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It's All In The Swagger
May 7, 2001
(NYT) News Analysis: To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly
By ROGER COHEN
BERLIN, May 6 — Before becoming president,
George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need
for a country as powerful as the United States to
show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will
resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong,
they'll welcome us."
The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of
hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first
three months in office. Their chief theme has been the
arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel
recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans."
On its Web site, the respected Munich daily Süddeutsche
Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr.
Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of
widespread European views.
The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush
Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea:
Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support
From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of
Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States
Abandons the Kyoto Protocol."
cont.
"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," Dick Cheney says. In other words, "Ride your bikes around the commune all you want, hippies, but the rest of us have to get to work." According to today's front page New York Times article, Cheney's nominal boss uses energy efficient heat-pumps to cool the ranch in Crawford; meanwhile the rest of us are burning high-cost, polluting fossil fuel (which, of course, we are expected to buy at a premium from his business cronies). I'm reminded of Philip K. Dick's novel The Penultimate Truth, where the masses live in crowded bunkers deep underground, hoodwinked that there's an atomic war going on topside, while an elite is in fact basking in green estates on the underpopulated surface, living off the masses' labor while simulating news reports of an ongoing "crisis." Science fiction? Not if you believe Cheney's BS.