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I got so pissed off, I sent him the following at his e-mail address:
Dear Mr. Bowers,
I read your column, “Revisiting Europe, a place terribly changed since 1970”
and had to respond. I am an American, too, who visited Europe, in 1975, as it turns out, and have been living there since 1983. While it is true that Europe is changing, so too is America, and each returning trip I make leaves me about as aghast you seem to feel coming this way. I feel that America is becoming ever more intolerant and arrogant. I literally winced when you wrote: “After 9-11, it was time to stop worrying about why our enemies hate us. It was time to make them fear us. That we did, with daisy-cutter bombs and our Special Forces.
Likewise, now it is time to stop worrying about why Europe despises us. Instead, we must make them fear the consequences of crossing us.”
Whoa, pardner. To make someone fear you is to terrorize them, is it not? You are proposing the US use terror on its enemies and allies to bend their will. How is this different from Hamas?
Living here, I have not really seen much hatred of America, as much as I have seen real anger at America’s policies, two very different things. The traditional values America has stood for are still very respected, and the growing concern here is that America itself is straying from its more nobler traditions. What you are suggesting is exactly the thing guaranteed to destroy relationships between Europe and the US. In fact, by calling them false allies, you have totally misunderstood the current dynamics, your four-year childhood visit, and occasional vacation trip here not withstanding.
Europe still has vibrant democracies, lively debate, attempts to be inclusive of all immigrants, which is never easy, as the US experience also documents. Your comments on the indigenous birthrate borders on racism. I suppose you are equally upset about the blacks, Asians and Hispanics soon outnumbering whites in America, and I wonder why you didn’t make that comparison or attempt to let it illustrate our commonalities.
Another difference you seem not to make is a similar anger at Israel’s current policies in Palestine in comparison to Judaism per se. Here too, most people are asking how Israel can be treating another people so harshly, when they were so harshly treated themselves. There is a difference between feelings towards the culture and its people and the current government policy that represents them. Criticism of Israeli policy is not automatically anti-Semitism, just as criticism against Clinton (or Bush) was anti-Americanism. Likewise most Europeans feel Palestinians deserve a decent life too, even while deploring suicide bombers. Once again the legitimate aspirations of a people are a separate issue from the actions of those who claim to act in their name.
Yes, there are anti-Semites, and always have been. But what you don’t often see back home in Chicago is that every time the NeoNazis hold a rally, there is usually a counter rally much more massive in size, often by an order of magnitude or two, made up of people of all ages condemning anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism, anti-anybodism. You may read about a anti-Semitist’s racist letter to the editor, but never hear of the storm of letter that follow in its wake, and thus come to believe that only the first letter occurs, and is thus representative. So I hope you will be gladdened by the news that I bring you, that most Europeans are very aware of slights to Jews, remember the horror of the Holocaust, and take up pen and placard in hand when extremists surface.
There is a strong youth movement here for understanding and cooperation in world affairs. Their demonstrations always dwarf those taking racist, nationalistic, restrictive lines. Unfortunately, present US politics seems to be unilateral and based on prior agendas, both of which are in opposition to this movement. That is why American policy is so feared. It is not a rejection of what America used to stand for. It is a rejection of what America seems to be too drifting towards: self-centered and exclusive politics that uses coercion and threat to gain compliance, and is very aggressive to boot. Europe wants to feel included, and the message coming from the US is as equally rejectionist of their concerns as you feel Europe is of the US’s. They still want an equal partnership, not a vassal’s status, which is how Conservatives keep approaching Europe with its* “We saved your butt from the Nazis and Reds, therefore you owe us again and again and again….” This works, granted, but it does wear thin. Especially in the light of the fact that the intelligence services of Old Europe really have been shown to have been correct about Saddam’s WMD. At some point a true friend, says “buddy, you are wrong about those reasons.” I suspect you believe a true friend fights with you to defend your lies. Or does the real friend take you aside and say “hey, these lies are lies”? Tricky isn’t it? But it doesn’t make one an enemy, for goodness sake.
The mutual feeling of rejection indicates that communication is bad on both sides’ part. The solution is not to polarize further, but to reaffirm the bonds that tie and strengthen. In fact, this is indeed going on. Since the Iraq war, both sides have indeed begun to talk more honestly and compromise a little.
It is the worsening job market and the tensions from the renewed threat of terrorism that scares people, but polarizing ourselves into mutually hostile camps and taking honest difference in opinion as “crossing us” is to split one’s forces in the face of adversity. It is a desperate, almost panicky solution. Have you already forgotten “United we stand, divided we fall?”
US culture is European in nature in its broad definition; a scientific outlook, belief in self-rule via elected assemblies, private corporations based on share-holding, private initiative, music styles, food choices, sense of humor, language…. America is a subset, a narrowed selection of all of this, and living here these last 20 years (I am now 50-years old), I see so many commonalities that I simply groan when reading comments like yours, inexperienced observers who freak out that the rest of the world is not America.
Yes, there are some extremists here as everywhere. Were it not so. But your idea to “make them fear us” is extremism in its own right, and should it succeed, you will have made true enemies of your friends, which is about as self-defeating as it gets. That you cannot see that Europeans in general still like Americans in general, and that what we now have is only political dispute at high levels, borders on the tragic, because you are advocating a policy that would destroy the deep basic respect among we (broadly-defined) Westerners. For that is what we are: the Western culture, basically Europe together with the old British Commonwealth, and you would split it in the face of radical Islam. You would advocate imposing fear on us. And isn’t that another word for terrorism? You are become what you say you oppose.
How foolish can one get?
PS. I posted a copy of this letter on the Democratic Underground Message Board, where I found your original article.
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