Reports of looting greatly exaggerated

Remember all those stories of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites being looted after the Coalition invasion; all those accusations of chaos brought in by the nasty Americans and their equally nasty allies? Many people do remember them and repeat them. They remember slightly less well that there were subsequent stories - much smaller articles on less popular pages - that a good many of the museum treasures had not been looted but hidden by curators and were now being repositioned.

Of course there had been looting in Iraq - back in the nineties when apparently illicitly lifted treasures appeared in Western arts sales rooms. Except that they had been lifted by members of Saddam Hussein's government.

Now we get an interesting story about the archaelogical sites. Thanks to Clarice Feldman's posting on American Thinker we can read an article in the Wall Street Journal that tells us that stories of those lootings were seriously exaggerated as well.

A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites -- eight of them -- had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. This, according to a report by staff writer Martin Bailey in the July issue of the Art Newspaper. The article has caused confusion, not to say consternation, among archaeologists and has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. Not surprising perhaps, since reports by experts blaming the U.S. for the postinvasion destruction of Iraq's heritage have been regular fixtures of the news.

I'll bet it's caused confusion. Almost as much confusion as the acknowledgement by newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times that the surge in Iraq is working and the situation is improving by leaps and bounds. Not to mention caused by the fact that Barack Obama's website has wiped all criticisms of the surge.

The rest of the article gives an account of archaeologists producing results of how much has been looted and destroyed before going to see for themselves (is that how archaeology is done these days?) and how surprised they were to find that those preliminary calculations were wrong.

According to the Art Newspaper article, "The international team ... had been expecting to find considerable evidence of looting after 2003 but to their astonishment and relief there was none. Not a single recent dig hole was found at the eight sites, and the only evidence of illegal digging came from holes which were partially covered with silt and vegetation, which means they [were] several years old." Furthermore, the most recent damage "probably dated back to 2003," to just before and after the invasion when the Iraqi army maneuvered for the allied attack. (According to other experts, looting probably took place when the Iraqi army first moved out of areas near sites to counter the invasion.)

Neither the British Museum pair nor Prof. Stone responded to my calls seeking comment. The British Museum press official for the Middle Eastern department cautioned that the official report had not yet been compiled, but it seemed that the article was generally accurate. Certainly none of the experts have denied any of it. In the article, Dr. Curtis "admits that he was 'very surprised' at the lack of recent looting, but stresses that ... 'it may not be typical of the country as a whole, and the situation could be worse further north.'"

No doubt. But how could previous assessments have been so wrong, and why would one expect anything to be worse elsewhere? In phone conversations with me, both Donny George and Lawrence Rothfield argued that the eight sites were all known to be well-protected. Dr. George was able to itemize each one: "Ur was an Iraqi airbase and then a U.S. airbase. Uruk Warka was protected by guards from nearby tribes -- we always knew that. Ouelli is largely prehistoric and of no use to looters..." And so on. But Dr. George, perhaps the world's leading authority on the subject, also conceded that the greatest damage done by looters had generally occurred in the 1990s, in Saddam's time. Prof. Rothfield said that the no-fly zones back then had allowed illicit digging to occur.

As an erswhile amateur archaeologist (well, a gopher on archaeological sites, if we are going to be honest) and a great admirer of heroic archaeologists, I was saddened to see that their successors have joined the NGO-tranzi brigade of using inaccurate data to oppose Western actions. But then, what can you expect from an organization called the World Archaeological Committee (WAC)?

Who is this "we"?

Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am not greatly enamoured of the “big lie” theory that Goebbels was supposed to have espoused. It is a sequence of small lies, I once wrote, that does the trick. Just look at that genius of propaganda, Willi Münzenberg. Nobody believes anything Goebbels said and not many people believed it even at the time but millions of people around the world repeat stories first started by Herr (or, as he was at the time, Genosse) Münzenberg without even realizing where they originated.

One of the small lies that is frequently repeated in the MSM and is believed by an astonishing number of people is that the United States has such an enormous influence in the world that justice demands that “we” should have a say in whom Americans elect to be President. Even Simon Heffer succumbed to that particular virus.

To which one can say only one thing: who is this “we”? We, the people of European countries, do not have a say in the selection of our real government. Nor do we have a say in whether to have a completely new constitutional arrangement, to wit the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty imposed on us. When the people of one European country are graciously allowed to vote on the subject and say no, plans are made to disregard their vote. So, before we claim a right to impose our views on the Americans on who should be their President perhaps we should take a closer look at what is happening in our own countries.

Furthermore, is it not strange that “our” opinion always seems to be on the side of the Democrats and the more left-wing and anti-American their rhetoric is, the more “we” seem to like them? Could it be because we are fed a succession of … ahem … inaccurate stories about American politics by our own media and various political pundits? Or could it be that "we" are only a very small proportion of the population?

The latest darling of all those who think they should be involved in American presidential elections is, naturally enough, Barack Obama, who is coming on a whirlwind tour of some European countries, just as soon as he finds out where they are, in order to bolster his credentials as a man who actually knows something about foreign policy.

The Daily Telegraph, which has set itself up to be a cheer-leader for the Democrats, has published two articles on the subject with many more to come, we can be sure. One tells us that Barack Obama will tell Gordon Brown that under his presidency Britain will no longer be America’s “poodle”. In fact, the headline tells us that he will “end Britain’s poodle status”. Is that now a recognized term in international relations?

Presumably there is no point in telling Alex Spillius that Britain’s status was far from poodle-like for many years, and it was Tony Blair’s far from poodle-like influence that dragged the United States through that UN farce before the Iraqi war.

Equally, there is, one assumes, no point in reminding him that far from considering Britain to be a “poodle” Congress saw her as an equal ally and offered a free-trade status. Prime Minister Blair then had to refuse it rather sheepishly because Britain no longer has the right to negotiate her own trade agreements. One wonders whether Mr Spillius actually knows this unimportant little fact.

