On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 21:10:16 +0100, "Emmanuel Gustin" wrote:

"Chris Mark" wrote in message
...

The European Right's anti-Americanism stems fundamentally from our
continent's loss during the twentieth century of its six-hundred-year
leadership role.

I doubt it. The 'leadership role' was at best a mixed blessing;
while some Europeans colonised the world (and got rich doing
it) others suffered economically because of the same process.
In the end the concept was perceived to be uneconomical and
immoral.

Not true, they decolonized because they got their butts kicked
out of the East Indies, India, the Congo, etc. etc.

It was therefore logical for Europeans to frown on
American attempts to run large parts of the world as their own
backyard; but this is not the fundamental conflict. Who cares
what happens to Chileans or Vietnamese? Only a tiny minority.

The Monroe Doctrine was forced on the US by Europe. The
Dictatorship installed in Mexico by the French, the "Zimmerman
letter", etc.

The real reasons for the increasing tension between Europe and
America are the different cultural values; a different conception
of what constitutes a just and decent society.

It is primary reason is that Europe is too cowardly and crass to
stand up for anything. Supporting Saddam was neither just
nor decent.

The Europeans who
colonised the Americas of course brought European values with
them, but they had to forget a lot of these in the struggle to wring
a sustenance from the new country -- "Erst kommt das Fressen,
dann die Moral" --, they often were outsiders to begin with, there
is still is an ocean in between, and America was relatively little
affected by the two world wars that burned Europe to the ground
and dramatically changed it.

We saved Europe on both occasions.

The outcome of it all is that American cultural values are now, by
European standards, rather old-fashioned. Disraeli or Bismarck
would feel perfectly at home in Washington DC; the way politics
is conducted there would be intimately familiar to them. But to
modern Europeans it is rather unpalatable.

OK, if decency, freedom, justice, and accountability are
old-fashioned, I suppose that you are correct.

Alain Peyrefitte, in his 'C'était de Gaulle,' quotes the general as
saying:
"In 1944, the Americans cared no more about liberating France than did the
Russians about liberating Poland." When one knows how the Russians treated
Poland, both during the last phase of World War II and then after they had
made
a satellite of the country, one cannot but be dumbfounded by the
effrontery of
such a comparison, coming from such a source.

Actually, de Gaulle was more accurate than you think. He had
to fight a very tough politically struggle to convert the Allied
occupation of France into a liberation, and it was not thanks to
the Americans that he succeeded. If it had been left to Washington,
France would have been run by the AMGOT, the Allied Military
Government of the Occupied Territories, with Eisenhower as
generallissimo. While CDG could be a terrible nuisance, and
was no doubt embittered by the unfair treatment he received
from FDR, his achievement in rebuilding France as a nation was
remarkable and he did it despite the opposition of his Allies.
If Iraq had a de Gaulle now (instead of, at best, a Giraud) I would
be a lot less worried.

CdG was given an "army", supplies, etc, and was allowed to
"liberate" Paris at the cost of US lives. If we had wanted
France we would still have it. Obviously we saw that France,
and the rest of Europe, was simply not worth the trouble.

Or do you really think that France could have defeated the US?

That is truly a fantasy.

Al Minyard