It was my first trip to an Arab country (though I've spent a lot of time in Muslim countries) and my first time in Africa. But it turned out that as an American, I had more to fear from other tourists: the place is overrun with Frenchmen.
Apart from retarding my progress in Dutch--after speaking French for a week, I seem unable to recall the Dutch words for anything--the cheese eaters didn't do me much harm. Also, my 3-year-old son got a ride on a camel when the camel driver found out I was American and asked me what I thought of Bush. I responded honestly, leading to my son's reward.
Now I'm back among the Coalition of the Willing, but still surrounded by a population that does not hold Dubya in particularly high regard. Frederick mentioned Bush's current can't-we-all-get-along tour in Europe and media speculation over how successfully he can mend fences. I think there's a certain extent to which future cooperation is inevitable: we need each other. And, in fact, even while we were going through our Freedom Fries foolishness and the French were looking down their arrogant noses at the illiterate American barbarians, we continued to cooperate on a wide range of matters.
But to the extent the question is "putting Iraq behind us," I'm skeptical. The problem is that everyone believes he/she was right about the war. Given the failure to find WMD or even active programs to pursue them, the complete lack of evidence of a connection between Saddam and jihadi terrorists, and the massive clusterfuck that is the occupation, it's easy to see why Europeans who opposed the war in 2002 and 2003 think they've been vindicated. It's less easy to see why Bush thinks he's been vindicated, but considering his congenital inability to admit to mistakes and his awe-inspiring capacity to inhabit an alternative reality, I take at face value his continuing assertions that he thinks he did the right thing.
When Bush says he wants to put disagreements behind us, he means that he's willing to cut the Europeans a break even though they were wrong about Iraq and stabbed him in the back. He seems to think the Europeans should be grateful for his generosity.
This is not a message that goes down well over here. Part of America's being bigger and stronger than everyone else is that the impotent European masses want at least to be able to enjoy their I-told-you-so moment, since they can't stop us from f**king things up in the first place. They think Bush should be embarrassed and essentially be asking them for their generous forgiveness. As long as he acts as if it's the Old Europeans who should be embarrassed, I don't see a lot of rapprochement going on. And since the American voters returned Bush to power even after it became obvious that Iraq was a disaster, the Bush-is-a-bastard-but-I-like-Americans option is less viable.
Time will heal this wound. Bush's trip won't. But life will go on, and we will continue to be allies, trading partners, and generally friends with the Europeans. It's just that the friendship is a bit more distant and cool at the moment.
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