération PropagandaStaffel.	Effectuée par des bloggeurs aux USA. Les bloggeurs franchouilles de la Vieille Garde continuent à faire les copieurs-colleurs de leurs KKKommissaires Politiques Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine et Libération PropagandaStaffel.

The French candidate	Le candidat fwançais
The 'French connection' on Kerry's side is a very real political liability. As well it should be given France's systematic opposition to America. Kerry does everything to hide his French side, even at the Dhimmicraptic Convention. 'They're a perpetual committee listening to a perpetual focus group ...' (sounds like the UN). Yep, he's the French candidate.	La 'Fwench connection' du côté de Kerry est perçue comme un véritable handicap politique; ce qui est parfaitement normal étant donné l'opposition systématique de la Fwance vis-à-vis les Etats-unis. Kerry fait tout pour occulter son côté fwançais, y compris pendant la Convention Dhimmicrotte. 'Ils font comme un comité atteint de réunionite aigue qui prend ses directives auprès d'un groupe d'étude qui n'en finit jamais ...' (on dirait l'ONUzi). Ouais, il s'agit bel et bien du candidat franchouille.

What the Hell Are We Doing in Iraq? (I)

Condoleezza Rice:

There are those who say, "Well, if you didn't go into Iraq, there wouldn't be terrorists there." They weren't some place drinking tea and playing Scrabble. These are hardened Jihadists who will fight us some place. And if they want to fight us in Iraq, where we are 140,000 strong, better there than in New York City again.

September 11 (VI)

Kurt Campbell's July 2002 Arts & Ideas piece in the New York Times takes us back to December 17, 1941, ten days after Pearl Harbor, when FDR demanded the first of eight investigations into U.S. unpreparedness in the Pacific.

"Roosevelt had a major problem," said a Harvard historian. "The public outcry to hold people responsible after Dec. 7 was much, much greater than what we have seen since Sept. 11." Conspiracy theorists — among them, future GOP presidential candidate Thomas Dewey — alleged that FDR welcomed, and perhaps invited, the Japanese attack, so as to draw America into the war. The investigations — carried out largely by the president's cronies — proved otherwise.

Might Europeans Benefit from Reading H L Mencken?

Today is the birthday of H. L. Mencken, the US editor, author, and critic (1880-1956) who said:

I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant.
Truth — Something somehow discreditable to someone.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

Stay away from Zeropean losers	La Zéropa, c'est trop la loose
Zeropa acts like it is running a popularity contest. And why should the USA get closer to Zeropa?	La Zéropa se comporte si elle organisait un concours de popularité. Et pourquoi les USA devraient se rapprocher de la Zéropa?

What Have We Learned from September 11?

Following the murderous attacks on 911, it became fashionable, and not only outside the United States, to hear smug voices wonder whether Americans had learned their lessons and whether they would be wise enough to apply those lessons in the future.

Basically, the (self-serving) point seemed to be, that Americans should understand that they display(ed) the following traits: Americans are simple-minded, stupid, unsophisticated, reactionary, egoistical, greedy, arrogant, imperialistic, war-mongering, treacherous, and they are the reason for most of the world's problems of the past 60 years. So, did Americans learn anything? Let's see… If Americans learned any lessons, let's see what they learned…

Read what Americans really learned from September 11…

September 11 (V)

A Rumanian's Ode to a United America is a reprint of the famous editorial written by Cornel Nistorescu less than two weeks after the 9/11 disaster, an ode which was subsequently disseminated all over the globe…

More…

September 11 (IV)

Andrew Sullivan:

I am reminded of a great American poem written by Herman Melville after the death of Abraham Lincoln, the second founder of the country:

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

America at War: America wakes up to a world of fear
The Sunday Times of London, September 16, 2001
copyright © 2001 Andrew Sullivan

And the French are now negotiating with the enemy	Et à présent les franchouilles négocient avec l'ennemi
Libération PropagandaStaffel calls 9-11 America's obsession.	Libé PropagandaStaffel parle de l'obsession du 11-9-2001.

