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Petra Marquardt-Bigman is a German/Israel citizen with a Ph.D. in contemporary history with a focus on European public opinion relating to the Middle East, Islamic Terrorism, the US and Israel.
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By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
September 7, 2006
For a few days after September 11, much of Europe wholeheartedly endorsed the resounding declaration of solidarity that the French paper Le Monde carried on September 12: "We are all Americans". Five years later, is seems safe to say that most Europeans would rather not be reminded of their spontaneous identification with the wounded superpower.
Criticizing America, its "War on Terror", its Middle East policy, and even "its" globalization, has become one of the favorite pastimes of European media, not to mention the blogsphere. Indeed, even on September 12, Le Monde's proclamation of solidarity with the US came already toned down with a hefty dose of European skepticism: Had America, the sole superpower, not become an arrogant actor in global politics, drawing nothing but (deserved?) hate in certain parts of the globe? Was bin Laden, who had once been trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, not just a creation of cynical American Cold War policies? And what about the Gulf War, or the use of American F-16s by the Israeli army against the Palestinians?
Europe didn't waste much time after September 11 to embark on a determined quest to understand why America would be considered the "Great Satan" in much of the Muslim world, and how America's support for the "Little Satan" Israel was making things just so much worse. And it didn't take long before European public opinion reflected views of the US that were not all that different from views held in Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, and Jordan: by early 2004, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center documented a remarkable convergence of anti-American attitudes in European and Muslim states.
The sincerity of the war on terror that Bush had declared in the wake of September 11 was doubted by around two thirds of respondents in France, Germany, Turkey, Morocco, and Pakistan; in these countries, around 60% of respondents also believed that the war on terror was just a pretext for the quest to control Middle Eastern oil supplies, and between 40 and 50% of respondents believed that the U.S. was conducting the war on terror to target unfriendly Muslim governments and groups. But the most dramatic results emerged in response to the question whether decision makers in the US and the UK had themselves been misinformed about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or whether they had made it all up and simply lied: a whopping 82% of French respondents had little doubt that it had just been lies; in Germany, Jordan, Turkey, and Pakistan, this view was held by around two thirds of the respondents, while in moderate Morocco barely half of the respondents were convinced that the Iraq war had been started on the basis of cynical lies.
The European view of Israel did not remain unaffected: already in fall 2003, a EU poll had revealed that 59% of Europeans considered Israel a greater threat to world peace that Iran. When the Iranian president Ahmadinejad issued his call to wipe Israel off the map, there was general dismay about such an open call for genocide, but in European political discourse it is still more acceptable to call Israeli soldiers "Nazis" than to call Islamic extremists "Fascists".
The dynamics that have produced these developments in European public opinion are complex, and explanations that anti-Semitism combined with anti-Americanism is to blame will miss the bigger picture. What dominates and drives the formation of public opinion in Europe is the fundamental conviction that no war can ever be just. This basic credo strictly proscribes the European political discourse about the threats to peace and security emanating from the Islamic world. Since war is a priori not an option, these threats are interpreted as being rooted in specific grievances that need to be acknowledged and dealt with by open-minded dialogue and skillful diplomacy.
At the same time, the European discourse is not impervious to the debate about historic parallels. Yet, as Tony Blair might testify, there is little receptiveness for attempts to paint a picture that bears some frightening resemblance to a time when dialogue and diplomacy proved unable to stop a ruthless ideology from pursuing its clearly stated goals. But what is hardly ever noted about the debate in Europe is that it might be best understood as a debate about where in history the parallels should be anchored: Do current developments mirror the late 1930s, when Chamberlain's quest to secure peace turned out to be no more than a doomed attempt to appease a viciously racist movement that was resolved to pursue its megalomaniacal fantasies? Or should we rather see parallels to the 1920s, when the victors of Versailles created the conditions that would eventually push a humiliated nation whose name had once been synonymous with Kultur to descend into a barbaric frenzy of conquest and destruction?
The approach adopted by the Europeans is firmly rooted in a historical framework that takes the 1920s as its point of reference. There is a victorious power -- indeed, a superpower -- that dictates, and there is a once great culture that feels humiliated. The overriding priority must be to assuage these feelings of humiliation, because we all know how they will erupt if they are left to fester.
For Americans and Israelis, September 11, 2001 signified that the historical point of reference could only be anchored well into 1930s. Whatever the causes, whatever the rights and wrongs of the feelings of humiliation, the overriding priority is the need to recognize that we are faced with an ideology that glorifies death and destruction and openly calls for genocide to the cheers of crowds of tens of thousands -- and millions more, who cheer in front of their TV screens.
The acrimony that characterizes most of the debates between advocates of the European perspective and advocates of the American and Israeli perspective tends to obscure the fact that war is an option that no democracy favors; and that a just war is indeed an elusive concept, because even the most just of wars is easily compromised by military excess -- be it the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, or, for that matter, even a small place like Qana. But categorically ruling out war as an option may obscure the fact that there is a real risk that the pledge of "Never Again" will be broken if the European approach fails to forestall the day when the continent's newspapers will proclaim "We are all Israelis" -- and the day after, when the response of a mortally wounded Israel will require the headlines to change into "We are all Iranians".
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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