American aspirations for pesky European nations

As I have told countless Princeton students over the years, I have looked down on Europeans ever since I came to this country. Saying it helps me overcome the perennial insecurity of a naturalized citizen. It makes me feel so — je ne sai quoi — quintessentially American!

My main beef with Europeans has not been their instinctive loathing of war, although that I do consider that loathsome. What really gets me is that they don't put the USA Today in front of my hotel door, when I grace their country with my visits. In Paris, for example, you end up with something called Le Devoir or Le Figaro. (The Barber?). The only comprehensible stuff in these rags is an advertisement for the McDonalds on the Champs Elysees, which really ought to be called George S. Patton Avenue anyway. In Germany, they dump before your door some kind of Zeitung. Although I can read the German print, those papers don't publish U.S. baseball scores! We liberated these people 50 years ago, and now they don't even have the courtesy of serving us a USA Today?

To be sure, the opposition of the European plebs to war is supremely annoying, too, especially at times when every thinking American — at least every real American — supports that war. Even some of Europe's leaders, who should know better, seem to be infected by the wishes of the people, as they express it in huge peace marches. For example, France's foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, earlier described as "smarmy" in these columns (Feb. 10, 2003) by my colleague John V. Fleming, still disagrees with the sage dicta of columnists Thomas Friedman, William Safire and George Will about our impending war on Iraq, not even to speak of those insightful reflections, shall we say, that are issued from time to time by el hombre, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld .

But, to paraphrase a former French queen — who ended up like all French should — "Let them [the French] eat frogs!" That's what the French do eat, frogs, hence their nickname "Frogs"! What civilized country would eat frogs? And look what else they eat! Compare the strong, refreshing fragrance of strong Wisconsin cheese with the often stinky, slimy French variety, which reminds one of nothing so much as rotten milk. Would you eat it? Would you ever drink the vinegary French Nouveau Beaujolix or whatever if f you could have a full-bodied California Merlot? Most French restaurants haven't even heard of Ketchup, let alone serve it with their foie gras. And France's French fries truly aspirate. (President Tilghman won't allow Princeton professors to say "s*ck"). Would you ever drive a French car, or fly a French jet, or ride on those effete French subways, with their soft rubber wheels for sissies? Why, most Frenchmen (yes, men) are too effete even to wear guns to work or church. When they bump into each other on the highways, they don't shoot. They just talk! Is it any wonder that these folks don't like to go to war? But who needs them anyhow, and their equally cowardly German friends, when we have braver folks on our side, like those of the country whose capital is Vilnius (Latvia, I think it is, or Riga, near Sweden), where the Vilnius Ten recently signed their letter in support of our war?

And speaking of those cowardly Germans: It is not their national dish that bothers me the most — the stinky, rotten cabbage they eat, called Sauerkraut (hence their nickname Krauts). That's just weird. What really gets my gander is that the German Chancellor, too, refuses to come on board of our war on Iraq, just because the overwhelming majority of the German people are against it. This is not what we Americans had in mind when we gave those Germans their constitution after World War II. We had in mind that German democracy should have a strong Fhrer (the German word for "leader") willing and able to lead Germany into wars desired by the U.S. even when, in its ignorance and ingrained loathing of war, the Germans plebs firmly opposes it. As Yogi Berra or Alfred E. Neuman or whoever once aptly put it, the only thing worse than a German who loves war is one who hates it. You just can't respect people like that, or work with them. They should have learned from us that, from time to time, bombing people — even terror bombing civilians — can be wholesome.

Come to think of it, we should have made Germany a U.S. Trust Territory in 1945 — like Truk and Guam. Then I'd get my USA Today there in the morning, like in any other civilized country, and maybe Germans would think more like we Americans — like real Americans, that is.