hello. i respect the experiment of European union. as an economic force, the combination is competitive. as a warring power, the notion seems obsolete. France alone is a nation to be globally reconciled with. Germany, England, whom can tell me the individual list? that their humanitarian foreign policies do not align with the United States of America may be wise. believing they will alter the course of American politics away from global rule with words alone is laughable. our politicians are only going to respond to acts of violence; those that remain. they are currently proceeding without the consent of the American people. we will get to the root of our own problem. stay your course. as for the Islamic influence in the Renaissance, there may be a degree of positive influence, and that is always welcome; but my favorites were Italian Catholics of art, some Austrians, and some Russian Orthodox. Was Mozart post Renaissance?

It may be that in their ‘old-age’ the Europeans’ve had enough of the swashbuckling imperialism of their heyday, and are finally ready for a little peace-and-quiet, as one poster here suggested.  So their unease could be due in-part to a realization that their allamerican juvenile delinquent offspring still rampaging around in the remnants of the ‘ancien regime’ can all too easily pull down (on everybody’s swelled-heads) the entire colossus known as “Western Civilization.” 

William Pfaff is very likely familiar with Oswald Spengler’s ‘Decline of the West,’ and so should also have at-least an inkling of Spengler’s central contention that this particular version of “civilization” has as its defining CONceit the hubristic notion that “The West” is not only the one true heir of all its predecessors, and the only one fit to survive among its contemporaries, it is destined by its innate perfection to expand forever into infinity.  It seems this self-satisfying belief has reached its full and inevitable flowering in the cult of allamericanexceptionalism….which threatens here in these latter days to bring the “global” criminal enterprise itself to sudden and ignominious ruin.

Like all such delusionally grandiose schemes, ‘Western Civ’ carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.  Having been hatched long ago, “in a galaxy far away,” it is proving woefully inadequate to the requirements our Mother Earth has of anything or any People looking to be a part of Her Natural Living Arrangement.

Its would-be perpetrators have insisted, however, it would be their way or no-way, and proceeded to manufacture an entire subspecies of semi-conscious and congenitally ignorant creatures (”....in {their} own image and likeness,” so the story goes) to enforce their designs on the rest of us here.  So as the the damned thing collapses around its own rotten core, it is mainly our tame Sisters and Brothers who are getting trapped in the wreckage even as they were the primary products/prisoners/propagators of its deadly devices.

Our Mother Earth does have a viable alternative for Her co-opted Human Children….The Tiyoshpaye Way.  Their tormentors, though, may have a lot harder time getting back into the Song ‘n’ Dance of Life Herownself.

HokaHey!

Regarding problems of immigration/emigration etc., it would be surprising indeed if there were no backlash from either side when people of different cultures try to live together after previous histories of fear, exploitation, privilege, persecution and resentment. In fact, it can be expected wherever one people exploit another—which is what empire is all for.  That’s partly what Chalmers Johnson was taking about in “Sorrows of Empire” which hit so many nailsl on the head. Johnson kindly calls it “a failure of the imagination to grasp the real effect on real people of such assaults ....”
  It cannot be remedied in a hurry, yet the needs of emigrating people are undeniably in a hurry as they will die if their condition does not improve rapidly, for they have risked everything to come. If they are refused after such struggles, imagine their disappointment.
  The answer is not more emigration, but to level the “playing field” (so-called—I love the irony!”)
so emigrants don’t have to move in the first place.  But try to get corporatioins interested in that!  No, no!  It would lower the profit margins. Better to lower the people!
  When will they ever learn?

condesending is the word that comes to mind
Johnnes.  (not gerard).  Just the article

More on “unnecessary wars”. I suggest that the recent wars were necessary in the eyes of US warlords. Actually they are ‘brilliant’
successes.
Using the label “unnecessary” also ?unwittingly and tacitly dichotomizes US wars into necessary and not necessary.

In add’n, it strongly suggests that there is a no apodictic principle which bans all wars of agression.
Apodicticly [of necessary truth]no land has the right to attack any other land under no known circumstance.

If a leadership has committed crimes against own or other people, only those who commit crime do time.
Going after them solely obviates collective punishment and, not mention, war[s].

But, obviously, US wanted the war badly and doing the sane way wld have obviated the invasion.
But when US wants land, all ‘aliens’ are now indians!

It had been a + that most americans evaluated even the most obvious lies as true.
But even, if all of the 98% were against invasion of iraq, US warlords wld have still, i guess, waged the war.
For one thing, if there wld be 98% support for any issue, that US masters wld not approve of, u’d never find out anyway!

WH-congress-judiciary-msm-educators-actors-cia-generals-fbi’s near 100% for war wld have sufficed.
What the low life thinks or says never ever mattered anyway! tnx

I don’t believe your theory wrong at all…
Maybe a little complicated.

This is a risky (because undocumented) assumption, but I’ll try it:  I think one reason why Europe finds it difficult to speak truth to American military and financial power (misguided as it is) is an unspoken allegiance to—roughly speaking—a kind of “white supremacy” more or less, and to what is very loosely called “western civilization” as opposed to other civilizations. 

Especially recently, European countries have been having trouble coping with immigration of Middle Eastern and African labor which seems to bolster white fears of loss.  Remember also the fact that the European “Empires” of the past—though they may be dead—carry memories of the attitudes of racial superiority their former power urged them to believe.

I may be wrong.  I hope I am. But I suspect that this is one source of Europe’s inability to see the United States as the heartless imperialistic country it became under the Neo-Cons.