Of course, facts must not be allowed to get in the way of a the “narrative” as presented by our hacks. Just let’s all pull together and get Obama in and all our problems, such as British mishandling of matters in Basra, as documented by us in this blog in great detail, will be solved. Oh woops, we cannot vote in the American election. That’s so unfair.

Then there is the story of Barack Obama intending to speak by the Brandenburg Gate, a wonderful backdrop to him, as someone from his campaign gushed. Harry de Quetteville explains

The Democratic candidate, who enjoys a 61 percentage point lead over Republican John McCain among Germans in a recent Daily Telegraph poll, has set his sights on a symbolic gathering in Berlin.

Here we go again. How can a man enjoy a 61 percentage lead in a country where where he has never been and where he is not standing for political office? I may add that his lead over John McCain in the country where it matters, the United States, is considerably smaller than that. In some parts of the country it is non-existent.

If his popularity in Germany is genuinely that high (do they even know anything about him or about Senator McCain, who has already travelled practically everywhere in the world, especially where there are American troops?) Senator Obama can only hope that this fact will not reach the American electorate. John Kerry’s boasts about his popularity in Europe did him no good at all in 2004.

Let us hope that the speech will be delivered in German as Barack Obama seems to have been complaining about Americans not speaking other languages while Europeans speak English when they visit the United States. (As he has not so far been anywhere else, except at school in Indonesia and, possibly, on a visit to a college friend in Pakistan, he wouldn’t really know how Europeans behave anywhere else. Then again, unlike the Bush brothers, he does not speak anything apart from English either.)

Meanwhile, as the Telegraph article hints, there has been a certain amount of discussion in Germany about Barack Obama speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, an honour that only actual American Presidents have been accorded so far.

Furthermore, even in Germany, despite the apparent support for the junior senator from Illinois, there is a strong feeling that campaigning should be done at home. By all means, visit other countries and speak to various people but an actual campaigning speech in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate, may be going just a little too far.

Chancellor Merkel and a number of other politicians seem to feel the awkwardness of the situation. After all, there is still an American Administration in place, and as one member of it said, it might be better to show some friendliness towards that, instead of looking to the possible successor. Furthermore, what if Senator McCain wins in November? How will this unnecessary gesture (after all the Brandenburg Gate is hardly the front line of the fight at the moment) will look to him?

The Social-Democrat Mayor of Berlin and other members of the party are, on the other hand, delighted with the idea. This will, they think somewhat mysteriously, improve German-American relations. Not if there is a Republican Administration next year, it won’t.

The other aspect of it is highlighted in what can be described as a rather cynical article in Der Spiegel: the rather lacklustre German Social-Democrat (and a few other) politicians are hoping that some of Obama’s glamour (somewhat tarnished by now in America) will rub off on them.

Of course, they could conceivably make themselves more popular with the electorate by attempting to solve some domestic problems and, above all, by ensuring that Germany’s own real government becomes accountable to the people of that country. But that would ignore the lies that these same people have been peddling for some time.

Anti-Americanism is not precisely new

One does not have to go back too far in history, just a few decades, to recall the endless anti-American demonstrations in many parts of the world and the snarling contempt directed by the Europeans at Americans, both at home and abroad. While I accept that politicians running for office in the United States feel the need to blame the Bush Administration for something that has been going on for at least since the Second World War, maybe longer, I fail to see why those who do not wish to garner political benefits should suffer from memory hole syndrome.

For reasons of other work (yes, there is a world out there) I have been reading Whittaker Chambers’s letters to Bill Buckley, published as “Odyssey of a Friend”, in 1969 and, apparently, reprinted in 1987. I may have mentioned before that I admire Chambers and consider him to be one of the truly heroic and pivotal characters of the twentieth century. Indeed, the battle-lines that he drew up with his testimony against Alger Hiss are, in many ways, still there.

He was, however, a difficult personality, given to prophet-like pronouncements of doom, never quite explaining what it is that the West needs to understand in order to fight the apocalyptic battle with the forces of evil. Quite possibly, he never really worked it out himself. Certainly his portentous analyses of political events, which, according to him, he alone understood, have a hit and miss quality.

His letters tend to be rather long and full of amusing accounts as well as interesting political and cultural comments. They are also full of self-analysis and self-laceration. It is worth sifting through all that sand in order to find the nuggets of gold, nuggets that must have been far more common in his conversation if Buckley’s account is anything to go by.

In 1959 Chambers and his wife visited Europe, meeting again many of the other ex-Communist fighters like Arthur Koestler, and travelling round the place. There is a long letter from Venice that is full of angry imprecations against just about everyone: American politicians, American tourists and Europeans who diddle the tourists while despising them for being gullible. These are all easy targets and it is understandable why Chambers became so angry.

In the midst of it all he gives an interesting account of what he thinks is happening. Fifty years on, it is still of relevance:

Europe belongs to the 20th century. In fact, it's getting there at great speed. Though I do not quite agree with Forrest Davis’ [conservative American writer and journalist] on the political or economic federative score (the certain tempor of it), that is the direction.

I disagree with him decisively about the future joy of Pan-Europe for us. Give them the means, and these dear friends, that noble Third Force, will cut our bloody throats. As people, they are stronger than we are, and they know it – I mean as individual people amounting to a mass, they are stronger. In the mass they loathe us.

At another level, their disdain for us is withering. At their most understanding or compassionate, they neither hate nor loathe; it’s just that they cannot help being conscious of a difference that superior breeds feel in the presence of others. Often they show it most by their effort not to show it. Give these superior breeds the economic power to see us "at eye level" (I think was Forrest’s phrase) and they will see right over us.

They have been seeing through us for years. Don’t imagine that this prospect pleases me. The anti-American climate here enrages me. It is immensely part of my being fed up.

I think Chambers was underestimating the growing envy of America – those “superior beings” were beginning to feel deep down that they were not really superior. But one can understand what Chambers is trying to do here. It is what many of us have been trying to do all these years: to analyze and understand the reason for the irrational anti-Americanis of Europeans (and that includes the British).

