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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (211133)	11/8/2004 1:04:11 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570547

BUSH'S MANDATE FOR EUROPE By NICOLE GELINAS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 8, 2004 -- PARIS THE French spent the days leading up to the U.S. election cat aloging the evidence of an irreparable schism between les deux Amérique: Red states vs. blue states, coastal voters vs. heartland voters, rich vs. poor. But the re-election of President Bush last Tuesday will expose more domestic fault lines in Western Europe than in the United States over the next four years. More than three-quarters of French citizens would have voted for John Kerry, according to international polls. But say this for the French: They accepted their electoral rout quickly and stoically. The French — from the elites of the political class to the waiters in cafés — understood immediately that they could no longer view their two-year-old split with America as a temporary quarrel with a barely legitimate president. The Le Monde newspaper called Bush's triumph "a conservative revolution." Le Figaro lamented that "this year, the Democrats' resounding defeat cannot be doubted." Indeed. A majority of Americans have now willfully chosen Bush's radical policy toward defeating radical Islam — and thus the president's take-it-or-leave-it approach toward a sullen, reactionary Europe — over John Kerry's promised return to a see-no-evil world of trans-Atlantic multilateralism. So, by late Wednesday afternoon, France's passive-aggressive policy of attrition toward Bush was fini. The question was: What now? The early answer had an oddly American ring: Less talk, more action. "We cannot permit ourselves any more excuses, illusions or escape . . . the Europeans must not make anti-Americanism their ideology," Le Monde editorialized. The French now know they must reconcile their growing cognitive dissonance with external action. * The French will not accept the current global reality: That France, due to Western Europe's economic and military stagnation, cannot greet America as an equal partner on the world stage. * But they are simply too proud to crawl back to America on America's terms. "We must stop talking about America as a hyperpower," Le Monde wrote. "America's power is only an echo of Europe's impotence." * But to admit that is to split Western Europe wide open domestically. As the French astutely observe, Western Europe cannot hope to expand its nominal military power to balance Bush's global "hegemony" without first expanding economically — and paring back social spending. French President Jacques Chirac wants to expand Western Europe's military power outside of NATO — but Europe simply doesn't have the money. And one thing is as clear to Europeans as Bush's victory: Old Europe is not growing. The European Union's four-year-old "Lisbon Agenda" to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world has failed abysmally, E.U. officials admitted Wednesday. Europe can't grow its way out of second-world political and economic status because its largest economies — Germany and France — won't deregulate labor markets and won't open up tightly controlled economies to new industries and new immigrants. And nothing will change until European citizens allow their politicians to ease this suffocating government vise-grip on the economy — and to reform the continent's cradle-to-grave welfare state. The Europeans glumly admit that they are now wedged between a powerhouse America and an emerging Asia. Modest efforts to grow out of the economic squeeze have foundered, due to "misunderstanding, reluctance and even opposition," European Commission President Romano Prodi told the International Herald-Tribune last week. So Europe now faces a civil war over domestic policy before it can meet America on equal terms. "The American neoconservatives have their imitators in Europe," the head of France's Socialist Party warned last Thursday. And the voices of those "imitators" won't be silenced. "It is time to understand that France's business can't be measured by the number of Airbuses sold to China," opposition party head Alain Madelin said. Madelin — and others like him — may gain more listeners as stubborn France now flails desperately for a way to somehow put Bush in his place. But even as Europeans accept the global political reality of the next four years — "C'est Bush" — most continue to delay this inevitable economic reality. Germany's Volkswagen ended a workers' strike last Wednesday by guaranteeing 100,000 jobs for seven years. In France, the federal government sets the price of a regulation baguette. And when Bush reforms America's Social Security system during his second term, America will leave France and Germany further behind — because an aging Europe faces the same entitlement-reform challenges that America is finally confronting. So Bush's second-term mandate for Europe is: Change economically, or admit your political irrelevance. Europeans loathe the message. But after last Tuesday, they know they are in no position to fight the messenger. nypost.com

To: i-node who wrote (211133)	11/8/2004 1:14:22 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570547

This can't be. "Battle" implies "war". And Elroy told me, on this very thread, there is no war. "Battle" does not imply "war". The 49ers battle some other team every Sunday. The Iraqi and coalition troops are not going to war with Fallujah, ya know. The "war" in Iraq is over, the current situation has coalition troops and some Iraqi troops policing Iraq, and all that is involved in that process. It is no way accurately described as a "war" in any common or meaningful usage of the word. Go back to berating the Dems about the election!