July 24, 2004
They fight back—that's bad. Very bad....
Alex Alexiev writes in FrontPage Magazine Of Afghan Girl Schools and American Allies:
Flying back home on the day the NATO summit opened in Istanbul, I came across an article by a British journalist, Charles Clover, in the venerable Financial Times. In it, the author blasted the American military in astonishingly vitriolic language. He described our troops as “socially maladjusted” and “natural-born killers” that have become "America’s main international liability.”...Mr Alexiev just returned from visiting American and Allied forces in Afghanistan, so he is able to forcefully refute this Euro-filth. Mr Clover can see the awesome violence we unleash in war, but everything positive we do is invisible to him. Do read.
Of course, from a the perspective of a European lefty, our forces are “socially maladjusted.” For instance, they are actually willing and able to fight! Their enemies fear them! How much more barbaric and primitive can you get? And they are willing to fight for freedom, not just of Americans, but of oppressed people in distant lands. (Not only fight, but work! Ugh.) You can't get much more maladjusted than that. Most of them still believe in honor, patriotism (and, shudder, even God). That's creepy, and a huge liability. If you want to be popular in Berlin.
I guess Mr Clover is right, 'cause our guys really are “natural-born killers." You attack them, they kill you. And it just seems natural to us “socially maladjusted” Americans. In fact, we are proud of it. Screw you, Mr well-adjusted blood-sucking Euro flab-worm.
(Thanks to Blackfive)
Jeez, John, don't hold back that way! You could burst a blood vessel. Tell us how you really feel.
But seriously, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the ravers who endlessly condemn America and all things American are caught in an intellectual trap of some complexity. On the one hand, they hate America, and therefore must hate America's most visible exported asset: her military. On the other, were it not for the American military, all of Europe would be speaking Russian and wearing those shapeless gray overcoats.
On the one hand, any excuse to attack America is good enough, including her popular culture, her fast-food restaurants, or her refusal to surrender her exceptionalist exuberance for Europe's preferred anguished nihilism. On the other, it's impossible for them to be unaware that America and American money are responsible for about 90% of the charity work done in the world -- work the Europeans have studiously ignored while fighting over such weighty matters as farm subsidies and divergent national tax rates.
On the one hand, it's possible for a European with a poor sense of cause-and-effect to sneer at the U.S. because we permit private ownership of weapons and forbid euthanasia. On the other, the un-gunned countries of Europe are exploding in crime, have no way for private citizens to restrain their governments, and are now beset by the interesting medical phenomenon of involuntary euthanasia -- to which the doctors involved have admitted more or less readily.
I could go on, but there's no real need.
Someone like Clover has to seethe inside when he compares America to his homeland. We're everything he hates...and probably everything he wants, too.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at July 25, 2004 03:14 AM
