Having read what Former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar had to say in a speech at Hillsdale College last October I can only hope that he is also the future Spanish Prime Minister. Here’s a brief excerpt:
It is often said that Europe always leans towards the soft option because it lacks the military power to do otherwise. The truth is that, at some recent point in our history, Europeans in general have chosen, either consciously or unconsciously, to separate diplomatic from military means, favoring conciliation over pressure and force. We refuse to call things by their proper names; we refuse to accept that there really are people prepared to die in order to kill us; we refuse to recognize our enemies, both at home and abroad.
We are engaged in a battle of civilizations against an emerging, assertively political Islam, all over the world. To make ourselves weaker is the best recipe for disaster. Another recipe for disaster would be to distance Europe from the United States.(h/t American Future )I am reminded of an old post that addressed that very same thing. It was from Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG titled "Europe, Thy Name Is Cowardice". An exerpt from the post:
A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe – your family name is appeasement." It’s a phrase you can’t get out of your head because it’s so terribly true.Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam’s torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush.
Read both as well as the (long) article by Mark Steyn and along the same line, James Lileks post in response.
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