Hmmm, I thought we already got it in the redneck Mick, back in September.
You Stupid Yanks!
A surprise attack at breakfast.
BY RAYMOND SOKOLOV
Friday, February 22, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=105001676
It takes targeting terror, apparently, to make Americans the target
of full-bore anti-Americanism. We've all read a lot about this kind
of hostility in recent weeks--America as demon of the world, as
portrayed in, say, Le Monde and the Guardian. I have my own tale to
tell, much closer to home.
For 15 years before the attack that set the Faithful dancing around
the world, I looked out at the World Trade Center from my office a
few hundred feet across West Street. My aerie nine stories up was a
perfect surveillance post. So perfect that when radical Islamists
set off a bomb in the WTC garage in 1993, my window bowed in from
the shock.
The attack on Sept. 11 blew the window in completely. I wasn't there
(the truth is I never went to the office before 9 a.m., and I saw
the first plane's impact from my corner in Greenwich Village while
walking my dog), but I have a photograph of that window taken soon
after. Everything but the glass was still in place, even a roll of
paper towels standing on end on the sill. In a small way it's become
a talisman for me of our proud national response to terror. If the
attack had to happen, at least we stood tall: We knew what we had to
do, we did it and the world is better for it--and will be better
still as we continue.
The idea seems so obvious, so undeniable, but the shocking truth is
that plenty of people in Europe--and not just Islamic
agitproppers--view our victory and our new antiterrorist policy with
alarm. And, as always, they are ready to tell you to your face what
a bumptious, callow, redneck sort of place you come from, something
you are too benighted by media cheerleading to see for yourself.
Take my friend the grand rabbi's grandson, who fled his Middle
Eastern home with his family as a boy, shortly after the creation of
the state of Israel ended peaceful coexistence for Jews and Muslims
in the Arab world. Now comfortably ensconced in a European
democracy, he devotes himself to promoting knowledge of Middle
Eastern culture and Jewish-Muslim amity.
My friend was visiting New York on the morning that news of the
abduction of Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi broke. I
reacted angrily to the report, expecting a sympathetic reaction from
across the breakfast table. Instead, I inadvertently unleashed a
torrent of anti- Americanism: I had been brainwashed by the U.S.
press, I was told. I needed to be reprogrammed. Didn't I know more
innocent people had died in Afghanistan than at the Trade Center?
Wasn't it repellent that the New York Times was publishing
obituaries of the Sept. 11 dead every day but never bothered to run
anything about foreign victims of the war we were forcing on
Afghanistan? Why did Americans care only about themselves? Our
swaggering just encouraged Israeli right-wingers to kill more
Palestinians when many more of them had already died than Israelis.
No point in arguing with this person, whose idea of the U.S. press
and America comes to him filtered through an old-line socialist
daily and from conversations with know- it-all caf� intellectuals.
No point in citing facts or asking why the American victory over the
Taliban shouldn't be heralded as a heroic step toward a safer world.
No point in asking why his only response to American success was
hysterical criticism instead of praise.
What can you expect? After saving Europeans from themselves in two
world wars and protecting them from Soviet invasion, should we hope
for anything but resentment? In western Germany it is commonplace to
see plaques on public buildings explain that they had to be rebuilt
after their destruction in 1945 by Allied bombing. Memorials to
Germans who died in that war do not generally list the Germans of
Jewish heritage who also perished then.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism go hand in hand, even if my
friend doesn't recognize it. It doesn't pay to stand out. Losers
envy winners. Citizens of former European imperial powers are
ashamed of their current decadence; so how can they be expected not
to turn up their noses and shudder at our power and vigor?
Pathetic, ragged Islamic societies see how we live on television and
hate us for it. They see how Israelis prosper without petrochemical
trillions and hate them for it too. Hate them for winning wars. Hate
success because they are failures. And so, when the Trade Center
towers collapsed, Muslims cheered and said we had it coming. When
suicide bombers kill Israelis in buses, in markets and at a
religious celebration, Europeans can say, "The Jews had it coming."
They've said it before, haven't they?
