Stardate 20020118.2145

We seek to project the message that there are rules to which all nations are subject. America has a simpler message: kill Americans, and you're dead meat.

By George, I think he's got it!

Her citizens do not see her as one country among many but as nonpareil, the biggest, the best, the one-and-only: final judge of her own interests and a pretty fair judge of what’s good for the rest of us too.

None of this is inconsistent with a strong sense of justice: a sense of justice characterises America at home and abroad, but it will be their justice and they will be the arbiters. Nor is it inconsistent with a wish to do good abroad: no people have shown such a consistently generous ambition to make our world a better place.

But their help will be given ex gratia and its terms dictated by them. America will save the planet if America must, and it will pay the piper: but it will then call the tune. A negotiated process of cooperation is not what America has in mind.

Yes, that's about right. But let's look at why that might be, shall we? Ninety years ago, the United States was pretty much isolationist. Wilson was reelected in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of the war." Remember that?

But the Europeans got themselves bogged down in stalemate, and slaughtered millions of their men to no avail. It got so bad that the French Army mutinied and refused to make any more attacks, because the individual soldiers were tired of getting butchered. The only answer for France and England seemed to be to get the US into the war, adding its contribution of treasure and blood. And that was done, and Germany and Austria were defeated, and American shook everyone's hand and came home.

"And we won't come home 'til it's over, over there!" That was one of the songs that our soldiers sang as they went to war. And they thought it was over, and came home, and within 20 years those blasted "old" countries in Europe were tearing each other to shreds again. And again we had to go "over there" and help straighten the mess out. And again it cost us blood and money, only a hell of a lot more of it the second time. A half million American men died in the war, and fewer than fifty of them were killed by enemy action within the 48 states of the Union. The only direct military attacks on the United States were a handful of instances where Japanese submarines shelled the coasts of Oregon and California. (Note that Hawaii and Alaska were not yet states. It's also noteworthy that it was a Japanese attack which brought the US into the war, but the US applied 70% of its might to the European theater.)

And after the war it was clear that the European nations couldn't take care of themselves. (Fool me twice.) Old they might be; some might even say senile. Whatever it was, left to themselves they'd start fighting yet again if we went home. So the United States occupied Western Europe.

(And the Europeans welcomed the occupation, because they also knew that they couldn't keep themselves from fighting again. The running joke then was that the purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down.)

Who is most responsible for the EC? Ready for an arrogant self-centered American answer? We are. The United States occupied Western Europe and imposed the longest interval of peace there in the last 600 years, and let the nations there know that the US wouldn't tolerate any more fighting between them. For fifty years, Germany and the UK and France and Italy have been allies with each other, because the US said so. For most of that interval the US had more than a million men in Western Europe, with the stated purpose of keeping the USSR out, and the unspoken purpose of keeping the Western Europeans from fighting each other. Had any of those nations gotten feisty with each other (as they had been doing for the last thousand years), they were going to have to answer to us.

So they got their peace, imposed on them by the US. (Maybe that explains their fascination with peacekeepers, and our disillusionment with them.) And now they're used to living together; and for the first time since Charlemagne they're uniting. It remains to be seen whether it will work.

And the US came out of that with a deep distrust of European wisdom and European advice. No matter how much older and wiser they claimed to be, they hadn't managed to do what we had ourselves: unite a huge area under a single government and live without war. We fought our Civil War, but that was 140 years ago and we've mastered living together ever since. And it took our meddling and our military occupation to make them live together without war.

We're not interested in listening to European advice because the Europeans have proved that their advice is worthless. We had to clean up their act, and indeed we are still occupying Europe and still guaranteeing the peace there. We are still "over there" because it isn't "over, over there" even now. (The USSR no longer exists and there is no longer a threat of invasion; we're still there to keep the Western European nations from fighting each other.)

We gave Europe one chance, after WWI, to dictate their own terms and the result was another bloody war. So the second time, we did call the tune -- and the result was a hell of a lot better. If we think that we are, as he puts it, "a pretty fair judge of what's good for the rest of [the world], too" then it's because we've proved it. We have been far from perfect, but we did a hell of a lot better job than the Europeans themselves did.

But that's because we are willing to try the unconventional. For example: after WWI, France insisted that Germany, with its ruined economy, pay drastic reparations to France. The result was hyper inflation, collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi Party.

If there is a more misbegotten "peace" treaty in history than the Treaty of Versailles, I sure don't know what it is. It's difficult to imagine how it could possibly have been worse than it was.

So after WWII, the United States tried a different approach: the Marshall Plan, and NATO. Instead of the destroyed losers paying the winners, the big winner with its intact economy gave aid to everyone who wanted it, allies and former enemies alike, to help them rebuild. Instead of the victors occupying the losers, the United States occupied everyone (except the USSR), enemies and allies alike.

Worked, too.

And even in the recent past the Europeans have proved that their counsel sucks. That's what we learned in Yugoslavia, something I've discussed here at great length. Years of dithering where the US lobbied for military action and the Europeans counseled diplomacy and sanctions, and what it got us was years of slaughter and civil war there. Finally the US issued an ultimatum; and after 6 weeks of bombing, the war there ended. Milosevic was deposed, and the Serbs went back to democracy and ceased to be imperialistic. And it's been reasonably peaceful there ever since.

But having forced the Europeans to accept an attack (which they graciously let us do most of) they insisted on being involved in controlling it and because of that it damned near failed. Our military learned a lesson: coalition command doesn't work. There needs to be a single commander in a war so that there is a single strategic goal.

So in 2001 we, ourselves, got attacked -- and the Europeans were generous with their advice and willingness to help decide what American military forces should do. Is it any wonder we're not interested? The Europeans can't even clean up their own back yard without our help; why should we listen to what they have to say about anything else?

The Twentieth Century is a tapestry of European failure and American success. If there's any arrogance here, it's the one held in the capitols of Europe where they still think of the US as some sort of rambunctious teenager who is strong but stupid and needs to be led by older and wiser heads. Experience proves otherwise. We've made our mistakes, but we haven't set off two world wars. That honor goes to our good friends in the UK, Germany and France, who don't seem to understand why the US isn't eager to follow their advice.

This is not the greatest evil the world has ever seen, nor the cleverest, nor the first — and nor, certainly, will it be the last.

But America is moving into a phase of believing so, and America is apt to throw her weight around.

No, I don't think that people here think that this is the greatest evil the world has ever seen. Certainly none of us who grew up during the Cold War would confuse the threat we now face with the annihilation that could have been unleashed against us with half an hour's notice during those 40 years. Bad as these terrorists are, they do not have the ability to turn the United States into a parking lot.

But we're also not interested in shrugging our shoulders after three thousand good people were killed here, and going about our business. We didn't start this particular war, but we're going to finish it. And anyone who slaughters Americans is going to be dead meat. (I think that's a pretty good message to send to the world. If that is all they learn from this, I'll be happy.)

And quite frankly, I can't think of any reason why we need either permission or advice to take care of it.