Our "Allies"

In an excellent article, Victor Hanson examines our relationship with our allies. While much has been made of the fact that Europe doesn't like us, Hanson points out that what is even more important is that we no longer like them.

For all the mayhem in the Sunni Triangle, and for all our mishaps at trying to reconstruct a pathological society reeling from 30 years of mass murder, we are beginning now to see the emergence of new civilized beginning in Iraq. Sadly our allies are mostly neutral, if not hostile to this radically new world, mostly out of spite, narrow self-interest, and deductive anger and envy of the United States. In the process, they have done the near impossible: lost the good will of the American people, a development that will have radical repercussions in the years ahead.

Yet Kerry & Co. want us to grovel before these very same "allies", as if that will in any way help make them like us again.

Mr. Kerry thinks he can woo these critics back on board. He cannot; but by trying he surely can win the wage of obsequiousness in addition to the present envy and irrational pique. It is banal and monotonous to keep insisting that Kerryesque charm will restore what Texas braggadocio threw away - and entirely ignorant of the radically changed post-Cold War world.

For now the Europeans are gleeful, assuming that America is in lockstep with Al Gore, Michael Moore, and George Soros. Maybe, maybe not. We will find out in November. But if they are wrong and Mr. Kerry thus loses - then most Americans between New York and Los Angeles will have a long, long memory.