Sunday, January 08, 2006

Good luck with that.
To Europe:
We wish you well in your faith that war has become obsolete and that outlaw nations will comply with international jurisprudence that was born and is nurtured in Europe. Yet your own intelligence suggests that the Iran theocracy is both acquiring nuclear weaponry and seeking to craft missile technology to put an Islamic bomb within reach of European cities — oblivious to the reasoned appeals of European Union diplomats, who themselves operate as Greek philosophers in the agora only on the condition that Americans will once more play the role of Roman legionaries in the shadows. . . .

You will, of course, answer that in your postwar wisdom you have transcended the internecine killing of the earlier 20th century when nationalism and militarism ruined your continent — and that you have lent your insight to the world at large that should follow your therapeutic creed rather than the tragic vision of the United States.

But the choices are not so starkly bipolar between either chauvinistic saber rattling or studied pacifism. There is a third way, the promise of muscular democratic government that does not apologize for 2,500 years of civilization and is willing to defend it from the enemies of liberalism, who would undo all that we wrought. . . .

The world is becoming a more dangerous place, despite your new protocols of childlessness, pacifism, socialism, and hedonism. Islamic radicalism, an ascendant Communist China, a growing new collectivism in Latin America, perhaps a neo-czarist Russia as well, in addition to the famine and savagery in Africa, all that and more threaten the promise of the West.

So criticize us for our sins; lend us your advice; impart to America the wealth of your greater experience — but as a partner and an equal in a war, not as an inferior or envious neutral on the sidelines. History is unforgiving. None of us receives exemption simply by reason of the fumes of past glory.

Either your economy will reform, your populace multiply, and your citizenry defend itself, or not. And if not, then Europe as we have known it will pass away — to the great joy of the Islamists but to the terrible sorrow of America.

From Victor Davis Hanson.

UPDATE: 5 minutes later, cause Stephen Green says it funnier. Read the whole thing here.
Also To Europe:
I know you think we're all religious nuts over here, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the real deal. We're trying, however imperfectly, to bring a little freedom to the Islamic world. Ahmadinejad says he wants to wipe Israel off the map. How's that for nuts? He's not making any idle threat, either, like launching "a thousand-year Reich" or promising "liberty, equality, fraternity." Iran wants nukes. Iran has an advanced nuclear program. We'd like to stop them, without using military means.

And we'd sure like some help, fellas.

There's another Holocaust brewing, and I don't mean your parlor-room talk about how America is killing brown babies for oil. Besides, we aren't the ones who committed the first Holocaust – that was your doing. What we're trying to do is prevent another one, and we'd like to think that you guys might be a little sensitive to that sort of thing. "Go forth and sin no more," and all that.

Well, here's your chance to right a wrong.

Looking at your atrophied militaries, maybe that's too much to ask. So instead, how about if you could provide a little multinational moral support to the endeavor? Then again, we've all seen what counts as moral backbone in Brussels and Paris and Berlin – so let's set our sights a little lower. How about you guys just sit back and shut the hell up while the pros do what needs to be done?

You guys have failed. As of right now, Iran can produce yellowcake. As of shortly after right now, Iran will have nukes. As of yesterday – thanks in no small part to Old Europe – Iran already has missiles capable of reaching Israel.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some chickenhawk cowboy who wants to bomb the snuff out of Iran. I think there's still some slim chance that diplomacy might still work. But – and let's speak frankly here, as friends – your brand of diplomacy just won't cut it.

Your kind of diplomacy gave chemical weapons technology to Saddam Hussein. Your kind of diplomacy sells jet fighters and stealth-defeating radars to whoever has the cash to buy them. Your kind of diplomacy is the same kind of diplomacy you used to coddle a certain German tyrant 70 years ago.

Well. In the age of nukes, that kind of diplomacy just won't cut it.

We can muster "big stick" diplomacy, and Iran knows it. We have CENTCOM in Iraq. We have Special Forces in Afghanistan. We have Israel on a very loose leash.

Yours is the kind of diplomacy that pleads. Ours is the kind that threatens.

You've had your chance, and gotten nowhere. We'd like to see what we can do. All we ask is that you play to your strength and admit defeat already. We'll take it from here.

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