Dear Ulrike,

While nothing can be done, I am afraid, to stave off the spread of conspiracy theories, it is so sad that hardly anything can be done to stop politicians from fomenting trouble in so many parts of the world. (70% of Poles are against Poland's presence in Iraq?  Sure enough, the government sends our troops there.)  As others have already said, the reason we so often talk about anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism these days is that millions of people hate what the US and Israeli governments, not nations, are doing and as a result that feeling extends to individuals.  That is a very counter-productive and irresponsible process, but to eradicate fanaticism one would need to learn how to pour oil on rather than fan the flames.  Too many are unable to do that even in simple everyday situations to hope for any genetic mutation in humans any time soon.

Thank you very much for sharing that interesting report.

Jacek

As I said elsewhere, on the eve of his departure for Brussels, Polish prime minister, conveniently an ex-communist, was struck by the Almighty as his helicopter crashed.  This time, said the Almighty, I will let you walk away.  Mr Miller vows to attend the summit in Brussels tomorrow.  We will see how he fares with his beacon of Christianity.

Jacek

http://www.courrierinternational.com/mag/ERsoc.htm

...une référence à l’histoire des convictions est-elle possible, qui ne soit pas un prolongement des querelles indécentes du passé ?

Il nous semble que le concept de “désaccord fondateur” avancé par [le philosophe français] Olivier Abel* est prometteur à ce propos. Un désaccord est fondateur lorsqu’il est reconnu comme valeur par un peuple. Une telle reconnaissance permet une dynamique créative de lien social équitable. La dévalorisation du désaccord, au contraire, entraîne une dérive. C’est pourquoi le désaccord peut être reconnu comme fondement nécessaire. Ici, dans le préambule de la Constitution européenne, le désaccord porterait sur le principe de transcendance. L’inscription d’un principe de transcendance est-elle nécessaire pour fonder la politique européenne ? La question est indécidable. Inscrire ce point sous le titre de désaccord fondateur dessine un espace de pluralisme s’accordant avec la recherche, incontournable, de normes communes, par le chemin du consensus par confrontation.

La reconnaissance du désaccord comme coeur de la culture européenne dessine un espace où l’Etat se reçoit d’une confrontation permanente entre les diverses “visions du monde” qui, simultanément, renoncent à toute prétention hégémonique du vrai et du juste. Elles ne renoncent cependant pas à une tension vers le vrai et le juste. L’espace ainsi dessiné correspond à la véritable laïcité de l’Etat. Il est le résultat d’une pression réciproque exercée par la pluralité des convictions religieuses ou sécularisées. Ce qui fait la solidité d’une voûte, c’est l’équilibre des pressions et non leur neutralisation. Nous sommes loin du pluralisme mou qui guette nos démocraties et ne leur donne pas les moyens de traverser humainement les défis du moment.

Le concept de désaccord fondateur permet d’écarter toute organisation politique qui se réclame d’un fondement philosophique ou théologique unilatéral. La non-reconnaissance du principe de désaccord fondateur par un Etat pour son organisation politique suffit à disqualifier sa requête d’appartenance à l’Europe. Honorer le désaccord fondateur revient à construire une digue qui préserve l’espace européen contre toute émergence de régimes intégristes ou totalitaires. Il permet d’approfondir la conception laïque et pluraliste de l’Etat, sans confisquer la citoyenneté à quiconque.

Sur la question des fondements des valeurs et du droit, les citoyens européens sont depuis des siècles en désaccord. L’inscription de ce désaccord dans le préambule de la Constitution revient à honorer la vérité d’une dynamique historique. Elle permet aussi d’asseoir la légitimité du pluralisme au sujet de cette question. Nul Européen n’est plus habilité à réclamer l’hégémonie de sa conception pour l’organisation politique de l’Etat. Souvent, poser la question des références fait craindre qu’on ouvre la boîte de Pandore. Le concept de désaccord fondateur évite ce risque. Il interdit toute prise de pouvoir violente d’une lecture hégémonique des racines culturelles de l’histoire européenne. ...

Japan remains a touchy issue in China because of WW II and the Nanjing massacres. Then there were the biowarfare experiments up north (the experts, by the way, never faced war crimes charges -- they took up job offers in the USA or offers of amnesty against full disclosure and consultancy services).

That said, Internet, increasing PR awareness among Palestinians and, above all, Europe's emancipation from US, um, patronage have combined to sway public opinion considerably in the past decade. Already apparent in information-savvy Sweden in the late 1960s, the swing of public opinion is clearly moving towards support of the Palestinian side.

In fact, even the British monarchy was pro-Nazi during World War II: Germany was perceived in those circles, as among US and European industrialists, as the best chance of crushing Communism. Once Germany had fumbled its shot at Moscow, Churchill shifted into fourth gear and strove to play off a rising Germany against a rising USSR with a view to letting them bleed each other to death. He underestimated the human resources, stamina and support available to Stalin, who played the "Mother Russia" card to the hilt, however.

George Bush Sr tried to cut Israel down to size -- it was costing the US some USD 15 billion a year in 1991 (not the official 3 or 4!). He failed.