Turning to other subjects

The American Enterprise Institute has an interesting piece by David Frum on anti-Americanism. The author is one of those people who excites more hatred from the "liberal" and not so liberal media than almost anyone else. If only we on this blog could generate those emotions. They we would know we were succeeding.

Mr Frum describes his session as witness to a subcommittee of the House committee on foreign affairson whether anti-Americanism went up because of the Bush presidency and, specifically, because of the Iraqi war.

Unsurprisingly, he notes that neither of those is true, anti-Americanism being rife some years before that, even in the supposedly halcyon years of the Clinton administration. He draws an interesting link between anti-Americanism and state control of media. As the latter takes off or intensifies, the former grows exponentially. One wonders what he would make of British anti-Americanism.

About time, too

The United States has finally and very sensibly abandoned its observer status on the ludicrous and poisonous UN Human Rights Council. According to Reuters:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the decision, taken recently by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reflected mistrust of the 47-member state forum, at which the United States currently has observer status.

"Our skepticism regarding the function of the U.N. Council on Human Rights in terms of fulfilling its mandate and its mission is well known. It has a rather pathetic record," McCormack told reporters.

"We will engage the Human Rights Council really only when we believe that there are matters of deep national interest before the council ... We are going to take a more reserved approach," he added.

There is, naturally enough, much wailing and gnashing of teeth in tranzi-land.

There was widespread consternation on Friday at the Palais des Nations in Geneva when the US mission gave up his observer status - a step backwards for human rights around the world, says Human Rights Watch.

It was all going so well, they sobbed. Belarus was was not re-elected to membership in 2007, nor was Sri Lanka this year. There were all sorts of "recommendations were made regarding Romania, Japan, Guatemala, Peru, Tunisia, Ukraine, Indonesia and others". And now there is this terrible set-back for human rights across the world.

Before we get too carried away with the horror of it all, perhaps we should look at who is who on the UN Human Rights Council. We have written about the organization before, some of its personnel and its attempts to stifle free speech, when it involves criticism of, for instance, Islamic countries.

We have written about the committee it has selected to organize the next anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Western hatefest in Durban in 2009.

We listed the odd problem or two with the organization, such as the bullying of UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer when he presents evidence of bias in the organization.

Above all, it is necessary to look at the membership of the Council and the countries that are in it. A few random examples: Nigeria, Zambia, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, Bangladesh, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Romania. Well, naturally, it is the American virtual withdrawal from observer status after prolonged abuse from representatives of some of the worst regimes on earth that is going to set back human rights in the world.

Something missing

The story of the two Christian preachers who were warned off by a highly unpleasant Police Community Support Officer for handing out gospel leaflets in what the man described as a Muslim area has, quite understandably, upset people both in the MSM and in the new(ish) media. One wonders whether similar warning would be issued to sellers of Koran or handers out of Nation of Islam leaflets in what might be described as predominantly Christian areas. After all, more people consider themselves to be Christian than go to church.

One aspect of this disgraceful story has not been aired much by those on the internet who mentioned it.

A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive."

After that came all that stuff about it being a Muslim area and threats to have the two preachers beaten up.

One wonders why the officer thought it was his job to interrupt a conversation unless it was getting violent and on whose side the violence was evinced. But what is so extraordinary or would be if one did not live in modern Britain is that the said officer and, clearly, his superiors, who are now, I am glad to say, being sued, thought that all can be excused by anti-American ranting.

A police officer should not be expressing political opinions publicly. If there is any training to be done it should not be "in understanding hate crime and communication" though, clearly, the latter is something of a problem among the West Midlands police, but in that simple point.

Apparently, expressing hate towards America, her democratically elected President and Americans in general is not a hate crime but an acceptable point of view.

Yet again, we are superior

Britain and Europe, as we know, are superior to the United States. If we do not know it then many a deranged, furiously spitting commentator and letter writer both in the MSM and on the internet will tell us. At length.

One of the main reasons for that superiority is that a higher proportion of the American population is supposed to be in prison than that of any European country. Whether the figures are true is, for once, irrelevant. It is the attitude that matters. I thought of it as I read about the latest London stabbing, on Oxford Street this time, and about its victim.

The 22 year old man was out on bail and was coming up for two separate trials, one for a fight in a club that involved knives and one for a horrific rape of a sixteen-year old girl. Isn’t it wonderful, I thought, that this country is not like that ghastly oppressive one on the other side of the Pond and people of this kind are given bail because we have no more space in prisons.

The EU is, of course, never backward about coming forward on the subject of European superiority. On May 14 the Presidency issued a declaration "on behalf of the EU concerning the resumption of executions in the USA".

The statement, rather an impertinent one, is a response to the fact that the State of Georgia (for these matters are the states' competence) had ended the seven-month, voluntarily imposed moratorium on executions by carrying one out on William Lynd, who had been found guilty of murdering his girl-friend.

The moratorium, as this article in The Australian, which refers to executions, rather tendentiously, as "legal killings", was caused by several legal challenges to the notion of lethal injections. The Supreme Court has ruled 7 – 2 that the method did not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment". The latter is barred under the US Constitution, a document, as our readers know, we respect a good deal more than the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty that is being imposed on the various peoples and states of the European Union.

Almost certainly, there will be other legal challenges and debates in the country and the various states will carry on. That is as it should be. Where does the European Union come into this picture?

As ever, it sets itself up as a kind of a moral arbiter of what is right and what is wrong with the world, though, given the numbers involved, it would be interesting to know whether there have been more protests and statements about executions in China than those in the United States and by what factor? If not, then why not?

The EU again reiterates its longstanding position against the death penalty in all circumstances and accordingly strives to achieve its universal abolition, seeking a global moratorium on the death penalty as the first step. We believe that the elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights.

