Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Citizen Galen

Rich Galen

Monday September 27, 2004

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From Paris, France
Citizen Diplomat Program

I am, indeed, in Paris yet again. This time at the behest of the United States Department of State as part of their Citizen Diplomat program.

Dear Mr. Mullings:
Let's get this straight. The State Department - the United STATES State Department sent you to Paris?
Signed,
Office of Kofi Annan
Yes. That would be correct.
And the United States Department of State sent you to France under a program with the word "Diplomat" in its title?
Is this a great country, or what?

Let me dispel an urban myth: You have heard that Parisians hate Americans and treat Americans badly. You have heard that Parisian taxi drivers refuse to carry Americans. You have heard that Parisians act like New Yorkers without New Yorkers' self control.

None of that is true. I have been here a good deal as regular Mullsters know (click here for the very excellent Paris Travelogues). I have never had a run-in with anyone here. And if anyone would have had run-ins with people here, it would have been me.

I am in Europe to meet with journalists, students, and government officials largely about Iraq and to help them understand the US political process as we approach our quadrennial elections.

Which is not to say I am in love with the French Government. I am most assuredly not.

Neither, it seems, is almost anyone else in Europe with the possible exception of the Germans. Now there's a party-pair for you.

In Newsweek Magazine's International edition dated September 27, reporter Stryker McGuire wrote a piece entitled "Britain's Big Tent."

Notwithstanding what everyone would like to believe, it seems that "the real 'new Europe' is an arc of countries that share a very real English approach to the region." The "arc" starts with the UK, up and across the Nordic countries "to a clutch of nations once under Soviet domination."

English was the only language spoken at a meeting of 25 ministers met at the European Union building. A huge exhibit has been erected on the EU grounds entitled "Image of Europe" which traces the history of European integration. According to McGuire's piece, "It's in a single language - English.

The only place where French - which used to be the international language of diplomacy - hence one of the many languages I do not speak - is routinely used at the European Union is "behind the counters at EU bars and cafeterias."

One of the reasons this has happened is because the countries which make up the"new Europe" are more interested in trade and economic growth than the centuries-old (to misquote Shakespeare) strutting and fretting across Europe's stage on which the French have so tirelessly spent their time, effort, and national treasure.

In modern day Europe, "along the EU's new eastern border, counties like Latvia and Poland look for their security to NATO and the United States, not to the EU."

Further, according to Newsweek, those states are turning toward the US which (McGuire's words not mine) is "widely seen as their liberator."

WHAT? You mean the Center and Right of the US in the latter half of the 20th Century was correct? The Left, which believed that anyone who said Communism was wrong and would ultimately, and with good reason, fail was a fool, a charlatan, or both was wrong?.

They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The United Kingdom and the United States are the countries other countries look to, because Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush understand an essential truth: Going in a direction because it makes you popular does not make you a leader.

Doing the right thing, because it IS the right thing, even in the face of opposition from people you thought were your friends, is what makes a true leader. And a safer world.

It is upon that central issue - leadership when leadership is required - which will decide the US elections in five weeks.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to an article in the Idaho Statesman which pretty lays out my position on Iraq; the link to the Stryker McGuire piece (I like saying "Stryker McGuire" to myself as I type that name); the required photo of myself, this time posing with Voltaire, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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