Frank Viviano Writes
The Battle for Hearts and Minds
Europe won over by war’s success
Critics of U.S. now brimming with praise
- Lucca, Italy — At a meeting of young, left-of-center
political activists in northern Italy’s “Red Belt,”
one would expect to hear fierce condemnation of Washington’s
war on terrorism.- But in a setting that has long featured unrelenting anti-Americanism,
not a word of criticism was leveled. In fact, the most insistent
theme at the meeting, earlier this month, was a call for more
U.S. intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East.- “Only America is powerful enough to establish the peace,”
said Alessandro Fontana, a member of the Democrats of the Left,
the renamed Italian Communist Party.- His comments underscore a remarkable turnabout on this side
of the Atlantic.- To a degree unmatched in recent memory, the lightning conquest
of the Taliban in Afghanistan has been paralleled by a huge U.S.
propaganda victory in Europe, even in circles where hostility
to U.S. policies abroad has been entrenched for half a century.- Recalling President Bush’s Sept. 12 promise that the U.S.
military would “smoke the terrorists out of their holes”
— a statement that many Europeans ridiculed at the time — the
French daily Le Figaro noted Wednesday that “the actual
outcome in Afghanistan was not very different from that.”- Differences remain, however, and they may become more apparent
as the war on terrorism enters new phases.- Beneath the awestruck surface lies uneasiness over the Bush
administration’s unilateral decisionmaking and emphatic reliance
on lethal weaponry. In a speech last Monday, Britain’s defense
chief, Adm. Michael Boyce, warned against the dangers of letting
the war on terrorism become “a high- tech, 21st century
posse in the new Wild West.”- Europeans also remain hostile to Washington’s plans for a
new missile defense system, and the administration’s go-it-alone
dismissal of proposed international treaties on global warming
and chemical and biological arms.- And perhaps most important, despite the U.S. success against
the Taliban, there is deep opposition in Europe to post-Afghanistan
attacks on Iraq, Somalia or other suspects on the U.S. hit list
of terrorist states.- The concern, according to the German newsweekly Der Spiegel,
is that Washington will pressure its allies to back military
strikes in countries where “the Americans have scores to
settle.” Any such action is likely to provoke a wave of
European popular anger.- But at least for the moment, there is broad approval for
U.S. actions.- Such approval soared with the release Thursday of a videotape
that appears to confirm Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the
Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in New York and suburban Washington.
In many cities, crowds of Christmas shoppers gathered to watch
the footage on outdoor television screens.- “There’s no doubt about it now,” said Parisian
architect Phillipe Mueller, watching the video. “The United
States has been right all along.”- In a poll published Thursday by the newsweekly Le Nouvel
Observateur, 65 percent of the French public described themselves
as pro-American, almost twice the figure registered in a 1996
survey.- Yet as recently as five weeks ago, with the initial phase
of the anti- Taliban offensive apparently stalled, European commentators
were predicting that U.S. forces would be bogged down for years
in a demoralizing struggle against an implacable foe, with horrendous
civilian casualties.- “We have had the same hand-wringing doubts about the
effects of the same kind of bombing campaign” that accompanied
the Kosovo war in 1999, wrote Paddy Ashdown, former leader of
Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party, in the Sunday Observer. “There
were the same wobbles from the same quarters invoking the same
images of Vietnam — to say it would all end in disaster.”- Then came the sudden collapse of the Taliban — followed,
just as suddenly, by an about-face in Europe’s coverage of the
war and commentary on its pursuit.- Part of the change was due to televised scenes of Afghans
celebrating their liberation from a harsh and dictatorial regime,
and part to the discovery that “collateral damage”
was far smaller than claimed by the Taliban.
- “When the bombing of Afghanistan began, reports of civilian
casualties had provoked serious concern in the public,”
noted Madrid’s El Pais. “That served as the principal argument
against (American) intervention.”- By Thursday, El Pais was featuring a heroic profile of Abdul
Ali, an Afghan journalist who served as a forward spotter for
U.S. bombing raids on Kandahar, where local doctors confirm that
fewer civilians than had been thought died in more than a month
of air attacks.- The sheer and unexpectedly rapid success of the war seems
to explain much of the abrupt change in tone. On Nov. 13, for
instance, the left-learning French daily Liberation published
an interview with a veteran of the Russian war in Afghanistan
characterizing U.S. bombing raids as “acts of vengeance”
that would accomplish no purpose.- That very day, the Taliban fled Kabul. Last week, Liberation
was reporting “every (doubt) toppled in mid-November –
vindicating a military strategy that overwhelmed the fire of
its critics.”- The most vociferous of those critics had been in Germany,
led by pacifist members of the Green Party. Today, according
to the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the loudest German protests
against the United States are mounted by small neo-Nazi fringe
groups that identify with the Taliban’s totalitarian philosophy.- By the time Kandahar fell on Dec. 7, the main thrust of European
opinion had shifted to undisguised admiration for American military
efficiency — and soul-searching over Europe’s own paralysis
in the face of earlier challenges in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.- “As a mirror of the American capacity for reaction to
unforeseen crisis, the events of Sept. 11 have provided grounds
for astonishment,” the prestigious Paris daily Le Monde
commented on the day Kandahar fell.- “By comparison, Europe appears to be a giant ensnared
in its own rules and procedures.”- “America is far from perfect,” commented Dominique
Moisi, adjunct director of the French Institute for International
Relations in Paris. “It has blundered through arrogance,
selfishness, cynicism, and a great deal through ignorance.- “”But without America, the history of humanity
in the 20th century would have been infinitely more tragic.”
”
back
to index page