A wheezing, creaking Europe

"..Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World.
That caricature frames the visit of the President to Europe as transatlantic pundits demand a softer George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. Stop the childish bickering and the tiresome neocon preening, we are lectured ad nauseam by Euro and American elites. Don’t divide Europe, we hear endlessly. Even though the European press, EU leaders, and their wild public have dealt out far more invective than they have received, American circumspection is the order of the day, the expected magnanimity from the more aggressive (and stronger) partner.
Europe is huffy, but strangely tentative in its new prickliness. Short-term positive indicators—trade surpluses, the strong Euro, low inflation and expansion of the EU—are showcased to prove that its statism and pacifism are the preferable Western paradigm. But privately bureaucrats in Brussels are far more worried about different and scarier long-term concomitant signs: high unemployment, static rates of worker productivity, low birthrates, Islamicist minorities, looming unfunded entitlement obligations, and a high-sounding pacifism that is being increasingly seen worldwide as base appeasement by friend and enemy alike.

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We keep assuming that Europeans are like Britain and Japan when in fact long ago they devolved more into a Switzerland and Sweden—friendly neutrals, but no longer real allies. In the meantime, let us Americans keep much more quiet, wait, and watch—even as we carry a far bigger stick...."

Only today we've heard about islamic 'honor killings' in Berlin.......the Netherlands suffering from its indigenous popualtion emigrating away from their homes due to the islamic tide overwhelming the Dutch culture. ..How truly sad.