In a weird journalistic conspiracy, it seems that every single
newspaper and wire service is describing President Bush’s sojourn
in Europe as designed to “mend fences.” Presumably, he has to go to
apologize for his uncouth act of winning the election against that
great Europhile from New England. Yet this phrasing left me in some
puzzlement: what “fences” does he have to “mend”?
Can they mean the security fence that Israel has constructed to
defend its citizens against rapacious murderers and that has been
roundly condemned by the citizens, the governments, and the courts
of Europe? How does one go about mending that, by offering up
little Israeli children as human sacrifices?
Or perhaps they mean the corrupt program by which the
governments of Europe were enriching themselves by bartering Saddam
Hussein’s oil while he fed his citizens to the meat-grinders. Are
they having trouble finding a fence for the oil? If so, President
Bush is hardly the man for the job. They would do better
approaching Bill Clinton who can put them in touch with Marc
Rich.
Frankly, I don’t lose any sleep over polls showing that 62
percent of Germans don’t like Bush and think he acts like a cowboy.
If we were to poll Americans, we would certainly find that a
similar percentage thinks that Gerhard Schroeder looks and acts
like a used-car salesman: Is he coming here anytime soon to mend
fences?
A Spoonerism comes to mind: instead of going to “mend fences,”
Bush needs to go to “fend menaces.” The Europeans have just enough
power to get in the way sometimes, and it pays to keep them on the
reservation, but the speaking softly part is usually less important
than carrying a big stick. Their chimera of defeating Bush by
daunting American voters with their superciliousness has been
undone by reality. This returns things to their regular state
wherein it’s in the Europeans’ best interest to be on our good
side.
Perhaps a greater cause for concern is England, which has been
our steadfast ally in the effort to unseat Saddam and bring a whiff
of freedom to Middle Eastern air. Prime Minister Blair, who
represents a Liberal political movement, is motivated to wrest some
concessions from our President to cash in the chips accrued by that
fealty. In so doing, he hopes to achieve the auxiliary benefit of
convincing his nation’s wry culture mavens that he is not Bush’s
“poodle.”
Naturally, we would like nothing more than to be accommodating.
As the old Persian king said to Queen Esther, “ask up to half of
the kingdom and it will be done.” Even if Blair wants us to be open
to the idea of importing fried fish, which would cause half the
United States Customs Service to resign and write tell-all books,
there might be room to talk. The kicker is that of all the
cockamamie things that he could take as valuable door prizes, he
seems to have set his little liberal heart on Uncle Sam giving his
avuncular nod to the Kyoto protocols.
Those were the product of all the mendicant nations of the
world, the almoners, the beggars, the solicitors, the
organ-grinders and the all-purpose schnorrers gathering in Kyoto a
decade ago to penalize the United States for using too well the
resources of the Earth. This excess is said to have caused Global
Warming, a prospect that shivering citizens of the U.S. Northeast
and Midwest may regard with some joy but which, if not soon curbed,
will cause our fragile planet — any day now — to be charred down
to a sizzling scree of embers and cinders.
Virtually every newspaper account notes the fact that Bush is
opposed to accepting the Kyoto rules because they would severely
hamper our productivity and expose us to various levies. What they
consistently fail to mention is that the United States Senate voted
99-0 against our succumbing to this huge global rip-off. Such
unanimous bipartisanship is very rare and precious in our society;
it should serve as a strong signal to any leader that this subject
is not open to negotiation.
So mend those fences, Mr. President. Amend them, emend them,
commend, recommend to your heart’s content. But there is no reason
to give away the store. We would like to have those guys as allies,
sure, but remember what the great Yiddish writer, Chaim Lieberman,
wrote in 1938 in his epic essay about the Nazi invasion of Austria:
“America is the correction of Europe.”
