September 22, 2001

VOICES OF OPPOSITION

In Europe, Some Say the Attacks Stemmed From American Failings
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/22/international/europe/22DEBA.html?todaysheadlin\
es

BERLIN, Sept. 21 — The killing of thousands in the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington last week has prompted great unity of purpose in the United
States, cemented by shared outrage. President Bush has called on the world to
unite against barbarism.

While Europeans have expressed enormous sympathy and solidarity, often in
emotional ways, they have also been divided in their responses. A debate has
begun over whether the inconsistencies of American foreign policy, and the sheer
weight of American dominance in the world, mean that resentment of the United
States — even, in extreme cases, hatred — are inevitable.

There was no rejoicing or support in Europe for the killing of so many
Americans. Many Europeans wept and the continent fell silent for a moment last
week in remembrance of the dead.

But it has also become clear that some Europeans feel that ordinary Americans
have largely floated on a tide of prosperity, triumphalism and indifference to
the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their view is that the United
States has now been confronted with a sobering reality, and that it must try to
understand. For those critics, Americans are now facing unsurprising retaliation
from an important part of the Islamic world that considers America to have
declared war on its faith.

The arguments are sometimes simple — America should expect war in return for
bombing Iraq regularly. Some Europeans also contend that many Americans have a
blinding confidence in their own goodness and so do not see that the acts of the
United States are regarded in many quarters as driven by the domineering pursuit
of national self-interest.

European writers and intellectuals have pointed to a catalog of actions that
include the bombing — in reprisal for the terrorist bombings of two American
Embassies in East Africa in 1998 — of one of Sudan's two pharmaceutical
factories on the challenged grounds that it was linked to Osama bin Laden, aid
to Israel to buy weapons used against Palestinians, or even the American refusal
to intervene to stop the mass killings in Rwanda.

Matthew Parris, a former Conservative Party member of the British Parliament,
wrote in The Times of London, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall."

Disgusted by calls for quick revenge, Mr. Parris wrote: "Do they think a
terrorist is like a pin in a bowling alley: one down, nine to go? Do they want
to give Osama bin Laden his own Bloody Sunday? Do they not know that when you
kill one bin Laden you sow 20 more? Playing the world's policeman is not the
answer to that catastrophe in New York. Playing the world's policeman is what
led to it."

Dario Fo, the Italian playwright and satirist who won the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1997, said bluntly in a widely circulated e-mail: "The great
speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of
people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who
carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the
culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation."

There have been other voices that pointed to Mr. bin Laden's various enemies:
not just the United States but also the autocratic Islamic governments that
Washington supports, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait.

The Observer newspaper wrote: "America needs to recognize that, all too often,
it poses as a champion of democracy while supporting regimes, such as that in
Saudi Arabia, which have no proper respect for democracy."

Tariq Ali, a leftist British commentator, wrote that America was now about to
wage war on Afghanistan, a country ruled by a religious movement, the Taliban,
only as a result of Washington's proxy war against the Soviets.

Mr. bin Laden himself joined in that proxy battle, and became a hero partly
because of that war.

"The underlying maxim is, `we will punish the crimes of our enemies and reward
the crimes of our friends,' " Mr. Ali said.

In an editorial, Le Monde wrote that America is also unreliable in the sense of
appearing inconstant in its choice of allies. The United States, it noted,
refused to help Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of anti-Taliban forces who died
last weekend from injuries suffered in an assassination attempt. Yet it
considers Saudi Arabia an ally, although that "is where the financial support of
the Islamic radicals comes from."

Even in Germany, one of Europe's most pro-American countries, there was concern
that NATO allies had somehow handed Washington a blank check. Die Zeit commented
that, "The defender against terror must not act like a furious giant," adding:
"The fear of U.S. hegemony is as deep-seated as the anti-American sentiment that
bubbled up predictably after Bush came to power."

Anti-Americanism is almost a reflex reaction among some left-of-center French
intellectuals, and there has been a predictable outpouring.

To the cry that "we are all Americans now," Marie-José Mondzain, director of the
prestigious French National Center for Scientific Research, writing in Le Monde,
retorted: "I don't feel at all American, but to the contrary feel redoubled in
me all the reasons to condemn a world that sings along with a catastrophic
president, who defends the death penalty and who has only disdain for the Middle
East."

Such anti-Americanism is rare in Germany. But the composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen, 73, called the attack on the World Trade Center "the greatest work
of art imaginable for the whole cosmos," impressive for the imagination of the
act and the precision of its execution.

His commentary was regarded with horror by a nation that has reached out to
Americans with sympathy and support, and Mr. Stockhausen apologized, saying that
his allegorical remarks had been misunderstood.

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