Recognizing the Bad Guy

The German magazine Spiegel Online posted a wonderful article back on March 29th that offers an interesting German view of America's image in the world vis-a-vis that of Iran. The article by Spiegel 's Berlin bureau chief Claus Christian Malzahn, titled "Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs," notes that 48% of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran...and among young Germans (those between 18 and 29), that figure jumps to a staggering 57%!

Think about that for a minute.

Nearly half of Germans believe a theocratic regime that is striving for a nuclear capability, has vowed to erase Israel from the map, and has a history of seizing hostages in clear contravention of international law and common sense, is more dangerous that the United States of America. What's wrong here?

Mr Malzahn lays much of the blame for the situation on the German political establishment and its coddling of the Iranian regime, along with its anti-Americanism-for-political-advantage attitude. But he also looks at the larger picture of America formed in European minds by authors and philosophers. He writes that:

"For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq...Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945...There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil."

You can read this article online at http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,druck-474636,00.html, and you should. It's tongue in cheek, but dead on in its depiction of the bizarre European attitudes toward America and its policies. Mr Malzahn notes that "Anti-Americanism is the wonder drug of German politics. If no one believes what you're saying, take a swing at the Yanks and you'll be shooting your way back up to the top of the opinion polls in no time." He goes on later: "Anti-Americanism is hypocrisy at its finest...Not a day passes when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved, and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness."

There's no risk involved. That's a key point to remember. Mr Malzahn goes on to discuss the Iranian reaction to a TV sketch by entertainer Rudi Carell 20 years ago, in which he poked fun at the Ayatollah Khomeini: Carell received death threats, flights to and from Iran were cancelled, and German diplomats were expelled from Teheran. He notes that, "Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are safer."

Granted, we have done a great job of making ourselves mistrusted, if not hated, in many parts of the world. But when 48% of the population of a well-educated European nation - one you might think shares at least some of our values - believes the United States is more of a threat than the mullahs of Iran and their relentless attempts to recreate the imagined purity of a time many hundreds of years gone, something is very wrong.

As I wrote in this space yesterday, it's important to know your enemy. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world is a poor judge of who the enemy really is. And sometimes the famous Walt Kelly comment in the comic strip Pogo is right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo