Rabid Weasels
The sickness of "old Europe" is a danger to the world.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110003052
A top German official visited The Wall Street Journal's editorial offices last week and tried to make a moral case for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power. Instead he revealed more about why Germany wants to keep the dictator in Baghdad and the need for the U.S. to press for reform in "old Europe" as well as in the Middle East.
"Saddam is a bad guy," German Interior Minister Otto Schily conceded, "but he is no Hitler." Hitler was much, much worse, he explained; he well understood the history of the 1930s and '40s. It was as if Mr. Schily, and the half dozen German officials at his side, thought everyone else was listening to their accents and imagining them wearing Nazi uniforms. He seemed determined to show that his nation had learned that aggression was wrong. The inspectors are working, he pleaded; we just need more of them, "perhaps as many as 5,000." As the meeting broke up, the minister's spokesman said plaintively: "I hope we can still be friends."
These are not the words of a self-confident leader meeting the security challenges of today. They are the mumblings of a defeated nation, perpetually holding its head in shame for its past atrocities. Even today, more than 50 years since World War II ended, German officials cannot attend a conference or take to a public stage without in words or demeanor apologizing for their country's past. It is no surprise then that Germany cannot muster the will to make a moral, military stand.
Germany labors under heavy socialist policies--high taxation and crushing regulations that suppress growth. Its economy can barely employ German citizens, and many immigrants--a lot of whom are Muslim--are prohibited from working, forced to sit idle for years on welfare. Germany needs to do a better job at assimilating its immigrants. It can do that by cutting taxes, removing obstacles to business expansion and allowing immigrants greater freedom in taking jobs and starting businesses.
This, of course, won't stamp out Islamic radicalism. To do that Germany needs tougher laws, tougher law enforcement and the moral courage to stand up to thugs and thug nations. It doesn't help that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who won re-election last year on an anti-American platform, pursues a policy of appeasement with Saddam Hussein. Terrorists thrive on fecklessness.
Al Qaeda operatives are watching. And they can only be encouraged by the trial of accused Sept. 11 co-conspirator Mounir el Matassadeq, who is charged in Germany with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murders. Prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence--15 years behind bars. By contrast, in America John Walker Lindh--who wasn't charged with treason or murder and wasn't connected to the Sept. 11 plot--cut a deal with the prosecution for a lenient sentence of 20 years.
Germany isn't alone in its blinkered priorities. French bureaucrats patrol the streets at night, looking for any business with the audacity to violate the 35-hour workweek. Meanwhile violent crime goes unchecked. Like other European countries, France refuses to assimilate immigrants. Consequently, there's a large population of Muslims--many from former French colonies--who are held in poverty collecting welfare checks for years.
France doesn't take crime seriously. Prisoners, even felons serving long sentences, are allowed to wear street clothes inside prison. This makes it relatively easy for prisoners to blend in with visitors and simply walk out the front door. That's how Ismael Berasategui Escudero, an alleged Basque terrorist, was able to trade places with his brother and escape from Paris's La Sante prison in August. Guards didn't even know he was gone until the brother stepped forward six days later.
That's hardly the most sensational French prison break in recent years. Prisoners have walked out after accomplices faxed in fake release papers. Others get out in escapes involving helicopters lowering ropes into the prison yard. That's how three convicts escaped from Draguignan prison, a Corsican drug lord got out of Borgo prison on the French Mediterranean island, and two convicts were able to flee the Aix-Luynes prison in Provence--all in 2001. "All of these were facilitated by rules prohibiting guards from shooting at helicopters so as to avoid civilian casualties," The Wall Street Journal reported in August.
France, Germany and other Europeans don't have the moral will to stand up to criminals at home or on the international stage. Terrorists know this, and depend on it.
Europe isn't necessarily a lost cause. In many ways the continent resembles the U.S. and Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a sputtering economy, a growing crime rate and a fear of confronting overseas enemies. We know what happened in American and Britain--Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher emerged and brought with them a new set of governing ideas. Those ideas regenerated national confidence, grew economies, rebuilt militaries and eventually arrested crime rates. Now those ideas are leading the world in combating terrorism.
Continental Europe could follow this path. Already, most of the new ideas and policy proposals are coming from the political right. In recent years Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have elected center-right-governments. Eastern Europe is following America's lead. Even Russia enacted a flat tax. There's an emerging network of free market think tanks and activists across Europe. On Friday the Center for the New Europe hosted more than 300 of these political radicals at what it billed as the "Capitalist Ball" held, after hours, on the floor of the Belgian Stock Exchange.
President Bush can and is doing much to hasten this new Europe into dominance on the Continent. It's not an accident that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is openly chastising "old Europe." Rummy wasn't just running his mouth when he blasted France for undermining NATO by vetoing any plans to defend Turkey. And he knew exactly what he was doing when he grouped Germany with Libya and Cuba as the only nations which have ruled out joining the coalition to liberate Iraq. Matching rhetoric with policy bolsters the right in Europe. Perhaps it will even be enough to topple the axis of weasels.
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. |
