UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES:

Berlin tirade widens rift with Washington: Franco-German axis Schroeder signals further opposition to military strike (John Hooper and Ian Black, February 14, 2003, The Guardian)

Germany has been seething since Mr Rumsfeld last week bracketed Germany with Cuba and Libya as nations that had withheld support for the US build-up against Iraq.

"It's just unacceptable," said Mr Struck. "It's beyond impertinent. It is even un-American when one considers fairness is practically an American virtue."

Chancellor Gerhard Schršder had earlier given a vigorous defence of Germany's position.

Staking a claim to the moral high ground, Mr Schršder told MPs: "The chief duty of international politics is to prevent war. No politics of expediency or security doctrine should lead us to become accustomed to war as normal political means."

In a remark suggesting Germany was bent on opposing a second UN resolution authorising military action, he said: "To reject a war is not to be condemned to appeasement."

Mr. Struck is mostly right, but Mr. Schroeder is almost entirely wrong. In its relations with the Europeans over the last century or so, America has kind of played the role of the big brother in a quarrelsome brood. We've mostly ignored the sniping of the immature siblings, sublime in the knowledge of our superior power and wisdom. But periodically we've had to break up fights amongst the brats and now, for maybe the first time, a couple of the worst behaved have finally goaded us into administering a somewhat gratuitous drubbing. If you've brothers and sisters, you know how it works--big brother is usually content to use a tiff arm to hold little brother away while he cartwheels his arms futilely, but every once in a while, if a lucky punch lands or the process just gets too annoying, big brother ends the charade and cold cocks the twerp, who typically can't believe what just happened. Thus America, long put upon, especially by the French, has, perhaps somewhat petulantly, been forced to smack down a few uppity Europeans. This surely must come as a shock, having grown accustomed to our not responding, so Mr. Struck is right, this isn't a usual American reaction.

Mr. Schroeder on the other hand, like his coconspirator, Jacques Chirac, has elevated the avoidance of war to the be all and end all of foreign policy. This may not be identical to appeasement, but always requires it. To make peace an end in itself is to accept all of the means required to preserve it. Since evil is always willing to push the envelope, it requires surrender to such pushing. That's truly un-American.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 14, 2003 8:27 AM