Old habits die hard. The West European democracies have a history of tossing the weak off the speeding sled in hopes of appeasing the wolves. Czechoslovakia was tossed off the Anglo-French sled in 1938 to satisfy a ravening Hitler. When the Soviet satellites rose in rebellion in 1953, 1956, and 1968 against the Kremlin tyrants, the bordering West European democracies did nothing. Their behavior then as now is reminiscent of Benjamin Disraeli's judgment of English statesman Sir Robert Peel: "His judgment was faultless provided he had not to deal with the future." That the Soviet Union finally fell has little to do with Western Europe and everything to do with President Ronald Reagan. Had it been up to continental Europe in the 1980s there would still be a Bolshevik Russia.
The United States is now the victim that the European Union (EU) would like to toss off the sled. Fortunately, we are not in the EU sled, nor, despite the pressing invitations, do we intend to get on. The EU is building up the United States as the rogue elephant superpower whom it is trying to cage. What an amnesiac EU forgets is that it is not the United States alone that is the Islamist target but Western civilization itself. Czechoslovakia was to be Hitler's last target; he even signed a piece of paper to that effect. Neville Chamberlain (England) and Edouard Daladier (France) scoffed at the notion that Hitler's real target was the West European democracies. And today? I'm not sure whom the EU regards as the greater threat to world peace: America or Saddam Hussein? Perhaps French president Jacques Chirac really believes that the terrorist wing among the Islamist migrants who live in high-rise slums outside of Paris is dreaming of the day when they become part of the French haute bourgeoisie.
A recent episode demonstrates the EU finger-in-the-eye attitude toward America. Last year the New York Times reported on May 4 what in effect was a victory for Europe over the United States: "In a move that reflected a growing frustration with America's attitude toward international organizations and treaties, the United States was voted off the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (CHR) today for the first time since the panel's founding under American leadership in 1947. . . . The unexpected move, which came in a secret vote, was apparently supported even by some friends of the United States. . . . Friends of the United States in Europe and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient, disappointed and annoyed with actions by Washington."
So to get even with the United States, they elected these undeviating violators of human rights: China, Cuba, Syria, Libya, and, unbelievably, slaveholding Sudan. And even more unbelievable, the CHR has just elected Libya as its chair!
Western Europe has made its choice: keep Saddam Hussein in power. President Bush says no. We are virtually alone in our determination to go to war against the Iraqi dictatorship. So was Britain in 1940 when Winston Churchill took over the reins of a tottering nation. The difference today is that the United States is not tottering.