Mr. Sokolov is editor of The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts
page
Stupid Yanks
Marc
location: Columbus, OH
listening to: gloating democrats...and that's ok, they earned it.
registered: 2001.11.02
posts: 1067
[view all posts]
[view all posts]
M
Marc
(view)
Hmmm, I thought we already got it in the redneck Mick, back in September.
You Stupid Yanks!
A surprise attack at breakfast.
BY RAYMOND SOKOLOV
Friday, February 22, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=105001676
It takes targeting terror, apparently, to make Americans the target
of full-bore anti-Americanism. We've all read a lot about this kind
of hostility in recent weeks--America as demon of the world, as
portrayed in, say, Le Monde and the Guardian. I have my own tale to
tell, much closer to home.
For 15 years before the attack that set the Faithful dancing around
the world, I looked out at the World Trade Center from my office a
few hundred feet across West Street. My aerie nine stories up was a
perfect surveillance post. So perfect that when radical Islamists
set off a bomb in the WTC garage in 1993, my window bowed in from
the shock.
The attack on Sept. 11 blew the window in completely. I wasn't there
(the truth is I never went to the office before 9 a.m., and I saw
the first plane's impact from my corner in Greenwich Village while
walking my dog), but I have a photograph of that window taken soon
after. Everything but the glass was still in place, even a roll of
paper towels standing on end on the sill. In a small way it's become
a talisman for me of our proud national response to terror. If the
attack had to happen, at least we stood tall: We knew what we had to
do, we did it and the world is better for it--and will be better
still as we continue.
The idea seems so obvious, so undeniable, but the shocking truth is
that plenty of people in Europe--and not just Islamic
agitproppers--view our victory and our new antiterrorist policy with
alarm. And, as always, they are ready to tell you to your face what
a bumptious, callow, redneck sort of place you come from, something
you are too benighted by media cheerleading to see for yourself.
Take my friend the grand rabbi's grandson, who fled his Middle
Eastern home with his family as a boy, shortly after the creation of
the state of Israel ended peaceful coexistence for Jews and Muslims
in the Arab world. Now comfortably ensconced in a European
democracy, he devotes himself to promoting knowledge of Middle
Eastern culture and Jewish-Muslim amity.
My friend was visiting New York on the morning that news of the
abduction of Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi broke. I
reacted angrily to the report, expecting a sympathetic reaction from
across the breakfast table. Instead, I inadvertently unleashed a
torrent of anti- Americanism: I had been brainwashed by the U.S.
press, I was told. I needed to be reprogrammed. Didn't I know more
innocent people had died in Afghanistan than at the Trade Center?
Wasn't it repellent that the New York Times was publishing
obituaries of the Sept. 11 dead every day but never bothered to run
anything about foreign victims of the war we were forcing on
Afghanistan? Why did Americans care only about themselves? Our
swaggering just encouraged Israeli right-wingers to kill more
Palestinians when many more of them had already died than Israelis.
No point in arguing with this person, whose idea of the U.S. press
and America comes to him filtered through an old-line socialist
daily and from conversations with know- it-all caf� intellectuals.
No point in citing facts or asking why the American victory over the
Taliban shouldn't be heralded as a heroic step toward a safer world.
No point in asking why his only response to American success was
hysterical criticism instead of praise.
What can you expect? After saving Europeans from themselves in two
world wars and protecting them from Soviet invasion, should we hope
for anything but resentment? In western Germany it is commonplace to
see plaques on public buildings explain that they had to be rebuilt
after their destruction in 1945 by Allied bombing. Memorials to
Germans who died in that war do not generally list the Germans of
Jewish heritage who also perished then.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism go hand in hand, even if my
friend doesn't recognize it. It doesn't pay to stand out. Losers
envy winners. Citizens of former European imperial powers are
ashamed of their current decadence; so how can they be expected not
to turn up their noses and shudder at our power and vigor?
Pathetic, ragged Islamic societies see how we live on television and
hate us for it. They see how Israelis prosper without petrochemical
trillions and hate them for it too. Hate them for winning wars. Hate
success because they are failures. And so, when the Trade Center
towers collapsed, Muslims cheered and said we had it coming. When
suicide bombers kill Israelis in buses, in markets and at a
religious celebration, Europeans can say, "The Jews had it coming."