O. Henry on Polls

In view of the importance that is often given to polls when (and only when!) those polled voice dissatisfaction with Washington, US foreign policy, and America's leadership — notably in Thomas Crampton's International Herald Tribune article — it is perhaps not unnecessary to remember that September 11 also marks the birthday of O. Henry, the US short-story writer (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) who wrote that

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

What is funny (for want of a better word) to note in the poll, is that among the 35 countries in which a majority of the 34,330 people showed "an unusually low level of support for U.S. foreign policy", Iraq did not seem to be present… How odd…

September 11 (III)

Question: What do you call Europeans who do not sneer at Uncle Sam?

Answer (among others): Europeans who lived through the horror of September 11.

Katrin Bennhold has an article in the International Herald Tribune in which she listens to a Frenchman, a German, and a Briton who "shared America's most traumatic moment"".

…Bruno Dellinger, 43 … moved to New York in 1997. In his study in downtown Manhattan, a small American flag adorns the bookshelf…

Born in Lyon, Dellinger is a child of France. But three years ago, when he fled his office on the 47th floor of the World Trade Center and saw the sky turn black as the towers collapsed behind him, almost suffocating from debris and fear, he also became a child of Sept. 11.

"It felt like war," Dellinger, a writer and entrepreneur, recalls with emotion. "And what a lot of Europeans don't understand is that this country is still at war."

Liane Lohde, a German policy analyst, heard the first plane hit on Sept. 11 as she crossed the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan on her way to work. She learned later that several of her company's clients had died in the attack. She says she remembers how alienated and misunderstood she felt during telephone conversations with family and friends in Europe in the days after.

"I remember how some of the first few phone calls really shocked me — and them," she said, sitting in a small restaurant in London, where she has lived since April 2002. "All they saw," Lohde said, "was the danger of the superpower overreacting, whereas I definitely felt that this could not go unanswered."

She herself was surprised by the force of her reaction, said Lohde, 29, who considers herself left of the political center in Europe.

In New York, Janice Brooks sympathizes. An Englishwoman, she transferred with her company from London to New York in August 2001, two weeks before the attacks. Brooks survived Sept. 11 against all odds. An executive assistant at Euro Brokers, an American brokerage firm, she was on the 75th floor of the World Trade Center on her way to her office on the 84th floor when the second plane hit the building, demolishing floors 76 to 84. Sixty-one of her colleagues died that day.

Today, Brooks, 44, in contrast to broader public opinion in her home country, is an unabashed supporter of Britain's embattled prime minister, Tony Blair, because he has stood by America over the past three years.

"I feel very proud of my little island to have stood by America when it counted," she said from New York in a telephone interview. "A stand needed to be made."

…What sets them apart from their friends and families in Europe to this day, it became clear in long conversations, is not just sharp memories of the smell of kerosene and the endless dust that blew through the city for months, but their intense everyday bonding with Americans. Brooks describes herself as an "honorary American." To all three — even Lohde, who plans to move to Washington shortly — the United States is home as much as France, Germany or Britain.

Like many on the European side of the Atlantic, Lohde feels unease with an American stance she perceives to be too unilateral and reliant on military might. But she also says Europeans have failed to understand just how fundamentally Sept. 11 altered American psychology. …

Dellinger says he can relate to both: America's military view of the world and Europe's soft-power approach of working with diplomacy, aid and economic incentives. In his opinion the current rift goes beyond Iraq. "Ultimately it's about how safe you feel as a nation and how you view threats," he said. "Europeans feel safe; Europe is at peace. America in many ways is not."

…Raised in the Old World, where after 60 years of peace taxpayers choose to fund welfare over weaponry, Dellinger said that as a European, he had been humbled when he moved to the United States to realize the amount average American families pay for their country's defense bill every year. "Let's just remember that Europe still relies on America for its security," he said.

…For Dellinger, the United States is about idealism, an idealism the French sometimes sneer at as empty or superficial. In the weeks after Sept. 11, he says, he saw that idealism at work. People grieved together, but they immediately went on to rebuild their businesses and their lives with an energy he can't imagine fellow Europeans at home ever would; it made him buy the little flag now resting on his bookshelf.