The EU recalls that on 18 December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on a Moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which explicitly calls upon all States that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

This sort of waffle does not answer the question especially as we have seen no rush among members of the UN General Assembly to abolish the death penalty, often carried out in far more brutal conditions and after a considerably less free and fair a trial. Remember those teenagers hanged from a crane in Iran?

The first thing to be noted, as I am sure Americans will, is that the United States of America is an independent country and those states are no longer colonies of European countries.

The second point is the one mentioned above and that is the questionable moral standing in this, as in other matters, of the UN and its General Assembly.

The third point is a little more intriguing. Via Chicagoboyz we find an article in the New York Times (not the Grey Lady herself, the Bible of leftism and hatred of all obscurantism such as criminals must be punished?) that writes about a study on the subject.

The results of the study ought to be read by the Presidency of the European Union because they are rather shocking.

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

At least one of the studies was carried out by an opponent of capital punishment but he found the figures hard to argue with. Naturally enough, the studies have evoked sharp responses, not least from lawyers, who argue that purely economic arguments do not apply to complicated matters such as capital punishment which is, in any case, a rare occurrence in the United States.

But if the figures about deterrence are close to accurate – and here we come to a difficult problem – then the "moral" argument against "legal killing" becomes hard to sustain. Is it really moral to oppose the taking of one life if that means supporting the taking of several other lives? What about the human rights and human dignity of the victims who might not be that if there were capital punishment? Could the EU Presidency answer, please?

Professor Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard, wrote in their own Stanford Law Review article that "the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive, especially in light of its 'apparent power and unanimity,'" quoting a conclusion of a separate overview of the evidence in 2005 by Robert Weisberg, a law professor at Stanford, in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

"Capital punishment may well save lives," the two professors continued. "Those who object to capital punishment, and who do so in the name of protecting life, must come to terms with the possibility that the failure to inflict capital punishment will fail to protect life."

There is an additional problem for the anti-capital punishment or, at least, anti-American anti-capital punishment brigade. There is a common enough argument that the whole legal system in the United States is racist because proportionately more Afro-Americans are in prison than others and more are executed on the few occasions this happens.

The paper by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule raises an issue that is closely related:

A study by Joanna Shepherd, based on data from all states from 1997 to 1999, finds that each death sentence deters 4.5 murders and that an execution deters 3 additional murders.

Her study also investigates the contested question whether executions deter crimes of passion and murders by intimates. Although intuition might suggest that such crimes cannot be deterred, her own finding is clear: all categories of murder are deterred by capital punishment.

The deterrent effect of the death penalty is also found to be a function of the length of waits on death row, with a murder deterred for every 2.75 years of reduction in the period before execution. Importantly, this study finds that the deterrent effect of capital punishment protects African-American victims even more than whites.

In other words, the study shows that capital punishment actually helps African-Americans though not the ones who decide to go down the route of murder.

The trouble is, as Shannon Love, of Chicagoboyz points out, that it is almost impossible to measure deterrence accurately.

I personally believe that the death penalty protects the innocent and punishes the guilty. However, I don't think we can accurately measure that effect directly. Instead, I think the death penalty merely serves as a marker to distinguish jurisdictions that have an effective anti-homicide political culture. The various studies, all using different standards and different assumptions, all converge on the same rough answers because many different ineptly-measured factors point in the same general direction. Metaphorically, I don’t think they can make an ordinance map of the landscape but they can determine which general direction is downhill.

At the very least, such studies and debates should be taken into consideration when the European Union, whose members' legal and punitive structures are variable, to say the least, makes another grand pronouncement of superiority to those dam' Yanks.

What do we do about anti-Americanism - open thread for Wednesday

We have written about it on numerous occasions. I mentioned it in my earlier blog in connection with the inaugural Thomas Jefferson lecture. It is one of the great blights on British political life and, indeed, public opinion.

People who will cheerfully imitate American slang, watch American TV programmes, wear jeans, eat McDonald’s and go to the States whenever they can, longing to have the sort of life Americans do, consider every single person in this country to be more intelligent than every single American. There is, of course, no evidence for this.

There is no evidence that American politics and foreign policy is dominated by Christian fundamentalists though it is more likely to have moral undertones than the European and British equivalent; there is no evidence that Christian fundamentalists are as nasty as Islamist fundamentalists; there is no evidence that Americans are greedier than the rest of the world, being more generous in their individual charitable giving as opposed to the state redistributing other people’s money than anyone else; and so on and so on.

But you cannot get away from it. Anti-Americanism is a huge problem on the right as well as on the left.

So, forum, let’s roll. Discuss. Reasons, causes, likely effects and what is to be done, to quote a really dreadful Russian novelist. (No, Lenin did not invent the title.)

PS Try not to get hung up on the word Islamist. It is not the issue at hand. Oh, and remember that what Hollywood thinks is typical America is no more typical than Barack Obama’s pronouncements on the people of Pennsylvania.

COMMENT THREAD

Fickle lot, these Europeans

Yesterday I attended the inaugural Thomas Jefferson lecture, organized by The Freedom Association. Being more of an Alexander Hamilton supporter, I am never quite sure about Jefferson but you have to give the man his due – he wrote very beautiful prose.

Pace former President Giscard d’Estaing, who had the temerity to compare himself to Jefferson, the latter did not write the American Constitution, was, in fact, mildly against it, and was in Paris at the time of the Continental Congress and the debates on the Constitution. Nor did he sign it on behalf of Virginia. John Blair and James Madison Jnr did.

What Thomas Jefferson was the author of was the Declaration of Independence, not a document M Giscard has any familiarity with. Mind you, even the American Constitution is written in a pellucid language and proclaims its aim in ringing tones.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Somewhat different from the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty or, indeed, any other treaty. No nonsense about the People or Blessings of Liberty there.

Anyway, back to the inaugural lecture. It was given by Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home and concentrated on the subject of anti-Americanism in this county as well as Europe and the rest of the world. Tim also made some tentative suggestions as to what might be done to counter it.

