Misunderestimated

It's a key Bush advantage, says the Times (London):

In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media. . .

In the 40-minute session in the Oval Office yesterday, Mr Bush was clearly striving hard to maintain the momentum of the past six months, a diplomatic push to align America more closely with its allies without deviating from its national interests. He promised more assistance for Africa, now steadily rising with each new summit meeting; more movement to meet the rest of the world something close to halfway on climate change, a phrase Mr Bush himself, however, conspicuously avoids using, suggesting he hopes to find agreement on means even if there is little on the principles. He has polite diplomatic words on the political turmoil in Europe.

“It’s going to be of great interest to me to watch how the European Union deals with its current problems, but I believe they will, over time.”

But this war President is unflinching on the principal foreign policy challenge. He rejects the idea that the war in Iraq may actually be producing more terrorism, creating a place where eager jihadists are trained to plot murder around the world. And he remains messianic about his ambition of promoting democracy around the world — not only in the Middle East, but in Africa and Europe.

Perhaps most revealing is his response to a question about Iran. His words are polite but the President’s body language is eloquent. As I read him a quote from the latest rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, and remind him that the Iranian President was a leader of the students who took Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979, he is visibly agitated. He glances at his advisers with a look of disgust that suggests that the chances of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis are remoter than ever.

I never thought the media reliable in the first place--or European anti-Americanism more than a defense mechanism deployed instead of any actual defense:

There are two forms of bigotry still given a free pass in the UK; anti-americanism is one. If you think it's just about George Bush, then next time you are in a conversation about him, try suggesting that all Americans are brutal, stupid and greedy, and we'd all be better off without them. You won't be called up for it - you'll probably find people joining in. The other form of bigotry that is OK in the UK is against people with middle class accents, but that's for another day and another article.

I'd begun to wonder if it all wasn't a function of the way racism has become socially unacceptable in modern UK society. Perhaps we all have an instinctive need to hate some "other" group - after all, that's how the European left think US foreign police works, so the pattern of the argument is a familiar one. If they couldn't hate blacks, or Jews, or Asians, then turn to hating the Americans. Find a group we could all agree upon to hate. What's more, the fact of the US being a multi-racial society meant that hating them "couldn't be racism". And it's worked that way in part, although I feel that the pattern of discrimination in anti-americanism ("lazy, stupid Americans"; "lazy, stupid blacks") is so similar to that of conventional racism that the distinction is malicious.

Anyway, if your head's nodding up-and-down (as opposed to side-to-side), the Times' interview transcript is illuminating:

THE TIMES: Mr President, last night you talked about, you mentioned [Iraq] becoming a haven for Jihadists, there's been a CIA report which says that Iraq is in danger of -- are you at risk of creating kind of more of the problems that actually led directly to --?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Quite the contrary. Where you win the war on terror is go to the battlefield and you take them off. And that’s what they’ve done. They’ve said, ‘Look, let’s go fight. This is the place.’ And that was my point. My point is that there is an ideology of hatred, an ideology that’s got a vision of a world where the extremists dictate the lives, dictate to millions of Muslims. They do want to topple governments in the Middle East. They do want us to withdraw. They’re interested in exporting violence. . .

So we made a decision to protect ourselves and remove Saddam Hussein. The jihadists made a decision to come into Iraq to fight us. For a reason. They know that if we’re successful in Iraq, like we were in Afghanistan, that it’ll be a serious blow to their ideology. . .

When we win in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a beginning of the end. Talking about the war on terror. If we don’t win here, it’s the beginning of the beginning. And that’s how I view it.

We learnt first-hand the nature of the war on terror on September 11. And last time I went to Europe I said many in Europe viewed September 11 as a tragic moment, but a moment. I view September 11 as an attack as a result of a larger war that changed how I view the world and how many other Americans view the world. It was one of the moments in history that changed outlook. So as long as I’m sitting here in this Oval Office, I will never forget the lessons of September 11, and that is that we are in a global war against cold-blooded killers.

(via Instapundit)

More:

In Wednesday's WaPo, Anne Applebaum investigates pro-American Europeans and tries a taxonomy:

[I]n Poland, which is generally pro-American, people between the ages of 30 and 44 are even more likely to support America than their compatriots. This is the group whose lives would have been most directly affected by the experience of the Solidarity movement and martial law -- events that occurred when they were in their teens and twenties -- and who have the clearest memories of American support for the Polish underground.

[Also,] in some more anti-American countries, such as Canada, Britain, Italy and Australia, people older than 60 have far more positive feelings about the United States than their children and grandchildren. This was the generation, of course, that had positive experiences of U.S. cooperation or occupation during World War II. . .

Looking around the world, it is clear there are classes of people who might also be called aspirational. They are upwardly mobile, or would like to be. They tend to be pro-American, too.

In Britain, for example, 57.6 percent of those whose income are low believe that the United States has a mainly positive influence in the world, while only 37.1 percent of those whose income are high believe the same. Breaking down the answers by education, a similar pattern emerges. In South Korea, 69.2 percent of those with low education think the United States is a positive influence, while only 45.8 percent of those with a high education agree. That trend repeats itself not only across Europe but in many other developed countries. Those on their way up are pro-American. Those who have arrived, and perhaps feel threatened by those eager to do the same, are much less so.

(via Rightpundit)

Still More:

What a difference an ocean makes--compare the first paragraph of the New York Times' editorial on Bush's speech:

President Bush told the nation last night that the war in Iraq was difficult but winnable. Only the first is clearly true.

(via Joe's Dartblog)