Watson A. Nayme wrote:

> Get_bush_INSTEAD@hotmail.com (Get bush INSTEAD) wrote in message
>news:<529be80b.0311121110.165c5a24@posting.google.com>...
>  
>
>>> The New York Times
>>>
>>>
>>>November 16, 2003
>>>Bush Visit Spurs Protests Against U.S. in Europe
>>>By ALAN COWELL
>>>
>>>LONDON, Nov. 15 -- It is the perception in many parts of the world that the Bush
administration was redefined on Sept. 11, 2001, by its response to global terrorism, even as
a wave of global sympathy engulfed the United States after the attacks.
>>>
>>>But a more recent moment -- in March 2003 -- has become the real benchmark for many
European critics, who contend that the first American airstrikes on Baghdad consumed any residual
benevolence toward President Bush after he overrode European objections to the war in Iraq.
>>>
>>>Mr. Bush is preparing to fly to London for a three-day visit, starting Tuesday night,
that has stirred deep and hostile passions here and plans for anti-Bush street protests. Some
of that anger has turned to schadenfreude as American forces seem ever more bogged down in
a morass that is compared, if only by association, with Vietnam.
>>>
>>>"In a way I even like it that he is now in such big trouble in Iraq," said Torsten
Lüdge, a 21-year-old physics freshman at Berlin's Technical University, referring to President
Bush. "It's a lesson he had to learn. Everybody told him before that he wouldn't succeed in
Iraq and he wouldn't listen. Now Bush has to learn it the hard way."
>>>
>>>Indeed, some European analysts believe, European misgivings about the Iraq campaign
are being vindicated by the continued bloodshed in Iraq and that may produce a different approach
from the United States -- if only because a chastened Washington, in the view of some Europeans,
has been proved wrong.
>>>
>>>"Even the most ideological of figures in the Bush administration are beginning to
realize that no power is unlimited," Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute
of International Relations, a private policy group, wrote in an article in Le Monde. "Better
late than never."
>>>
>>>Other French analysts agreed with Phillipe Gélie, who wrote in Le Figaro, "French
ideas are coming back into favor in the United States."
>>>
>>>For all that, President Bush remains a lightning rod for scorn and caricature as
a bumbling provincial, an insensitive cowboy and worse: in Britain, Steve Bell, a cartoonist
for The Guardian, routinely depicts President Bush with simian hands and feet, half man and
half ape. "Bush Off," a play on the phrase "push off," a British expression for "shove off,"
proclaimed a front-page headline in The Mirror.
>>>
>>>"As we would say in Rome," said an Italian jeweler, Sandro Mosciatti, 54, "Bush
junior is a `bullo di periferia,' " a thug from out in the sticks.
>>>
>>>It is a matter of debate here whether Europeans have become more anti-American or
are venting deep frustrations with President Bush himself.
>>>
>>>Timothy Garton-Ash, a scholar of European affairs at Oxford University, said it
was clear that anti-Washington sentiment spreads right across the divide between what Secretary
of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld once characterized as an anti-American, antiwar "old Europe,"
led by France and Germany, and a new Europe, led by Britain and other nations that supported
the war, including Spain and Italy.
>>>
>>>"What scares people is Bush's unilateralism," said Javier Noya, a political analyst
in Madrid.
>>>
>>>Indeed, one recent opinion survey of 7,500 Europeans, conducted on behalf of the
European Commission in Brussels, ranked the American leader No. 2, along with Kim Jong Il of
North Korea, as a threat to world peace. (Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel ranked No.
1.)
>>>
>>>Even in Britain -- by far Washington's staunchest ally in the Iraq war -- thousands
of people say they will take to the streets to protest President Bush's state visit here. Mr.
Bush and his wife, Laura, will stay at Buckingham Palace as guests of Queen Elizabeth II.
>>>
>>>Partly, hostility by Britons -- unlike that of some other Europeans -- is colored
with a profound resentment that, having sent troops to fight and die in Iraq and having provided
unfailing political cover and support, Prime Minister Tony Blair seems to reap so few American
rewards for tying his political fortunes to an unpopular alliance with Mr. Bush.
>>>
>>>"It is all too clear what Britain has done to advance U.S. foreign policy," said
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned in protest over the Iraq war. "It is
hard to spot what President Bush has done in return to assist British interests."
>>>
>>>In an effort to soften the harsh and simplistic contours of his image here, Mr.
Bush embarked on an unusual publicity campaign, giving interviews in Washington to two British
newspapers and a news agency. He also plans to appear on Sir David Frost's television talk
show.
>>>
>>>"The president is entitled to a fairer hearing than he has received and to be treated
as a politician on his merits rather than be caricatured as a cartoon figure," said an editorial
in The Times of London, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
>>>
>>>The editorial appeared, though, opposite a cartoon showing a confused-looking Mr.
Bush in camouflage military gear pondering how the letter X in the phrase "Exit Strategy from
Iraq" would look as the X on a ballot for the presidential elections in 2004.
>>>
>>>Mr. Bush will find it hard to shake the perception among European critics that he
is anything more than a tool of oil interests and a coterie of close, neoconservative advisers
and an implacable opponent of many cherished European ideas on the environment, the Middle
East and other issues. His frequent allusions to his own Christian faith may not have won friends,
either.
>>>
>>>"He thinks the same way as Philip II did in the 16th century: as long as we believe
in God we're going to win," said Mayte Embuena, a 43-year-old tour guide in Madrid. "He doesn't
know anything about history, economics or sociology; he's governing thanks to his faith, his
mother's advice and the help of four friends."
>>>
>>>Mr. Bush's visit was planned long before the war in Iraq at a time when British
sentiments toward Washington were molded by sympathy after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then,
attitudes have changed. In particular, the arguments offered by both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair
to justify the war -- that Iraq had chemical, biological and potential nuclear weapons, that
there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that a smooth victory was likely -- have not
been borne out for many Europeans.
>>>
>>>"If we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, if the transition was going
well, what would be the atmosphere around this visit?" Mr. Garton-Ash said. "If things had
gone well, if Blair and Bush had been proved right, you wouldn't have had anything like the
kind of resistance that you have now."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>