I have always maintained that there was more visceral anti-Americanism in Britain than in most Continental countries, which is a curious paradox as the historic and present links between the two countries are so obvious. This is a long and complicated subject that needs serious discussion but let me just make one point.

The two cultural developments of the twentieth century that are undoubtedly America’s though they both have a presence in other countries are films and jazz. Neither, incidentally, is in particularly good shape, but that is another story. Much more to the point is that both are taken very seriously in almost all European countries but not in Britain. Despite the appallingly low standards of present-day popular culture in this country, there is a sniffy dismissal of what Americans have achieved in those fields.

Tim did not talk about such trivial matters. Instead he mentioned that an astonishingly high proportion of Europe’s and other countries’ population sees America as the greatest threat to peace, ahead of Iran, China, North Korea or Russia.

Happily, there is news in yesterday’s Spiegel that manages to counter that rather bizarre view. It seems that in the wake of the crack-down in Tibet and general misbehaviour by Chinese thugs around the Olympic torch processions the Europeans have changed their minds.

China has now overtaken the United States as the greatest perceived threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans, according to the opinion poll commissioned by the Financial Times.

The poll, carried out by the Harris agency between March 27 and April 8 and published on Tuesday, found that 35 percent of respondents in the five largest EU states see China as a bigger threat to world stability than any other state. Last year, that figure was 19 percent, and in 2006 it was only 12 percent. In contrast, the US has slipped back into second place, with 29 percent of the respondents viewing it as the biggest threat, down from 32 percent in 2007.

The poll was carried out in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom shortly after the brutal suppression of the unrest in Tibet in mid-March. Many of the respondents would have seen images of subsequent protests against the Olympic torch relay.

Honestly, one can’t trust these Europeans even to be consistently anti-American. Emotional bunch.

An interesting question

This is the sort of posting I do not usually link to the forum. It is a shortie that links to another blog, in this case Thomas Lifson's piece on American Thinker. However, for once, I shall break that rule for two reasons.

One is that it is not easy to comment on American Thinker, which may be quite sensible as they can avoid all those inadequate trolls. The second is that this is a subject we might be able to have a reasonable discussion.

Lifson takes the word Islamophobia that is always being thrown around with gay abandon and means, as it happens, not hatred of Islam but irrational fear of it and points out that if anyone has irrational fears it is the Islamic community or, at least, those who speak for it in mosques, madrassas, colleges and, even children's TV.

He refers back to another blog, Dr Sanity, where there is a piece on "Westophobia" that discusses, firstly, the crimes that are committed by Islamists against their own people and others and, secondly, the completely irrational fear and hatred that is promulgated by many of the spokesmen.

This could be called Westophobia, which is a clums word, or, as someone suggests, Ameriphobia as it is really an irrational fear and hatred of the United States and everything it represents.

As I read the piece I realized that I was not actually thinking about Islamists but the many other people, not least in Britain, who suffer from what might be called Ameriphobia, which prevents them from seeing who our true allies are and from fully accepting the ideas of the Anglosphere. Anyone who doubts this should read the comments on the two Sunday Times pieces my colleague has linked to.

The trouble is, I don't like the word. Can anything better be created? So, I am putting this on the forum with strict caveats: this is not a thread about Islam or Muslims. It is to be a discussion of Ameriphobia and other possible names to it.

Soft hypocrisy

What we say is if you cannot get anywhere with soft power and have to use ordinary bribery by way of funds and defence contracts, try soft hypocrisy. Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, seems to agree with us.

Via Pajamas Media we get the story of Señor Zapatero going to Mexico and attacking the United States for constructing a fence along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants. The question of illegal immigration into the United States and what to do about it is an internal American one and we would not presume to comment on it. Why bother, anyway? There are hundreds of American blogs that write about it at great length and very interesting it is, too.

However, several things can be mentioned even on this side of the Pond. One is that immigrants, legal and especially illegal, do not have immediate and unargued rights in the country which they enter. Secondly, many of those who argue against illegal immigration over the American-Mexican border are, in fact, legal immigrants from that or other Central and South American countries. This is very understandable and we see similar developments in Britain.

Thirdly, it is hard for me to grasp why a country like Mexico, which is potentially rich enough to have its entire population living well, should have leaders who have supposed friends in Spain or wherever, who consider that it is absolutely right that the height of any Mexican’s ambition should be to leave and it is shockingly unfair of the United States not to go along with it.

Why not concentrate on making it possible for people “to build a better life” in their own country? Not building it for the people – no government could do that and whenever they do try everything becomes much worse – but create a political structure in which people can do so for themselves.

Fourthly and most importantly we are particularly taken with Señor Zapatero’s hypocrisy. Let’s face it, one of the European Union’s preoccupations, rightly or wrongly, is how to keep immigrants from Africa out of the member states.

Spain has been in the forefront of that fight and, as Soeren Kern, the author of the PJM article reminds us, has not been using particularly pleasant methods. Spain has been criticized by the New York based Human Rights Watch. It is possible that Zapatero is a tad miffed at not being invited to the White House because of his pro-Castro stance over Cuba, a stance that even the European Parliament has disagreed with.

As it happens the debate as to whether Muslims are more assimilated in America than in the various European countries is not quite as one sided as Soeren Kern makes out. There are many indicators on both sides.

But there can be no debate about one aspect of Spanish policy and that is Ceuta, one of two Spanish-held enclaves in Morocco, which remain so for no apparent reason. And, as we have pointed out before, there is a socking big fence around Ceuta to prevent any immigrant from entering what is regarded as Spanish territory. Errm, what about their desire for a better life, often blighted by the EU and its trade and fishing policies?

COMMENT THREAD

A European Council on Foreign Relations?

George Soros, the billionaire, spent $27.5 million in 2004 to try to defeat George W. Bush. Clearly, the man is a huge success in political terms. He is now pouring money into Barack Obama's campaign. If I were Obama and his advisers I'd feel a little worried.

