Because Euroweenism deserves its own MEGATHREAD

[CountDeMoney]

Obama's fickle European fans
By Charles Lane

If Europeans could vote for U.S. president, Barack Obama would have carried that continent by a landslide in 2008. Who can forget the cheering in Berlin for the "proud citizen of the world?" Youthful, urbane, and broadly in agreement with European views of Guantanamo and "enhanced interrogation," Obama had been in office only a few months when a select group of Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.

But now many of Obama's erstwhile Euro-fans are feeling a twinge of buyer's remorse. By ordering a covert raid on Pakistan that resulted in Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of Navy SEALs, Obama has earned the kind of condemnation Europe's cognoscenti once reserved for his predecessor, George W. Bush.

And nowhere is the chorus more moralistic than in Germany, where former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat, has pronounced the action "clearly a violation of international law." The quality press is full of carping and quibbling. Handelsblatt called the raid "an act that violates both the international prohibition of force and humanitarian law." Der Spiegel, under the headline "Justice, American Style," reports an expert's view that it's "questionable whether the USA can still claim to be engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaida." Elsewhere in the same journal, a reporter calls NewYork celebrations of bin Laden's death "reminiscent of Muslims celebrating in the Gaza Strip after the 9/11 attacks."

To be sure, the criticism is not universal. The newspaper Bild opined that "it is not only good that bin Laden is dead. It is also good that the U.S., after ten agonizing years, has finally freed itself from his terrible stranglehold." Chancellor Angela Merkel pronounced herself "glad" that the terrorist chieftain was dead.

But German clerics and politicians immediately chided Merkel for her lack of tact, claiming that she might inflame the Muslim world. And Bild is a right-wing tabloid, the less-than-respectable news source of strap-hangers consruction foremen.

The fashionable critique of Obama and the U.S. achieved its purest form on ARD Television, Germany's equivalent of the BBC, where commentator Jörg Schoenenborn pompously observed that nothing good could come from Obama's Bush-like breach of international law. "Al Qaeda will seek revenge," he asserts, "so, is the world any safer? No." Yet Americans dance in the streets, which Scheonenborn attributed to something essential, and essentially primitive, in the American character. The USA is, after all, "quite a foreign land to me. What kind of country celebrates an execution in such a way?"

It never occurs to Schoenenborn that Americans might not be celebrating bin Laden's death as such but the suddenly real chance that a long and costly struggle could end — and end in victory, no less. To be sure, optimism does not come naturally in Central Europe, for good historical reasons. And victory is not a word that comes readily to the lips of U.S. officials waging this war. But it's actually quite rational to suppose that the decapitation of al Qaeda, plus the exposure of its Pakistani safe haven and the recovery of a vast intelligence trove may, in fact, hasten the organization's end. Certainly the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter than it was before.

What kind of country celebrates? The same one that elected Obama in the first place. Perhaps Schoenenborn and Obama's other critics across the pond missed the part of the 2008 campaign in which Obama quite clearly promised that "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." He also said that "if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

It was Republican John McCain who questioned the wisdom of Obama's plan in part because it would violate Pakistan's sovereignty. All right-thinking Europeans despised him.

The only way the German TV commentator can make sense of this is to insinuate that Obama abandoned his true principles to curry favor with the unreasoning American electorate. He is "in a political campaign and has distinguished himself as a 'law and order' candidate," Schoenenborn observed. "Has he gotten closer to re-election? Yes. I'm afraid the balance is just that simple."

Schoenenborn never seems to consider that Obama took a huge political risk by ordering this operation, which could have gone wrong in a thousand ways – and would have destroyed him politically if it did. The safe course, politically, was to keep the SEALs' powder dry. Was it an "execution?" Perhaps. What little "resistance" bin Laden offered seems to have been in the nature of the inherent danger posed by a man who had made his living killing by stealth, sponsoring suicide bombings – and swearing to die with his boots on.

But would any of Europe's moralizers have been more pleased if the U.S. had blown bin Laden and his house away with a B-2 bomber or a Predator drone strike – the president's other options? More to the point, do the critics have a realistic suggestion as to how the president could have met their demand to arrest bin Laden and put him on trial — without violating the sovereignty of the double-dealing nation, Pakistan, where he had unlawfully found refuge?

Part of the reason Obama chose to send ground forces to deal with bin Laden "up close and personal" was to limit civilian casualties, which the Navy SEALs did, almost unbelievably well. They harmed none of the dozen or so children with whom bin Laden surrounded himself, even though he knew that he was subject to U.S. attack at any time.

