Mark Perry, Rootless Cosmopolitan, July 6:
In the end, the Europeans might well know the Americans are wrong (that a boycott of Hamas will not work, that the war in Iraq was a blood-filled waste, that a confrontation with Iran will lead to a military debacle, that Afghanistan is lost…), indeed, might well be convinced that the American program cannot and will not succeed, ever, anywhere. They might know it now and might someday in the future say that they told us so. Even so, the nation’s of Europe, that grand alliance, will never splinter, as it nearly did in February of 2003. For Europe’s calculation is quite like Churchill’s: they would rather be wrong with us, than right alone.
i’ll steal a line from de gaulle: “politics is too important to be left to politicians”. that’s fair, he was paraphrasing clemenceau.
when a nation’s prosperity is tied to the leader’s prosperity, no ‘difficult’ decisions will be made. america’s economic power is enough to frighten any european leader into silence. indeed, when principled people in the french and canadian ministries reminded the world that aggressive war was a crime by america’s own standard, they lost their positions.
whistleblowing is a dangerous business if you don’t live in a democracy. and no one does, save the swiss.