Interesting Sullivan essay but he makes the same mistake a good many such columnists do these days. He portrays widespread dismay, in Europe and the US, at the foreign policy pronouncements of the Bush administration and its "pre-emptive" doctrines as anti-American. Forgotten in all this is the very high levels of sympathy following 9-11, to the point of the NATO vote to consider it an attack on all NATO members.
Bush's actions and policies since have waisted that moment. That's what these demonstrations are about. Forget a few slogans, a few statements, a few placards. This would not have happened in the immediate wake of 9-11 and would not have happened had we pursued Al Qaeda without a doctrine of pre-emptive attack, without a hauty dismissal of treaties such as the Kyoto treaty, etc.
Now, either deliberately or not, these kinds of columns try to turn one's gaze from the object of the protests, the Bush administration, to some phantom called "Anti-American" which is some sort of sickness of the left, or far left, or extreme left, surely somebody. |