Soros also funds other organizations like MoveOn.org, dedicated to the overthrow of the, in their minds, illegitimate Bush administration and American hegemony, while they are at it, and Human Rights Watch, whose purpose appears to be to write anti-American and anti-Israeli reports. His activities in the former Communist countries are separate and have, actually, produced useful results, where he has not been thrown out.

Clearly, the man has decided that he cannot win in the United States - money does not necessarily buy political power in a democracy. So, he has turned to Europe (whatever that might mean to him) and announced that he will set up a European Council on Foreign Relations. He announced this, yesterday at a conference in Oxford and added:

Europe has to be interested in recreating what used to be called the West, based on the principles of international cooperation. Out of this idea came the idea of founding a European Council on Foreign Relations.

Well, that's nice. Is this the equivalent of the one telephone number that Henry Kissinger used to long for?

After all, it is not clear where the Council will be set up and whom it is going to advise in the way the original one advises the State Department or other parts of the American government (usually rather badly). So, is the European Council going to be in Brussels, advising Javier Solana and the incipient EU diplomatic corps? Or is it going to compete with the German Council on Foreign Relations or our own Chatham House or Foreign Policy Centre?

Answer seems there to be none but one thing has emerged immediately - this will be a sinecure for Professor Tim Garton Ash, who is advising Soros on the project. What does Professor Garton Ash say?

"Our resources are similar to the United States, but we punch pathetically below our weight," Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at Oxford University who is helping Mr. Soros with the plans, said in an interview. "The idea is to contribute a European voice. It's still in the making."

Who is this "we" one wonders.

According to Bloomberg:

Garton Ash said that the new institute would concern itself with global inequality and climate change. Soros said that integrating China into international institutions was a reason why the group would be needed.

Why he thinks that Europeans are going to decide what China does or does not do remains a mystery. But that's the problem with all these "internationalists" - they rarely know what goes on outside their own backyard.

COMMENT THREAD

European politicians v. Wolfowitz

Today's Wall Street Journal has another interesting editorial about the players in the Wolfowitz saga. The ad hoc committee that was supposed to decide whether Wolfowitz has acted unethically is dominated by Europeans most of whom are former politicians and they decided before hearing either him or Ms Riza that he was guilty, despite the evidence, and had to go.

On Saturday, the Washington Post cited "three senior bank officials" as saying that the committee has "nearly completed a report" concluding that Mr. Wolfowitz "breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend." The Post also reported that, "According to bank officials, the timing of the committee's report and its conclusions have been choreographed for
maximum impact in what has become a full-blown campaign to persuade Wolfowitz to go." So there it is from the plotters themselves: Verdict first, trial later.

The timing is crucial in another way. President Bush is about to meet Commission President Barroso and Chancellor Merkel in a summit. He will, presumably, be put under some pressure from them to rid the World Bank of Wolfowitz and let it lapse back into its cosy, corrupt cronyism.

The article is scathing about certain Dutch politicians in particular:

The "ad hoc" chairman is Herman Wijffels, a Dutch politician who has his own blatant conflict of interest in the case. One of the main "witnesses" against Mr. Wolfowitz is Ad Melkert, another Dutch politician who had previously run the bank board's ethics committee that advised Mr. Wolfowitz to give the raise to his girlfriend that is now the basis for the accusations against him. Whom do you think Mr. Wijfells is going to side with: His fellow countryman, or an American reviled in Europe for wanting to depose Saddam Hussein?

Mr. Melkert has played an especially craven role by running from his own responsibility in the case. As head of the ethics committee in 2005, he refused to let Mr. Wolfowitz recuse himself from dealings with Shaha Riza, who had been long employed at the bank. Then Mr. Melkert advised him to ensure that Ms. Riza got a new job that included some kind of raise or promotion to compensate for the disruption to her career. Now, however, Mr. Melkert claims he was an innocent bystander who knew nothing about Ms. Riza's raise.

How very European. This is the same Ad Melkert, who on October 24, 2005, after Ms. Riza had been told of her new job and salary, wrote in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz that "Because the outcome is consistent with the [Ethics] Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed."

And it is the same Ad Melkert who absolved Mr. Wolfowitz after inspecting two whistleblower emails from an anonymous "John Smith" that circulated around the bank in early 2006 and charged malfeasance. A January 21 whistleblower email included a reference to Ms. Riza's "salary increase of around US$50,000" and was sent to the entire bank board.

Oh and one more point. Ms Riza, details of whose employment and salary were leaked to the media against all rules, has not had a chance to give her side of the story. Until now.

COMMENT THREAD

Can't wait to see this one

Our readers might recall that not so long ago I wrote about the German film “The Lives of Others” that, contrary to expectation as it showed the East German Communist system in a bad light, won the Oscar for best foreign film, having won various other awards besides.

A week or so ago I was told by a friend who lives in the United States (for those who are interested in such matters, he calls himself English of Irish descent if he bothers to define himself at all) that the film was going to be remade, substituting Bush’s America for Hoenecker’s German Democratic Republic. We spent some time discussing as to who might play the Berlin Wall but came to no conclusion. Surely, I thought, this was just a rumour.

Alas, no. According to an article by Sheila Johnston in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday, the film has been acquired for remake by American movie moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Well, acquired for remake does not mean being remade but it is an ominous message.

There is a longish piece on the subject here.

COMMENT THREAD

They call it installation realignment

It looks a little as if the adolescents may find themselves without parental aid and support sooner than they thought. Not that the Americans are withdrawing from the European commitments they faithfully kept to throughout the Cold War. Deary me, no. They are merely realigning their installations.

According to the Department of Defense press release

With the U.S. European Command’s force structure realignment and transformation, it was determined that RAF West Ruislip and RAF Daws Hill are no longer required.

These will now be returned to the host nation though what it will do with them is anybody’s guess. Perhaps turn them into global warming theme parks.

