Last week, VDH put up a short, biting editorial in the Times of London to deliver the brit protesters a bit of the spanking they deserve:

If It Weren't For America, You Wouldn't Be Free To Protest

I forgot where I saw it, but I once came upon a great phrase which I'll paraphrase a bit - Americans / Republicans like their leaders simple & direct;  Europeans / Democrats like them complex and tragic.  VDH bats this one out of the park:

Mr Bush's Christianity, cowboy metaphors, and drawl might grate on European sensitivities. But he sought approval of the US Senate and went to the UN before attacking Saddam, unlike a lip-biting Bill Clinton, who bombed the Balkans, Africa and Iraq without either national or multinational sanction. And, by the terrible arithmetic of war, the Anglo-American effort to defeat the worst regime in the Middle East has been remarkable in its efforts to minimise casualties, both ours and Iraqi.

It ain't the deed, it must be the rhetoric they disapprove of.   The conclusion for a cynical American?   If you want to do something, you'll encounter FAR less foreign bile if you do it quickly and unilaterally.   The moment you attempt to "play their game" they'll string it out and extract as much tax as possible because it's the Game that makes them feel relevant - outcomes be damned.

Of course, I'm not that cynical.  Yet.

VDH also channels a beautifully delivered argument about the Tragic vs. Utopian views of man:

Far more likely the shrillness of the London protest reflects the mood of the new Western citizen; the most affluent and privileged individual in the history of civilisation, who, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, can afford to find patriotism, civic militarism and the singularity of Western culture all so passé. In an era when the horrors of the Somme, the Great Depression, the Jewish Holocaust and even SS10 Soviet nukes are dim memories, we have riches and unrivalled freedom. So we demand perfection, expecting that we can stop racism, class oppression, sexism and environmental desecration as quickly and easily as we can find information on the internet or communicate across the globe.

In this unrealistic view of the perfectibility of human nature, far from being appreciative of our fragile peace, accomplishments and luck, well-off Westerners demand more. Furious over our perceived failures, we equate the pathologies of man exclusively with the sins of an all-powerful West, especially those of its most powerful nation as it is symbolised now by George Bush.

Don't you see?   Racism, War, the Oil Economy, Terrorism, and AIDS are simply the direct result of choices made by rich, white Americans for their own self advancement.   "External" rules of economics, game theory, chemistry, biology, and even Human Nature are merely artifacts inside of the Western World view and can be cast aside just as easily as we can paint up new "Bush=Hitler" signs.  If cowboys from Texas weren't president, then they wouldn't need to create Terrorists in order to ensure their reelection.