For Lohde, who is leaving London to move to Washington next month, America is a place of diversity — diversity of culture, opportunity and views. She gets upset when her European friends fail to see how many Americans have a profoundly mid-Atlantic point of view, one she holds herself.

And for Brooks, who has stayed on in New York and just renewed her work permit for another two years, it is, above all, camaraderie and personal freedom — "the belief that you can do anything" — that keep her in New York.

Brooks says she wishes she didn't have to choose between Europe and the States: "I want to make my own country and take the best of both worlds."

Thinking of the Iraqis, who, rather overwhelmingly, support the decision to topple Saddam Hussein: isn't it strange how the people who are the most directly concerned by America's (or Bush's) "crimes", or the most directly involved in the tragedies involving Uncle Sam, are always the least inclined to criticize the United States?

The 10 Dumbest Quotes of the 2004 Election

You can vote on your favorite. (I hesitated between nºs 5 and 1, before choosing the former, but in all honesty, 10 and 2 are pretty good (bad), too…)

Kuralt on Everyday Americans

Today is the birthday of Charles Kuralt, the US television news reporter, producer, and writer (1934-1997) who said:

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

and

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.

September 11 (II)

Since the 911 commemorations can hardly pass without America-bashers' smug references to another September 11 anniversary (the coup against Salvador Allende in 1973), a few facts should not be left unsaid.

• More than a few Chilean voices do not share the romanticists' longings for Salvador Allende and his party, They include the Santiago resident admitting that the latter "put the interests of the party before the interests of the people". In conversations that the New York Times conducted with a vast number of Chileans, it emerged again and again that they implicitly blamed the party’s radicalism for Chile’s hyperinflation, shortages, and economic collapse in 1972 and 1973, conceding that a crucial reason for the coup was the Socialists' encouragement of peasant land invasions and worker takeovers of factories, going as far as calling on military units to mutiny.

Before you protest that the Chileans interviewed must have been neofascist Pinochet-lovers, it should be noted that the interviews that Clifford Krauss conducted for the New York Times were made exclusively with members of Allende's Partido Socialista (the Santiago resident quoted above being none other than Ricardo Lagos, Allende's direct heir as party head and president of Chile). (Full story here.)

• Bearing that in mind, if you get tired of hearing of simple generalizations of the coup d'état of 1973 (demonic Pinochet versus angelic Allende), here is Val Dorta's lengthy and straightforward article on what took place in Chile before, during, and after the Allende years (1970-1973). An excerpt:

The Allende myth may be good for keeping the socialist faith alive, but it evidently contradicts the historical facts.

While Augusto Pinochet’s brutal post-coup repression and terrorism cannot be justified, it is essential to explain what led him and the Chilean armed forces to the fateful coup d’état, outside of the fantasy that had him bursting onto the democratic Chilean political scene on September 11, 1973 with readymade CIA orders to stop a beautiful, pacific and liberating socialist dream. For I have no doubts that if the Chilean Marxist experiment had ended … as the totalitarian society it pointed to, it would have lasted much longer and would have brought Chileans much more suffering than Pinochet’s ugly but temporary dictatorship.

There occurred many important episodes leading to the coup, but I have chosen those that most clearly present the myth in all its falseness. To support the post I have selected four diverse books, one by a right-wing author (Moss), another by a trio of Marxists (Roxborough) and two by recognized scholars (Sigmund and Alexander); all of them knew Chile well and had first-hand experience of the Allende period.

• George Erbe has an item on the same subject, along with a lengthy excerpt of Mark Falcoff's March 4, 2000, article "Who Killed Latin Democracy?"

• En français, voici l'article de Ase sur le même sujet, une histoire détaillée de la période 1970-1973 au Chili ; celui de François-René Rideau, qui invite "les flammes" ; et le mien, intitulé Ce que les romantiques ignorent sur leurs martyrs.

• If you need some ammo to counter people asking "Do you know what other event occurred on September 11?" as they look down their noses at you, check out the final section of Americans Anonymous, the subhead entitled "Watching for the 'Fool-Proof' Cards".

Note: all of the above weblog hyperlinks (except
for my own, natch) were first mentioned on MiF
(Merci to W for digging them out again)