Bush Visit Spurs Protests Against U.S. in Europe
The New York Times
November 16, 2003
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, Nov. 15 - It is the perception in many parts of the world
that the Bush administration was redefined on Sept. 11, 2001, by its
response to global terrorism, even as a wave of global sympathy
engulfed the United States after the attacks.
But a more recent moment - in March 2003 - has become
the real benchmark for many European critics, who contend that the first American
airstrikes on Baghdad consumed any residual benevolence toward
President Bush after he overrode European objections to the war in Iraq.
Mr. Bush is preparing to fly to London for a three-day visit,
starting Tuesday night, that has stirred deep and hostile passions here and plans for
anti-Bush street protests. Some of that anger has turned
to schadenfreude as American forces seem ever more bogged
down in a morass that is
compared, if only by association, with Vietnam.
"In a way I even like it that he is now in such big trouble in Iraq,"
said Torsten Lüdge, a 21-year-old physics freshman at Berlin's Technical
University, referring to President Bush. "It's a lesson he had to learn.
Everybody told him before that he wouldn't succeed in Iraq and he wouldn't
listen. Now Bush has to learn it the hard way."
Indeed, some European analysts believe, European misgivings
about the Iraq campaign are being vindicated by the continued bloodshed in Iraq and
that may produce a different approach from the United States - if only
because a chastened Washington, in the view of some Europeans, has been
proved wrong.
"Even the most ideological of figures in the Bush administration
are beginning to realize that no power is unlimited," Thierry de Montbrial, director
of the French Institute of International Relations, a private policy group,
wrote in an article in Le Monde. "Better late than never."
Other French analysts agreed with Phillipe Gélie, who wrote in Le Figaro,
"French ideas are coming back into favor in the United States."
For all that, President Bush remains a lightning rod for scorn and caricature
as a bumbling provincial, an insensitive cowboy and worse: in Britain,
Steve Bell, a cartoonist for The Guardian, routinely depicts President Bush
with simian hands and feet, half man and half ape. "Bush Off," a play
on the phrase "push off," a British expression for "shove off,"
proclaimed a front-page headline in The Mirror.
"As we would say in Rome," said an Italian jeweler, Sandro Mosciatti, 54,
"Bush junior is a `bullo di periferia,' " a thug from out in the sticks.
It is a matter of debate here whether Europeans have become more
anti-American or are venting deep frustrations with President Bush himself.
Timothy Garton-Ash, a scholar of European affairs at Oxford University,
said it was clear that anti-Washington sentiment spreads right across the
divide between what Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld once
characterized as an anti-American, antiwar "old Europe," led by France and
Germany, and a new Europe, led by Britain and other nations that
supported the war, including Spain and Italy.
"What scares people is Bush's unilateralism," said Javier Noya,
a political analyst in Madrid.
Indeed, one recent opinion survey of 7,500 Europeans, conducted
on behalf of the European Commission in Brussels, ranked the American leader
No. 2, along with Kim Jong Il of North Korea, as a threat to world
peace. (Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel ranked No. 1.)
Even in Britain - by far Washington's staunchest ally in the Iraq war - thousands
of people say they will take to the streets to protest President
Bush's state visit here. Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, will stay at
Buckingham Palace as guests of Queen Elizabeth II.
Partly, hostility by Britons - unlike that of some other Europeans - is
colored with a profound resentment that, having sent troops to fight and die
in Iraq and having provided unfailing political cover and support,
Prime Minister Tony Blair seems to reap so few American rewards for tying his
political fortunes to an unpopular alliance with Mr. Bush.
"It is all too clear what Britain has done to advance U.S. foreign policy,"
said Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned in protest over
the Iraq war. "It is hard to spot what President Bush has done in return
to assist British interests."
In an effort to soften the harsh and simplistic contours of his image here,
Mr. Bush embarked on an unusual publicity campaign, giving interviews
in Washington to two British newspapers and a news agency.
He also plans to appear on Sir David Frost's television talk show.
"The president is entitled to a fairer hearing than he has received
and to be treated as a politician on his merits rather than be caricatured as a
cartoon figure," said an editorial in The Times of London,
which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
The editorial appeared, though, opposite a cartoon showing
a confused-looking Mr. Bush in camouflage military gear pondering how the letter X in
the phrase "Exit Strategy from Iraq" would look as the X on a
ballot for the presidential elections in 2004.
Mr. Bush will find it hard to shake the perception among European
critics that he is anything more than a tool of oil interests and a coterie of
close, neoconservative advisers and an implacable opponent
of many cherished European ideas on the environment, the Middle East and other
issues. His frequent allusions to his own Christian faith may not
have won friends, either.
"He thinks the same way as Philip II did in the 16th century:
as long as we believe in God we're going to win," said Mayte Embuena, a 43-year-old
tour guide in Madrid. "He doesn't know anything about history,
economics or sociology; he's governing thanks to his faith, his mother's advice and
the help of four friends."
Mr. Bush's visit was planned long before the war in Iraq at a time
when British sentiments toward Washington were molded by sympathy after the
Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, attitudes have changed. In particular,
the arguments offered by both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair to justify the war - that
Iraq had chemical, biological and potential nuclear weapons,
that there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that a smooth victory was likely
- have not been borne out for many Europeans.
"If we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
if the transition was going well, what would be the atmosphere around this visit?" Mr.
Garton-Ash said. "If things had gone well, if Blair and Bush had been
proved right, you wouldn't have had anything like the kind of resistance that
you have now."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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