George -

Americans seem to be confused about how Europeans perceive them these days. Someone in my family asked me just today if the Europeans were being anti-American again. That theory is so pathetically watered down it just goes to show how unreliable the media is these days in the U.S.

Europeans still love Coke, McDonald’s, American hip-hop artists, Hollywood and campy American TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But Europeans have been telling me that it's not an anti-American sentiment they harbor; it's an anti-Bush sentiment. I read this past weekend in the French newspaper le Monde that a whopping 6% of Europeans like Mr. Bush and his policies. Whether Americans like George Bush or not, it is an immutable fact that Europeans in general don't like him adn his policies. And to be honest, I can't say I've heard anything positive about Mr. Bush in the year and a half that I've been living here, in all the places I've traveled to, even in Eastern Europe and over in the U.K. So why should Americans be surprised when anti-Bush rhetoric gets people elected in Europe? German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder used similar rhetoric two years ago to save his flailing campaign; he came from behind and ended up winning in the end. Quite obviously, there has been an ever-widening difference in political ideologies between the U.S. and Europe in recent years.

When John Kerry claims he has the tacit support of a number of European leaders, I don't doubt him one bit. Kerry also has the tacit support of an overwhelming majority of the European population, I can assure you. But unfortunately for Mr. Kerry, Europeans can’t vote for him. It was stupid of Kerry to claim to have the support of European leaders, given that they wouldn't want to openly oppose Bush in case Bush gets re-elected. Making such a statement would risk further deterioration of Euro-American relations, especially if Bush gets re-elected. Kerry gave Karl Rove and the Bush campaign a wondrous sound bite to exploit because they knew there was no way Kerry could corroborate his claim without further damaging current U.S. relations with Europe. Most Americans could give a rat's behind about what Europeans think about them, anyway, and Mr. Kerry ought to realize that he must campaign to Americans if he wants to win an election in America.

To clarify information regarding Spanish Premier-elect José Zarapota, one of his campaign promises was to remove Spanish troops from Iraq, so now that his party has won the election, it’s no surprise that he’s called for their withdrawal. A politician actually kept a camapign promise for once. Granted, it wasn't the best time to publicly announce this proposal, given that it made the Spanish look like they were giving into terrorist pressure, but in fact, Zarapota had made is intentions of what he would do as Prime Minister known months before the Madrid bombing, and was not intended to be a tuck-tail-and-run policy towards terrorism in any way. Zarapota for a long time hasn’t wanted the Spanish to be perceived as undignified Bush brown-nosers to the rest of Europe – he’s more of a “Self-determining Europe” kind of guy. Spaniards and most Europeans don’t see what the war in Iraq has to do with fighting international Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, anyway. Many Europeans seem to think the Iraq War has been creating more problems than it’s been solving. With militiamen patrolling the train stations and trains of Europe, and the no-nonsense policies towards suspect luggage and activities (unclaimed luggage is to be confiscated and destroyed immediately now, and if you even joke about having a bomb on a train you are arrested and can face up to three years in prison - in France, at least), I wouldn’t exactly say that there is a general attitude of “appeasement” towards terrorists in Europe. Just this past Sunday a militiaman with an Uzi refused to allow me onto my train at the Gare de l’est in Paris until he searched my bag. I couldn’t argue with the Uzi.

José Zarapota and his Socialist Workers’ Party were elected because voters were angry with José Aznar for trying to use the bombings for his party’s political gain in the March 14th elections. Aznar’s government allegedly impeded information regarding the attacks from being released to the public in real-time. He’s also alleged to have gone as far as to call all the heads of the media in Spain just hours after the attacks and told them to report that the ETA was to blame, and not to believe any other hypotheses, even if evidence discovered in the first few hours after the attacks pointed strongly towards Islamic fundamentalist responsibility. Aznar belongs to the center right People's Party, and the ETA is on the extreme left of the political spectrum, so any hatred towards the extreme left would have played to his party's favor in the elections. Aznar’s People’s Party simply paid the political price for their alleged attempt to deceive the Spanish population.

>From these events it becomes more evident that the vast majority of Europeans have a different view of the world and politics than do Americans and their political leaders. During the Cold War, Western Europe went along with U.S. policy most of the time because the U.S. would have protected them from the Soviets in case the Reds invaded Western Europe. Charles de Gaulle in particular resented Washington's meddling in European politics during his tenure as French President (1960's), but was forced to put up with it since Europe was still recovering from a devastating war in the 60’s, and it could not have withstood a Soviet attack without the help of the U.S. Now that the Cold War has been over for 15 years, and that Europe has changed drastically since, Europeans and their political leaders seem to want to go their own way more and more, to have their own policies and not have Washington influence their decisions.

One of these policies is adressing fundamental Islamic terrorism in a different way than the Americans, given the very different demographics of Europe when compared to the United States. Europe has a lot more Muslims living in it than does the U.S., and it isn't exacly easy to determine who's a good citizen and who's intent on making a violent political statement. The boundary between the two isn't clear sometimes, which complicates things even more.

A “Self-determining Europe” ideology isn’t new. The election of José Zarapota is just one example of how this ideology is gradually beginning to take hold in post Cold-War Europe. The question is, how severely will this influence Euro-American relations in years to come?" (Joey Cheek, electronic mail, March 17, 2004)