An awful lot of those nice liberal Europeans probably cheered Obama because his father was African
President Barack Obama's trip to Europe was a truly resounding success. Now an infinitely wiser man than when he set out on his journey, he may return to Washington, close the door of the Oval Office, put his head in his hands and declare with real passion: What a bunch of assholes. Of course, he's not the first US president to have such feelings; but he is the first US president since Kennedy to have won the popular acclaim of both the mobs and the media across Europe. He now knows how valueless that acclaim really is.
Admittedly, some of his crowd-pleasing stunts were simply silly. His promise to rid the world of nuclear weapons is as meaningful as Tanzania's undertaking to open a safari park on Mercury. Nonetheless, this vacuous rhetoric went down well with the idiots who think that the world would be such a nicer place if we all loved one another, and took an oath to live in peace. Of course, they don't listen to the little details, such as his proposals that any country's nuclear-free status would involve inspections, and a refusal to allow them would mean sanctions and punishment. Ah yes. That one. Sometimes known as I-R-A-Q, but otherwise known as: Isn't this where we came in?
Actually, an awful lot of those nice, liberal Europeans probably cheered Obama simply because his father was an African, and proving (a) they're not racist, and (b) that he must think just the same as they do about peace, love, and disarmament, and aid to the third world, and the Dalai Lama and so on. One day they'll wake up to the reality that he is the president of the United States of America, and the commander in chief of the greatest force for freedom in the world, the US military.
The interests he serves are those of his country, and his armed forces, and they are not about showering love upon our enemies. And I mean 'our' enemies. The enemies of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan are ours also. They are the foes of all the countries in Europe which President Obama was not-so-discreetly petitioning to stump up more men in the war against Taliban.
But how the empty-headed cheering just turned into a sickly rictus when all those countries which lived under US protection for half-a-century were told that it was time to return the favour. So he now knows that there will be no serious contribution from the European peoples that the US made free between 1944 to 1989, and the UN-authorised war in Afghanistan will continue pretty much with the same Anglophone countries predominating as before: the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The United States have never produced a finer generation of Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors than those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan today. For the most part, they are volunteers who have freely joined the armed forces of their country at a time of war, knowing full well they could be killed or maimed in the line of duty. Their patriotism, their selflessness, their sense of honour -- these are all beyond any description I am capable of. Their willingness to risk life and limb in their country's service makes Europe's artful and devious refusal to take a substantive place in the line of battle all the more shameful.
To resort to the cliche, which for once has meaning: this is not a zero-sum game. The outcome of an allied defeat in Afghanistan would be global in its magnitude, and would rapidly make President Obama's call for a nuclear-free world more risible than it already is. Because next to go (if it has not already fallen by then) will be Pakistan, which is, of course, a nuclear power. And one thing that India will never do is to abandon its nuclear weapons while the barking caliphate next door has its missiles pointing at New Delhi and Bombay.
And nor will Israel abandon its nuclear weapon, the device of last resort in its endless quest for survival. That, of course, is what differentiates rational states such as the US, the USSR and India from irrational states like Iran: for such countries, the nuclear option is the final one. For Iran, it is the first one, probably against Israel, in a glorious and demented jihad to trigger an Islamic insurrection around the world.
I have no idea what calamity is needed to wake up Europe from the smug slumber which allows it to keep the best part of a million men under arms at home, while the populations of Waziristan and Pakistan's Tribal Areas are mobilised for war. Nor, I'm sure, does President Obama, but I suspect his vision is a little clearer now. So, his allies remain not merely few in number, but of long duration. I just wish we could say Ireland is one of them. But while we have this demeaning and meaningless devotion to an utterly unprincipled 'neutrality' (fatuously elevated to a constitutional status last weekend by Enda Kenny) we cannot say we have any real friends, merely convenient acquaintances.
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