Europe At A Crossroads

In 2001, George W. Bush became President of the United States. He was scorned as a dumb, rich-kid cowboy who didn't know foreign policy from Adam. After 9/11, Bush went to work fighting the enemies of the United States expressing the battle in very "modernist" terms like "good and evil." The U.S. took out the Taliban and then prepared to move into Iraq to take out Saddam. This was too much for the Left and the elites of Europe. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder led the fight to try and stop the United States and Britain from invading Iraq and at the very least would make it known to the world that they would have no part of such an endeavor, France going so far as to say that even if Saddam had WMD's up the wazzu, military action would never be an option.

Time passed, Saddam was captured, elections were held. The cleanup and preparation of the Iraqis to run the story on their own has been molded into a "disastrous civil war" by John Murtha and the MSM AS, while attention begins to move to the madmen in Iran.

Meanwhile, France went through a period of riots by Muslim immigrants in the fall over a death that wasn't in reality the fault of French police. The government hemmed and hawed for a while, Jacques Chirac not even appearing until days into the violence. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy took grief for his tough talk about the rioters, but as things progressed the ultra-right-winged politician Jean Marie Le Pen was starting to receive an audience to his anti-immigration rhetoric. Le Pen shocked the world by coming in second in the Presidential race in 2002, and many wondered if he was right all along.

Now, we come to present-day and Muslims all over the world are rioting over the fact that a Danish newspaper ran cartoon pictures of Mohammad that were less-than respectful caricatures. Are Europeans prepared to wake up to what's going on around them? Have we finally reached the point where they're prepared to see the dire need for peace, civility and democracy in the Middle East?