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Europe -- Thy Name Is Cowardice 
By Matthias Dopfner
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 7, 2005

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe --
your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of
your head because it's so terribly true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England
and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before
they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements.
Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in
that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were
glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other
possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in
Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in
and did our work for us.

Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European
appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now
countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000
victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the
self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George
Bush. A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the
escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere
by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.

What else has to happen before the European public and its political
leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially
perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims,
focused on civilians and directed against our free, open Western
societies. It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than the
great military conflicts of the last century -- a conflict conducted by
an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but only
spurred on by such gestures, which will be mistaken for signs of weakness.

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for
anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush,
supported only by the social democrat Blair acting on moral conviction,
recognized the danger in the Islamic fight against democracy. His place
in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.

In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in
the multicultural corner instead of defending liberal society's values
and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the
true great powers, America and China. On the contrary-we Europeans
present ourselves, in contrast to the intolerant, as world champions in
tolerance, which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily
justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more
because we're so materialistic.

For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of
additional national debt and a massive and persistent burden on the
American economy-because everything is at stake.

While the alleged capitalistic robber barons in American know their
priorities, we timidly defend our social welfare systems. Stay out of
it! It could get expensive. We'd rather discuss the 35-hour workweek or
our dental health plan coverage. Or listen to TV pastors preach about
"reaching out to murderers." These days, Europe reminds me of an elderly
aunt who hides her last pieces of jewelry with shaking hands when she
notices a robber has broken into a neighbor's house. Europe, thy name is
cowardice.

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for
enough good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke.
Matthias Döpfner is Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG.

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