One would guess that there will be quite a lot of force structure realignment and transformation in Europe in the next few years up to and including a complete disappearance of the force, which will no longer be with us.

It is true that in the teeth of smug opposition, Prime Minister Blair wants Britain to be part of the new Missile Defence System and several of the East European countries have also expressed strong interest, despite the inevitable and rather synthetic Russian anger. But Angela Merkel has been rather busy in her latest round of travels (she still finds it rather hard to stay at home for more than a week or so) trying to get European countries to oppose it.

No Missile Defence System and lots of force structure realignment. Well, it won’t hurt the European countries to realize that choices have to be made. It’s called growing up.

COMMENT THREAD

Still behaving like adolescents

We have noted in the past that the European (and that includes British, in this case) anti-American posturing reminds us of nothing so much as adolescents displaying defiance of and contempt for their parents in the certain knowledge that in the case of any real trouble, those contemptible parents will be there to give aid and support.

The real enemy, on the other hand, have no such intention, so it is best not to annoy them. Curiously enough, this ridiculous attitude is now so prevalent that those who display it do not even recognize their own stupidity. They will, undoubtedly, be the first to scream for help if the Americans do, finally, turn their backs on Europe (with the exception of the odd East European country) and Britain.

We can all cite myriads of examples both on a personal and public level. I recall talking to a highly educated lawyer friend soon after 9/11 who was wistfully hoping that President Bush was looking at the rather beautiful moon, as we were (unlikely, given the time difference, but let that pass) and was imbibing peaceful ideas, which he badly needed, being a well-known warmonger. I pointed out that flying aeroplanes full of people into buildings on another country’s territory and killing several thousand in the process was, by any definition, an act of war. Oh yes, she moaned, but I still think … She trailed off.

At the time it was still not done (except on the BBC’s “Any Questions” – remember the treatment meted out to the American ambassador just days after 9/11?) to blame the United States directly for all the ills in the world. That came soon afterwards.

We have now reached a stage when a very large proportion of the population, egged on by the media and the political classes in Britain and on the Continent, do actually believe that the United States is a greater menace to peace than any other country; that it is more oppressive than any other country; and that its democratically elected leader is a bloodthirsty tyrant unlike say the peace loving and fairly elected leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba.

One of the commenters on Biased BBC refers to an extraordinary exchange about the British sailors and marines in Iranian hands during a PM programme. The gist of it seems to be that an interviewee happily gets away with saying that we have to be so very careful of what we do because of the way the Americans are behaving at the moment.

This is rather vague as a description, with the writer relying on memory but sounds remarkably accurate.

Still, things are worse in Germany. Through Captain’s Quarters I found an interesting article in Der Spiegel about German anti-Americanism. The author, Claus Christian Malzahn starts his analysis with the not-so-very-surprising information that, according to recent polls, 48 per cent of Germans think that the United States is more dangerous than Iran, rising to 57 per cent among 18 to 29 year olds, with only 31 per cent across the whole population believing the opposite.

Presumably, much of that argument is based on that curious assumption that Iran has never actually attacked anyone. Well, give or take a few terrorist groups that they fund, arm and train, I suppose they merely threaten Israel with annihilation and, of course, seriously oppress their own people. Oh yes, there is that rather curious presence in Iraq and, well, they do seem to have kidnapped 15 British sailors and marines. But hey, who is counting?

Mr Malzahn blames the German political establishment, who will, in his opinion, shed crocodile tears at this unfriendly attitude towards the country’s great ally.

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb.

That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

Another item on the Iranian president's wish list is the annihilation of Israel. But that will take a bit longer. In the meantime, just to make sure it doesn't get out of practice, the regime had 15 British soldiers kidnapped a few days ago. But it's still all the Americans' fault -- that much is obvious.

He then goes through the various “reasons” why Germans dislike Americans, knowing them so well through all those holidays they spend there. Much of it, of course, applies to other Europeans and the British as well. How many people know exactly what Americans are like (too materialistic and too religious, too obese and too obsessed with keeping fit, too aggressive and too apologetic all at the same time) after a visit or two to Florida or California?

Germany, in Mr Malzahn’s opinion, has special reasons for hating the Americans:

Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course -- from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil. Just look at President Bush, the man who, as some of SPIEGEL ONLINE's readers steadfastly believe, "is worse than Hitler." Now that gives us a chance to kill two birds with one stone. If Bush is the new Hitler, then we Germans have finally unloaded the Führer on to someone else.

The Germans are not alone in this belief. How often do we hear about the incipient fascism and tyranny of the United States? Yet, it is a country that has never come even near to having either a fascist or a communist dictatorship. How many self-righteous Europeans can say the same thing about their own homeland?

The point is, of course, that there will be no consequences of these constant attacks on America and Americans, whereas the situation with Iran and other countries of that ilk is very different. You might find yourself under serious threats, some of which may be carried out.

Your “parents”, on the other hand, are never really going to let you down. Or are they? Will they finally get tired of this adolescent tantrum throwing?

This is what Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters suggests, having made it clear that he does not think America never makes mistakes in its foreign policy. It makes plenty, as do all countries.

Perhaps the Germans would get a better appreciation for security issues if they shouldered more of the burden for them. It's time to close down the relics of the Cold War in Germany, and locate our military forces in nations more amenable to America. Poland would probably have some interest in hosting American bases, and they would have more strategic location in this era than Germany. Let the Germans have their space from the warmongering Americans and pay for their own national security. We do not need to stay where we are not wanted or appreciated.

He is not alone in voicing these opinions. There is, indeed, little logic to keeping American or, for that matter, British troops in Germany. But if the west Europeans are so anxious to be rid of those incredibly dangerous Americans, their wish may well be fulfilled. The unthinkable might happen and the adolescents may well find that their threats to leave home are suddenly taken seriously.

