And now, folks, let's continue dealing with the diatribe of virrudh.  Again, virruhd's comments are in italics; mine are in plaintext.  I've also included some outtakes from other sites below.  The quotes from those are in italics.  Check out the thread on Townhall.com Here :

Then along came the European Union. It has, of course, been around for 50 years now, but it was only fairly recently that it has been gaining some real power. And with that was the beginning of the U.S. being just another country on the other side of the ocean. In actuality, that is an exaggeration. They know they need us when push comes to shove, but we have not yet admitted that we need them too or have ever bothered to find out what was going on over there unless it is some Muslim riot that we are thrilled to hear about. But as our dollar continues to weaken and their Euro continues to strengthen that may change too.

This is the same European Union that could only stand by helplessly as the old Yugoslavia tore itself up and engaged in Hitlerian “ethnic cleansing.”  The EU was born helpless.  And it remains so.  NO state (and the EU is attempting in its bumbling way to become a state) can exist without mastery and use of the most lethal force necessary to “ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense.”

As a result of 60 years of American protection against the predations of the Soviet Union and now Islamofascist terrorists, Europeans are in the situation described so well by Robert Kagan in his book "Of Paradise and Power."

Robert Kagan describes the Europeans as living in their (presumed) pacifist paradise (minus the Balkans), while America remains in the Hobbesian world of war.  As long as this remains the case, and I see no indication that the Europeans are facing up to their situation and doing something about it, the EU will remain what it has been: an American protectorate, with as little real world power as that phrase indicates.

Here are a couple of pullquotes from Kagan's book posted on Vinod.com:

...Europeans have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace...In fact, the United States solved the Kantian paradox for the Europeans.   Kant had argued that the only solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the creation of a world government.

... By providing security from outside, the United States rendered it unnecessary for Europe's supranational government to provide it.   Europeans did not need power to achieve peace, and they do not need power to preserve it [due to unseen US power operating outside of Europe].

Those European leaders and intellectuals with a semblance of knowledge and rationality know all of the above.  They know that in Kagan's sense of the term, America provides a kind of world government for Europe.  And they resent the hell out of this situation.  How else do you explain their decades-long, even centuries-long, obsession with America?  Europeans have known for a long time that America matters in the world and to the world…and they don’t.

And now, back to virruhd:  The hostility didn't come (that I noticed) until the beginning of the Iraqi war. It hurts when your allies don't like you. It hurts even more when you start not liking your own country yourself.

Now why do you suppose Europeans would care at all about what we did in Iraq?  With the noble exception of Great Britain, European nations have only sent token forces or stayed out entirely.  Are they upset that we beat the hell out of their beloved Saddam in three weeks?  One would hope not.  Then they'd be upset that we stopped the endless horrors in Abu Graeb, guards forcing horrified mothers to watch as their children starved--that was least of what Evil they perpetrated.  Hardly the same thing as Americans forcing Iraqis to pigpile nude. 

I don’t believe the furious venting of anti-Americanism recently is due to our efforts in Iraq.  I believe it’s an effort to excuse European helplessness by claiming a higher moral ground for their pacifism.  I also don't believe for a minute that anti-Americanism would end if we left Iraq...which would mean leaving it to the tender mercies of Islamofascist terrorists.  I believe anti-Americanism is a sickness. 

Here are a few sites addressing the problem of anti-Americanism.  Check out the sickness for yourself.  Learn the truth of what I say from the horse’s mouth:

Hnn.us

During anti-war demonstrations in Britain left-wing marchers have unashamedly waved banners defending known terrorists, shouted abuse at American tourists and British pro-American supporters and described George Bush in terms usually reserved for serial killers. Banners decrying the attacks of 9/11 were nowhere to be seen. When Daniel Pearl was murdered there was no outcry from the left in Britain. Instead, leftist and liberal commentators concentrated their critical faculties on the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Gauntanamo.

Hooverpress.org

Since September 11, 2001, the attitudes of Europeans toward the United States have grown increasingly more negative. For many in Europe, the terrorist attack on New York City was seen as evidence of how American behavior elicits hostility—and how it would be up to Americans to repent and change their ways. In this revealing look at the deep divide that has emerged, Russell A. Berman explores the various dimensions of contemporary European anti-Americanism. The author shows how, as the process of post–cold war European unification has progressed, anti-Americanism has proven to be a useful ideology for the definition of a new European identity. He examines this emerging identity and shows how it has led Europeans to a position hostile to any "regime change" by the United States—no matter how bad the regime may be—whether in Serbia, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

And then here's a report on one of Europe's downright strange wingnuts, this one in a position of real power:

Spiegel.de 

Her theory? It seems the U.S. had to do something to weaken the influence of the pope, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. Vollmer finds it all very suspicious that after the war, "Poland was made a top occupying power in Iraq, naturally to weaken the pope's hinterland. Or how then, of all times, the campaign against the Catholic Church and the pedophilia was started, which was, of course, totally justified, but at this point in time was definitely a tit-for-tat response." Vollmer found it somehow strange that the US presidents traveled to the Vatican despite the "tough power struggles."

Like a good conspiracy theorist, she doesn't point fingers directly, but lets her comments hang in the air so that others can piece together the message. In essence, with her bizarre ramblings she was saying that the US tried to undercut John Paul II's political influence in Poland by giving his countrymen an important role in occupying Iraq and instigating a pedophile scandal against the church as a sort of smear campaign against the Catholic leader.

Clearly, Europeans have their own issues—the resurgence of anti-Semitism, a deep-seated (well-earned) fear of rising radical Islam, and an equally deep-seated inferiority complex in response to the growing power of its American daughter.  Wishing these problems away by calling for American appeasement of Islamofascism solves nothing.  Instead, it very well may lead to our doom.