Excerpt from NY Post story on the coalition.
Then there's Powell's bizarre notion to include both Syria and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority in our anti-terror coalition. What good can come out of pretending that the Syrians - who continue to use terrorists to wage proxy war against Israel and Turkey - are our friends?
Our Saudi "allies"? They rewarded our Gulf War friendship by obstructing the investigation into the bombing murder of Americans in their own country, and by refusing to allow U.S. troops there freedom of worship.
NATO? Well, Turkey remains a genuine American ally that can be relied upon to live up to its NATO obligations. But the whole idea of forming a military coalition seems even more dubious as several of our traditional European allies quickly distance themselves from the obligations they undertook in the aftermath of last week's attacks.
Generally their withdrawal is accompanied by talk about "justice, not revenge" or about the dangers of lashing out in a poorly thought out, vengeful (i.e., what they see as typically American) way.
The implications are clear:
1) Though the ordinary people of Europe East and West have shown their affection and sympathy for us in ways that are wonderfully moving, their leaders subscribe to the stereotype of America as a nation of dumb, greedy, violent yahoos with too much power and money for anybody's good.
2) They don't take the NATO treaty the least bit seriously.
3) The Europeans hold fast to a dangerous modern myth: the idea that "justice" can be achieved between states, as if the world were analogous to a nation whose citizens live under the rule of law. But if justice does exist in the international arena, it is only poetic justice or the wild justice of revenge. The rest is fantasy or convenient dishonesty.
Now, you'd half-expect France to back off from any commitment to help the United States in its hour of need. Even if France didn't have business links to U.S. enemies like Iraq, its anguish at the global triumph of what the French call "anglo-saxon culture" is unbounded.
Nor is it a surprise that Belgium, that small, corrupt home of European Union bureaucracy, should do the same. Nor that Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino has vaccilated on commiting Italian troops to any coalition.
In Greece, which saw an explosion of anti-American sentiment during the Kosovo war, journalists at Kathimerini (the leading daily paper) apparently cheered when they saw footage of the attacks. Expect Greece to give the smallest aid possible, then claim that we blackmailed them into it.
Outside NATO, it's a sad surprise to see Russia back off from her early promises of help. Apparently, she won't let us use her bases in the independent, unstable Central Asian republics.
The Indians, our new friends, are standing by us. Their intelligence service has already passed useful information to the FBI which has discreetly opened an office in New Delhi.
In fact, much of the English-speaking world is behind us, with our British cousins once again in the forefront. The vast majority of Britons view our losses as their losses (e.g., British soccer players wore black armbands this weekend).
Now, we will remember those who genuinely stood by us after our people were butchered, and those who did not.
But the relatively bleak conclusion that we are essentially going to have to walk this road alone is just one of the unpleasant facts we are going to have to face if we are going to win this war. |
