Europe a Creek
IN “EUROPE’S NON-STRATEGY” (May 10), Gerard Alexander shows that while Europeans believe poverty and injustice in the Middle East are the “root causes” of terrorism, they are doing little to address such poverty and social injustice in the Middle East.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Europeans are paralyzed because they understand, even at the most basic level, that the best way to address poverty in the world at large, and the Middle East in particular, would be the advancement of free market approaches to economic life. But since Europe has long since abandoned advocacy of free markets, this is something that the continent will not (indeed, cannot) do.
William Van Nest
Wayne, NJ
IN HIS LUCID “Europe’s Non-Strategy,” Gerard Alexander establishes a number of reasons to explain Europe’s failure to offer alternatives to the United States’ long-term antiterrorism strategy. But perhaps Europe’s problem is more profound. Perhaps, indeed, Europe’s intellectual contribution to the ideologies that spawn terror cannot be excluded as a fundamental reason behind the continent’s inaction. The historical landscape of the last century is littered with the corpses of the victims of economic and political experiments conceived by the European intelligentsia.
Thus, as Alexander points out, it is “Europeans who are averse to transformational agendas.” In other words, the continent is scarred by its tortured relationship with “transformational” agendas. The extreme practitioners of European ideologies–such as Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein–are permanent reminders and painful symbols of political experiments gone terribly wrong.
Hugo Enrique Bargioni
Miami, FL
Special Issue
I READ WITH INTEREST Stephen F. Hayes’s “Cheney vs. Kerry” (May 10). The article reports that the Bush reelection campaign plans to use national security as an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. Presumably such an effort will include scathing attacks on John Kerry–a decorated Vietnam veteran–in order to portray the senator as weak on defense.
But the Bush campaign’s view of today’s security needs is self-defeating, not to mention inadequate. Bush’s idea seems to be that law enforcement and military action are mutually exclusive in our struggle against terrorism. Thus Bush’s surrogates attack Kerry for understanding our post-9/11 world as one rife with broadly distributed threats like al Qaeda, threats that require the use of international cooperation, particularly in the area of law enforcement.
Lorelei Kelly
Washington, DC
The Nanny Diaries
I LAUGHED SO HARD at Andrew Ferguson’s “The Net Nanny State” (April 26) that I logged on to www.govbenefits.gov myself to see the government programs for which I am eligible. What I found made me envious. I answered all the questions, and yet I was told I could receive the largesse of only 14 government programs–far short of the “Ferguson Fifty-three.” After I answered the questions as I would if I were a homeless drug addict, however, I did manage to get into the thirties, but that was still far short of my goal.
My favorite question on www.govbenefits.gov asks, “Are you are a coal minor [sic]?” Since I am over 18 years old, I couldn’t quite convince myself to answer “yes,” although I bet I would’ve gotten extra credit if I had.
Rick Riedmiller
Loveland, OH
Spainkillers
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL describes Europe’s disinclination to defend itself from militant Islam in “Zapatero’s Spain” well (May 10). What he misses, however, is that the latest actions by Zapatero’s government may be simply the internationalization of a recent Anglo-European tradition.
For example, Britain’s 1953 Prevention of Crime bill outlawed the carrying, except in the most imminent and threatening circumstances, of any article “intended by the person having it with him for [causing harm to someone] by him. “The Criminal Law of 1967 set a “reasonable” standard for the use of force, and case law has reached the point where using a toy gun to deter housebreakers results in criminal charges. Both laws typify modern European jurisprudence.
In other words, no one should have been surprised at Spain’s decision to withdraw from Iraq. The more surprising thing is that the British haven’t.
William J.Durr
Cornwallville, NY
