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In Europe, an angry told-you-so awaits Bush
Alan Cowell/NYT NYT
Monday, November 17, 2003
LONDON 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 on New York and Washington.
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 George W. Bush after he overrode European objections to the war in Iraq.
Bush is preparing to fly to London for a three-day visit, starting Tuesday night, that has stirred deep and hostile passions here as well as plans for anti-Bush demonstrations. Some of that anger has turned to schadenfreude as U.S. 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 Luedge, a 21-year-old physics freshman at Berlin's Technical University. "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 experts believe, European misgivings about the war are being vindicated by the continued bloodshed in Iraq.
"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.
Other French analysts agreed with Phillipe Gelie, who wrote in Le Figaro, "French ideas are coming back into favor in the United States."
For all that, 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 Bush with simian hands and feet, half man and half ape. It is a matter of debate here whether Europeans have become more anti-American or are venting deep frustrations with 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 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once characterized as an anti-American, antiwar "old Europe," led by France and Germany, and a new Europe, led by Britain and other countries that supported the war, including Spain and Italy.
"What scares people is Bush's unilateralism," said Javier Noya, a political analyst in Madrid.
Indeed, a recent survey of 7,500 Europeans, conducted on behalf of the European Commission, ranked Bush 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 Bush's state visit. 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 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."
To soften his image here, Bush gave interviews in Washington to two British newspapers and a news agency. He also plans to appear on 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 Corp.
The editorial appeared, though, opposite a cartoon showing a confused-looking 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.
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."
The New York Times
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