As if We Needed It

Here's yet another reminder. This time it's Newsweek editor Michael Hirsh in Washington Monthly, in a book review, reminding us that Europeans, in their attitude toward American power, behave like spoiled children. He at least does them the honor to say they behave like spoiled children in a Tolstoy novel, which gives some literary flair to the petulance.

Consider the French, our most persistent critics. Seeking to curb the excesses of the self-righteous, God-obsessed Bush, French officials regularly invoke U.N. resolutions and international law like holy writ. Rarely do they acknowledge that it was another self-righteous, God-obsessed American president, Woodrow Wilson, who forced the proto-United Nations, the League of Nations, on them nearly a century ago; and two other equally self-assured presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who made the next-generation iteration of the failed League work. There are some exceptions in Europe today, like the small band of “anti-anti-Americans” who tentatively defend Bush. But on the whole the Europeans, having known three generations now without war—and earnestly desiring to become “postmodern states” that never again wage war—tend to forget that it is principally the U.S. defense umbrella that has made this dream possible.

And so forth. American observers -- or crafty Europeans writing for American publications -- are getting better and better at writing this article. But is anyone publishing, or saying, these things in Europe, in French or German or Italian or Spanish?