Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive): Europe, Unbow Yourself

From The Progressive
Dated Tuesday February 22

Europe, Unbow Yourself
By Matthew Rothschild

Bush is playing Europe for a fool, and oddly, it seems willing to go along.

Why the leaders of France and Germany are making nice with Bush is beyond me. I thought they had more pride than that.

Bush, after all, had rubbed their faces in it before the Iraq War. And now he comes calling for their endorsement of the war, seizing on the elections as some sort of post-facto vindication, never mind the vanishing WMDs.

Bush has persuaded NATO to send some trainers—mostly American—to Iraq. So maybe the European powers are just putting up a front of pleasantry while leaving the fighting to Americans.

Read more.

Europeans, of all people, should know that a tyrant cannot be appeased.

why would the people in EU want to do their own money for armies when we tax payers will do it for them. Looks to me like they have gave little up to US but for letting Bush use them as a back drop for his 'leader of the world and God' thing.

And rudeness is not going to get relations anywhere.

Period.

I don't think they are 'sucking' up very much either - with France backing their "Old Europe' partner, Germany, in pushing the EU agenda over NATO.

France offered to send what... one person to Iraq? Germany won't send any at all. What do you expect? Chirac to pull out an epee and challenge Chimpy to a duel?

We shouldn't have good government-to-government relations right now -- we're being run by a mad tyrant.

In the lead up to the Iraq war, the Bush mob used every non-negative utterance by a European leader to bolster his case for war. With the complicity of the American corporate media, Americans only heard the good or neutral statements, and very few of the criticisms.

If they had taken a more explicitly hard line with Bush before the war, it would have been more difficult for Bush to get his Iraq War Resolution passed through Congress. The governments of Europe (and the rest of the world)need to take a hard line with Bush until he's out of office.

Tyrants cannot be appeased. Not even American ones.