COMMENT THREAD

Different attitudes

Today's Wall Street Journal carries an editorial entitled "Tehran's hostages" with the subtitle "Iran's Act of War against our British Allies". It recalls various other Iranian acts that go against any international agreements and makes it clear that Britain and the United States must react quickly and efficiently. Just imagine, it adds, what would the situation have been like if Iran were a nuclear power - a prospect that may not be all that far away.

What I found interesting was the immediate reaction across a good deal of the American media and the blogosphere (or the parts of it that are genuinely interested in other countries, that is, curiously enough, on the right). Uniformly, there was outrage and support.

Britain, America's close ally, was under attack, they all said. The UK and the US must do something. There was no question of gloating or "told you so" attitudes, though, given the smug superiority some of the British military and politicians speak, they would have been justified.

How different, I could not help thinking, from the sort of posturing we might see in the British media, among the British political commentators and, even, a great stretch of the public, if it had been the other way round.

There would have been an outpouring of gloating mock-sorrow and a plethora of useless advice. Blogs like this one, that take an interest in the world outside (hint: not that many of the so-called political blogs in Britain do) would mostly line up on the side of the United States but we would still get plenty of pompous and (there is no other word for it) gloating comments.

COMMENT THREAD

It ain't over yet

Should I want to become even more depressed about the state of political play in this country than I am, I merely need to look at the coverage of American affairs both in the MSM and on the blogosphere, consisting as it does of half-heartedly ignorant assumptions and rather superior sneering.

The coverage of the "Scooter" Libby trial was all but non-existent on this side of the Pond and, therefore, the verdict - guilty on four counts out of five - which is rightly seen by anyone who has thought about it as a travesty of justice, has elicited remarkably ignorant comments.

(When I tried to remonstrate on Iain Dale's blog, I received a good deal of personal abuse from someone who clearly suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome. I was accused of buying into the Bush propaganda and possibly denying the truth of My Lai, Watergate and assorted other matters. I hadn't even realized there was any Bush propaganda about My Lai.)

Then again, there is little point in this blog duplicating what has been so ably by others. I suggest our readers have a look at the editorial in today's Wall Street Journal for a very cogent analysis and, above all, read Clarice Feldman's piece on American Thinker, which is ice-cold rational in its anger.

COMMENT THREAD

Did the Left lose its way?

Nick Cohen, the left-wing journalist who writes for the Observer, the New Statesman and the Evening Standard, among others, thinks the left has really lost its way by supporting the worst, most repressive and most ferociously right-wing ideology around: Islamism.

Then again, he seems to equate liberalism, in the British sense of the word, with leftishness, which is completely wrong. Liberalism is about freedom; left-wing ideology is about control. Perhaps, they did not really lose their way but have ended up in the most logical position. Here is why I think it is so.

COMMENT THREAD

Arrogance or national interest?

Pamela Meister starts an interesting alphabet on American Thinker with her article, called “A is for Arrogance, B is for Baloney”. I wonder what C might be for? Condescension? Capriciousness?

The starting point of the article is a supremely ridiculous statement by Hillary Clinton, who took time off from bashing Barack Obama to tell the audience in Florida that

When I' m president, I'm going to send a message to the world that America is back - we're not the arrogant power that we 've been acting like for the past six years.

My guess is that people don’t know what arrogant is until and unless Hillary Clinton becomes President. Just remember how arrogant she was when she was merely the First Lady. Pamela Meister reminds everyone of the time she said:

I 'm not going to have some reporter pawing through our papers. We are the president .

I take it, once Hillary is in the Oval Office, if she gets there, poor old Bill will not be allowed to be part of that rather royal “we”. Is this what the American War of Independence was fought for?

What Hillary is talking about is that old chestnut: Bush ignored everyone but America in his foreign policy decisions. Apart from the fact, that this is not true, as anyone who can recall those endless and fruitless discussions in the UN would agree, as would anyone who can add up the number of allies the United States has in Iraq and Afghanistan, what else is he supposed to do? The task of the President of the United States is to look after that country’s and its people’s interests. He may get it wrong; he may make mistakes; he may get the country into a mess through wrong-headed policies (see Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter). But he is not supposed to look to other people first.

Pamela Meister refers to another article by Kyle-Anne Shiver, which recounts a conversation with, sadly, a Brit in New York City. Sadly, because one would like to think that such arrogant silliness and ignorance would be exhibited by other Europeans but we must all be realistic about the level of knowledge and understanding in this country.

I got into a bit of a verbal tussle with a Brit this past summer - in New York, of course. He was demanding to know why W didn't pay more heed to the European interests before starting a bloody war that involved the whole bloody world. At first, I could barely believe my ears, but then I simply reminded him that we, the citizens of the United States, pay our President to worry about us first - and everyone else after that. He bolted back that, well, Clinton had cared about them! I just said that perhaps that was one good reason why his party was out and the ones who put America first - and foremost - are IN.

One would like to know why the Brit in question thought that European opinion should be sought. Why not African? After all, the people of Africa really have a say in their own governance, do they not? So, they should be consulted about American politics. Or why not Chinese? Or any number of other countries, where governments just happen often in a far more bloody fashion than what has been going on in Iraq?

Then again, it was European interests that President Bush was supposed to have paid attention to. One wonders what those European interests are. Keeping bloodthirsty dictators in power? Perhaps.

Pamela Meister’s own rejoinder is good enough as far as it goes:

Another good rejoinder might have been to ask why Europe didn't pay more heed to American interests before starting two terrible wars that involved the much of the world. Neither World War I nor World War II were picnics, and it certainly would have been nice if someone in charge somewhere had asked what America thought beforehand. But most Americans are realistic. They don' t expect France, Germany, or any other country to play "Mother, may I? " with us when they make their foreign policy decisions. Alliances come and go depending on the needs of the day, but the reality is that it has always been every man for himself, and it always will be.

Who on earth are those international interests that the American President is supposed to consult, anyway? The United Nations, a rapacious organizat