It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom

Victor Davis Hanson. ‘Nuff said. Read the whole thing.

No nation has done more to save Muslims — whether in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq. In the last quarter-century we have given billions in aid to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians. We are the most tolerant of Western countries to Muslim and Arab immigrants. In Iraq now, we — not Arab intellectuals, not “moderate” Arab governments, and not the Europeans — are bringing consensual government and billions more in aid to the Arab Middle East.

The problem is not “getting the message out,” but having the intellectual courage to tell the truth and not to be browbeaten by faux intellectuals who talk monotonously of mythical pipelines and Zionist aggression. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom — never.

Nor do we have anything to apologize about to the Europeans. We liberated the continent, sent it billions in aid, protected it from Soviet Communism, supported the EU and German reunification, created NATO in part to keep internal peace, intervened in Kosovo to stop more European genocide, and have well over 100,000 troops there still to protect it sixty years after it nearly destroyed itself. We no longer expect gratitude or even memory of the past, but we do expect maturity and not the patronizing lectures from a Spanish or French foreign minister who should know better — given the respective histories of their countries and our own during the last century.

So, yes, they are our allies. And yes, we must be polite and considerate as we all work together to hunt down terrorists. And yes, we are often undiplomatic when there is no need to be given our stature. But there is a reason for Europeans’ anger and it transcends George Bush — having everything to do with the fear that America is a stubborn, powerful, moral antithesis to their own global socialist utopia. What the Spanish did recently was only an affirmation of what France has done with Saddam for twenty years.