This was the kind of choice that responsible statesman hate to face but cannot avoid. And Obama's decision was the essence of leadership – decisive, nervy, humane. If it earns him the same scorn Europe's fickle intelligentsia once heaped on his predecessor, then he, like his predecessor, should wear it like a badge of honor.

[Caliga]

I HAVE HAD IT with these castrated Germans.  Bring back DER KAISER, or Bismarck, or somebody.  I don't even care if France and Poland get flattened in the process.

[Zanza2]

We need a :smug: smilie. 

[Caliga]

Anyway will his.... Nobel Peace Prize be revoked?

[Lettow77]

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/hillbilly-celebrates-osama-death_n_857180.html
press release to the Europe to smooth things over.

[Syt]

newspaper Bild

This is where I stopped taking the article seriously.

I will go on record here that I was:
- for Gulf War I (in fact, when almost all my school demonstrated against it, I and two others refused to participate)
- for air strikes against Serbia
- for Afghanistan War
- against Gulf war II - Bush's Revenge
- for whacking Osama

I'm also for removing the semi-friendly regimes in Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia, as well as the regimes in Syria, Libya, North Korea, Myanmar. Torn about Venezuela. Let them fuck themselves pu some more, then arrive as savior in shining armor.

[Valmy]

But German clerics and politicians immediately chided Merkel for her lack of tact, claiming that she might inflame the Muslim world.

I do sort of love the bigoted way they just assume all Muslims love AQ and Bin Laden and are going to take their vengeance on us all.

The USA is, after all, "quite a foreign land to me. What kind of country celebrates an execution in such a way?"

We weren't crying when your boy Hitler died either asshole.

[Berkut]

Yeah, you sure would not want to inflame anyone who might be upset that bin Laden took a bullet.

[Ed Anger]

But German clerics and politicians immediately chided Merkel for her lack of tact, claiming that she might inflame the Muslim world.

I do sort of love the bigoted way they just assume all Muslims love AQ and Bin Laden and are going to take their vengeance on us all.

The USA is, after all, "quite a foreign land to me. What kind of country celebrates an execution in such a way?"

We weren't crying when your boy Hitler died either asshole.

I like it when Valmy gets worked up. 

[C.C.R.]

Obama's fickle European fans

This is where *I* stopped taking the article seriously.  With there being several billion people in the world you can pretty much find some douchebag somewhere to serve as Anecdotal Evidence for *whatever* point that you're trying to prove, but when the point of that point is just to stir up shit then I just generally tune out & make waffles or some fucking thing.  Mmm, waffles.  Waffles sound good, but I don't want to dirty up dishes that I'll have to wash.  But damn, waffles sound good right now...

[Camerus]

If they had arrested him and put him on trial (which would have been a horrible mistake), they would have whined that he couldn't hope for a fair trial, his arrested violated Pakistani sovereignty, and blah blah blah. 

The cadre of hardcore Eurowhiners will get up in arms about anything the US does and doesn't do, and thus it's usually better to ignore them.

[Valmy]

I like it when Valmy gets worked up. 

The bitterness of the Caps being swepts is lingering

[KRonn]

But German clerics and politicians immediately chided Merkel for her lack of tact, claiming that she might inflame the Muslim world.

I do sort of love the bigoted way they just assume all Muslims love AQ and Bin Laden and are going to take their vengeance on us all.

The USA is, after all, "quite a foreign land to me. What kind of country celebrates an execution in such a way?"

We weren't crying when your boy Hitler died either asshole.

I posted an article that said how little support bin Laden and AQ had among Muslims, as they had attacked Muslim countries often enough, so were pretty much reviled. As for those who do support radicalism what ever was done with OBL wouldn't matter as he's their hero. So I don't understand what the writer is trying to say.

As for celebrating. I couldn't care much either way. It's not like they were cheering people having been through a natural disaster or something. This thug was the leader of one of the world's most heinous ideologies, a hateful, intolerant movement, totally at odds with anything civilized the rest of the world has been trying to build for centuries. He was at war with the rest of the world, committed acts of war on many nations, long before and after 9/11 NYC. It was his war that killed him. It's his doing. Many people around the world were cheering his death. We were reminded here that he was a hated, brutal thug by many other nations who had suffered grief by his followers.

[Ed Anger]

I like it when Valmy gets worked up. 

The bitterness of the Caps being swepts is lingering

But the team is so badass in the NHL video games. 

[Martinus]

Would be good if you credited the article (i.e. where it was posted). It seems written in a rather smug/self-important tone which makes the criticism of the allegedly smug/self-important Europeans expressed in it that less convincing.