EDITORIAL

 My European Vacation

by: Randy Schapery

Having just completed a two week visit to Germany and Poland, I thought it might be a good idea to report back on some things I learned while abroad. The first thing I noticed when getting off the plane in Germany was how skinny people were. No worries though – given the number of McDonalds I encountered, the European waistline should be catching up with ours in no time. Another tidbit I picked up was that when President Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), the jubilant response from the crowd might have been partly due to its alternate interpretation. It turns out that a “Berliner” is also the name for a jelly-filled donut. (Let’s hope that our presidents never have to make similar speeches in a divided Hamburg or Frankfurt!

On a more serious note, I also noticed a certain change in my own feeling of well-being. What I mean by that is, after only a day or two on the ground in Germany, I started feeling like a dark cloud had been lifted. (The dark cloud being a certain feeling of angst or paranoia due to the constant drum-beat of the “War Against Terrorism” that we are subjected to by the American media on a daily basis.) It’s not that Europe is somehow immune to terrorism, but while I was there, I just didn’t feel as threatened by it. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that I felt a certain sense of freedom and safety that I no longer feel at home in Texas. This is rather astonishing, given that we pride ourselves on being the land of the free and the home of the brave. Nevertheless, the feeling was very real (to me anyway). And after spending some time devoid of the dark cloud, I began to understand why most of our European brethren have not felt the need to join us in our war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At home in America, we have been living with a siege mentality ever since 9/11. We expect that any minute, some crazy terrorist will attack another sky-scraper or even worse – maybe an entire city. So it wasn’t too difficult for many Americans to make the logical jump from seeing Saddam as not  just another tyrant, but a tyrant who might actually be ready to do us real harm (here at home). This logical jump never happened in the minds of most Europeans however. If they had been attacked on 9/11 as we were, they might see things differently. But without seeing any hard evidence to back up our claims regarding WMD’s, etc, they simply didn’t want to get involved in an expensive war against a dictator that in their own minds was no real threat (to them anyway).

Something else I learned was that the war in Iraq has caused us to lose the support of many long-time fans of America - people who for most of their lives had viewed America as the defender of freedom throughout the world. Even though we might see invading Iraq as defending freedom and putting an end to a brutal regime, this is not the view held by most people outside our own borders. (Including most people in Poland - although their government is now sending troops to Iraq.) In their minds, we have become a nation bent on forcing the rest of the world to see things our way, or else. As a result, we have sacrificed a lot of good will among our friends. Given that Saddam’s regime was one of the most brutal the world has ever known, it’s surprising that the Bush administration has been so unsuccessful in winning international support for the cause. Perhaps this is as much a testament to this administration’s lack of diplomatic prowess as it is to the validity of the war itself.

In any case, what I came away with from my journey abroad was a feeling that:

• Our preoccupation with the war on terrorism (to the exclusion of everything else) is unhealthy. It is making us too inwardly focused and is creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust, both at home and abroad.
• If we are going to win the war on terrorism, we need the support of our friends around the world. We can’t afford to alienate them by appearing insensitive to their points of view.

So as we move forward in our struggle to turn Iraq around and win the war on terrorism, let’s try to keep things in perspective. Our greatest assets are freedom and democracy. We must be careful not to allow fear and paranoia to turn America into a police state or an island unto ourselves. Secondly, we are going to need as much help as we can get from our friends around the world, so we must do a significantly better job on the diplomatic front. At the end of the day, the world will not be a safer place for Americans unless we can find a way to generate more good will toward ourselves and our policies. Maybe Bush making a trip to Hamburg and declaring “Ich bin ein Hamburger” isn’t such a bad idea after all. If nothing else, it might get us all laughing again!