Israel's plight is desperate: no nation can survive indefinitely against the enmity of all its neighbours -- even with the solid backing of the world's only superpower. Even the ultraconservative mystics of Judaism oppose Zionism. The Sufi and other mystics also take a dim view of Zionism: it is only a matter of time -- a country with a mere pair of centuries of history can have no inkling of the power of having 30 centuries of history in your people's blood. That superpower will either go down with Israel or it will drop Israel like a wet tampax before it's too late.

What is characteristic of all the empires' fall is that no one imagines it is possible. 

J.

Patrick,

Jews, I imagine, could object by saying that when the Holocaust happened, there was no modern state of Israel yet (although, of course, there was Palestine and Zionism).  It is, to a large extent, about memory.

I think that the survey you have reported on may be part of broader attempts we are witnessing to demonstrate that Germany was also a victim in WWII.  This is believed by one-third of Germans, but it is debatable.

If you don't know what it is, you can be sure it's all politics:

Germans as Victims
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A23, The Washington Post

"It was also hard not to notice how much the chatter about books in Germany reveals nowadays about the mood in Germany. As in the United States, many of the books that have recently found their way to the top of German bestseller lists concern Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike those in the United States, many of them also argue that the Bush administration was responsible for Sept. 11. One book, by a former German government minister, argues that the planes that hit the World Trade Center may have been secretly steered from the ground. Another — translated from the French and titled "The Appalling Lie" — says that the Pentagon was never hit by a plane at all but was instead deliberately blown up with a bomb. Germany's establishment press has studiously debunked these theories, to little avail: Recently, an opinion poll showed that one in five Germans believe them.

But if German bestseller lists reveal a German reassessment of the United States, they have also in recent years revealed an even more vigorous German reassessment of Germany. Not one but two books have become popular through their descriptions of the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945, which resulted in fires that caused tens of thousands of deaths. One of the authors used the word "crematoria" to describe the burning buildings, described the Allied bomber pilots as the equivalents of Nazi police units that murdered Jews and concluded by wondering whether Winston Churchill, who ordered the bombings, ought to have been condemned as a war criminal.

These books have also been effective: According to another opinion poll, more than a third of the Germans now think of themselves as "victims" of the Second World War — just like the Jews. Nor has this new interpretation of history remained limited to books. Lately momentum has gathered behind a movement to build a new museum in Berlin dedicated to Germans expelled from their homes at the end of the war — just like the Holocaust museum. It's not wrong for Germans to remember their relatives who suffered, but the tone of the campaigners is disturbing, because they seem, at times, almost to forget why the war started in the first place. Their leader, for example, is the daughter of a Wehrmacht officer, and was born in occupied Poland. Tragically, she was expelled from her childhood home when German troops were defeated — the adverb "tragically" representing a certain point of view here, not an objective observation."

Jacek

From http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20031101faessay82607-p10/dominique-moisi/reinventing-the-west.html

"Europe is not doomed to be a continent of betrayal and antisemitism, a view too often trumpeted in popular American magazines such as Vanity Fair. Antisemitic acts in modern Europe are perpetuated by individuals, not states, and have nothing to do with Europe's past. There is an equally dangerous tendency, on both sides of the Atlantic, to believe that in today's Europe, Jews are the primary target of discrimination and, in America, an insidious source of influence. This dichotomy must be resisted, as neither assertion is true. Muslims are far more likely to suffer prejudice and discrimination in Europe, and Jewish power in America has always been greatly exaggerated."

Dominique Moisi is Senior Adviser to the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales. A longer version of this essay will appear as a report of the Trilateral Commission.

Otherwise, the author advocates a new doctrine of no European-American mutual interference:

"The result might amount to something like the acceptance of two Monroe Doctrines, with the transatlantic partners each holding sway in certain areas, and on certain issues, that reflect their de facto spheres of interest. Europeans would concentrate on Europe, with a special emphasis on the Balkans and the Mediterranean, and the United States would have priority in the Americas and in Asia. Both Wests would support moderate leaders and promote the rule of law in their respective spheres of influence. They would collaborate in the Middle East, attempting to close the emotional gap between them over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. And the two sides would also come together over a new doctrine of enlightened interventionism in Africa."

The twin-Monroe doctrine would be an improvement but US reticence to allow Europe to create an independent military command suggests they intend to continue running the show in Europe, e.g. there is a world of difference between "Secret" and "NATO Secret", "Top Secret" and "NATO Top Secret" with the unqualified being reserved for US eyes only and French Air Force pilots and ATC use English to simplify monitoring as much as coordination. Most Frenchmen ignore this and the French Defence Ministry isn't shouting it out loud.

Alas, as Mediterranean neighbours of the Muslim world, Europe's buns are on the line if relations continue to sour -- just as Germany would have become the first instant lunar landscape if Cold War push had come to Hot War shove in the latter half of the last century. And graduated response doctrine might have contained it to just that land too.

Anyhow: a belated Happy Xmas to you & fam, Jacek, and think of me the next time you dig your teeth into a fine piece of kielbasa.