An Autumn of War - What America Learned From September 11 and the War on Terrorism by Victor Davis Hanson

Author:Victor Davis Hanson [Hanson, Victor Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: 1400031133
Publisher: Anchor / Random House
Published: 2002-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

(The questioner is soft-spoken and sometimes condescending, typically highly educated, well-traveled abroad, and a denizen of either coast. In a live setting, clapping usually follows his question.)

Q. This is more of the senseless retaliation that is typical of American unilateralism. After Kyoto and Durban, why should Americans expect European support?

A. Well, the three thousand dead are ours, not Europe’s. And we, not they, must take care of our own—as we, not they, see fit. Still, although it took twenty-one days to invoke NATO’s Article Five, in theory Europeans and Americans are not mere friends but military allies, sworn as such under treaty. The terrorists struck the United States first, but not necessarily last—and might equally have hit the Louvre (cf. the destruction of the great Buddha in Afghanistan), the Vatican (cf. their deadly rhetoric about non-Muslims, the murders in Pakistan of Christians, and murmurs of plots against the pope), or the Eiffel Tower (as we now know was once planned). Without a long climate of permissiveness in Europe for terrorists, much of the present carnage would have been impossible. We in America were naive and foolish, but those in Europe were far more knowingly and deliberately lax. The shores of the southern Mediterranean and what lies far across the Aegean are much closer to Europe than America—and most in Europe now recognize that far better than we. If anything, as our military continues to blast apart the enemy, small flotillas of European ships will join the fray before it ends.

The Anti-Americanist

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