They've said it before, haven't they?
Mr. Sokolov is editor of The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts
page
You Stupid Yanks!
A surprise attack at breakfast.
BY RAYMOND SOKOLOV
Friday, February 22, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=105001676
It takes targeting terror, apparently, to make Americans the target
of full-bore anti-Americanism. We've all read a lot about this kind
of hostility in recent weeks--America as demon of the world, as
portrayed in, say, Le Monde and the Guardian. I have my own tale to
tell, much closer to home.
For 15 years before the attack that set the Faithful dancing around
the world, I looked out at the World Trade Center from my office a
few hundred feet across West Street. My aerie nine stories up was a
perfect surveillance post. So perfect that when radical Islamists
set off a bomb in the WTC garage in 1993, my window bowed in from
the shock.
The attack on Sept. 11 blew the window in completely. I wasn't there
(the truth is I never went to the office before 9 a.m., and I saw
the first plane's impact from my corner in Greenwich Village while
walking my dog), but I have a photograph of that window taken soon
after. Everything but the glass was still in place, even a roll of
paper towels standing on end on the sill. In a small way it's become
a talisman for me of our proud national response to terror. If the
attack had to happen, at least we stood tall: We knew what we had to
do, we did it and the world is better for it--and will be better
still as we continue.
The idea seems so obvious, so undeniable, but the shocking truth is
that plenty of people in Europe--and not just Islamic
agitproppers--view our victory and our new antiterrorist policy with
alarm. And, as always, they are ready to tell you to your face what
a bumptious, callow, redneck sort of place you come from, something
you are too benighted by media cheerleading to see for yourself.
Take my friend the grand rabbi's grandson, who fled his Middle
Eastern home with his family as a boy, shortly after the creation of
the state of Israel ended peaceful coexistence for Jews and Muslims
in the Arab world. Now comfortably ensconced in a European
democracy, he devotes himself to promoting knowledge of Middle
Eastern culture and Jewish-Muslim amity.
My friend was visiting New York on the morning that news of the
abduction of Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi broke. I
reacted angrily to the report, expecting a sympathetic reaction from
across the breakfast table. Instead, I inadvertently unleashed a
torrent of anti- Americanism: I had been brainwashed by the U.S.
press, I was told. I needed to be reprogrammed. Didn't I know more
innocent people had died in Afghanistan than at the Trade Center?
Wasn't it repellent that the New York Times was publishing
obituaries of the Sept. 11 dead every day but never bothered to run
anything about foreign victims of the war we were forcing on
Afghanistan? Why did Americans care only about themselves? Our
swaggering just encouraged Israeli right-wingers to kill more
Palestinians when many more of them had already died than Israelis.
No point in arguing with this person, whose idea of the U.S. press
and America comes to him filtered through an old-line socialist
daily and from conversations with know- it-all caf� intellectuals.
No point in citing facts or asking why the American victory over the
Taliban shouldn't be heralded as a heroic step toward a safer world.
No point in asking why his only response to American success was
hysterical criticism instead of praise.
What can you expect? After saving Europeans from themselves in two
world wars and protecting them from Soviet invasion, should we hope
for anything but resentment? In western Germany it is commonplace to
see plaques on public buildings explain that they had to be rebuilt
after their destruction in 1945 by Allied bombing. Memorials to
Germans who died in that war do not generally list the Germans of
Jewish heritage who also perished then.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism go hand in hand, even if my
friend doesn't recognize it. It doesn't pay to stand out. Losers
envy winners. Citizens of former European imperial powers are
ashamed of their current decadence; so how can they be expected not
to turn up their noses and shudder at our power and vigor?
Pathetic, ragged Islamic societies see how we live on television and
hate us for it. They see how Israelis prosper without petrochemical
trillions and hate them for it too. Hate them for winning wars. Hate
success because they are failures. And so, when the Trade Center
towers collapsed, Muslims cheered and said we had it coming. When
suicide bombers kill Israelis in buses, in markets and at a
religious celebration, Europeans can say, "The Jews had it coming."
They've said it before, haven't they?
Mr. Sokolov is editor of The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts
page
