New Europe Stands With the USA...

January 30, 2003

... though I have a hard time thinking of Spain and Portugal as "New." This open letter from Jose Mar�a Aznar, Jose-Manuel Dur�o Barroso, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, Peter Medgyessy, Leszek Miller and Anders Fogh Rasmussen credits the USA with helping to set Europe "free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and communism." The signatories, 3.5 of whom hail from nations with fascist histories, do not mention "fascism," which was also a form of tyranny and arguably encompasses Nazism. You may recall a similar ellipsis in President Bush's September 2001 speech, in which the phrase "path of Fascism and Nazism and imperial Communism" was changed—out of concern for offending the Russians—to "path of Fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism." Mentioning communism does not present the same problem here, since Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia all had that misfortune imposed on them by outsiders.

Comments

Josh|1.30.03 @ 1:14AM|#

Maybe they didn't want to give the false impression that Italy conquered anyone?

|1.30.03 @ 2:40AM|#

New European countries here will be the last to institute shariah law -- unlike old (overly tolerant) Europe: France and Germany.

|1.30.03 @ 3:28AM|#

Well, it starts off really, really badly:
"The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America."

If Europe had all those ideas in the 16 and 17 hundreds, I seriously doubt this country would have gotten off the ground population wise.

|1.30.03 @ 6:49AM|#

Seems like more of the solemn foolery that nations have been using to massage each other since Daladier's first term.
Funny how Blair's police state is all of a sudden supposed to be a freewheeling democracy (at least that's what Viscount Hogshead told the Royal High Lord Chamberlain to tell Her Majesty after the Royal Foxhunt Club adjourned)and consider human rights somehow more important than police surveillance.
Good job Mosely never polled a majority; there might have been infringements on British liberty.