"RedRain" <nospam@ever.com> wrote in message
news:3FB7BE1E.4010102@ever.com...
> 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 Pres
ident 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."
> >>>

We don't care about stinking lefty limp wristed Europeans.