The Europeans still don't get it

World Peace Herald publishes a wide variety of opinions, including those we don't agree with. Martin Walker's commentary "Grim forebodings for the New Year" is certainly an example of that.

The fact that he writes with a Paris dateline is, of course, a somewhat grim foreboding for what is contained in the remainder of the article. Reporters are influenced by the environment in which they write. Good reporters try not to be, and Walker is definitely a very excellent reporter, but it still happens.

All jokes about "freedom fries" aside, there definitely is in France, as well as in much of the rest of Europe, a curious inability to understand what makes the United States work and how it is that the U.S. came to be the world's sole superpower.

Walker's lead sentence "Not since the grimmest days of the Cold War has a New Year opened with such a sense of foreboding for the United States" says a lot about the European environment in which Walker is writing.

Then he gives a list of the issues the United States faces in the world today -- Iraq, dollar, North Korea and Iran, economy, and so on. Each of these is supposed to lead to the downfall of the U.S. and any country foolish enough to remain its ally.

Walker appears to be reflecting the general view of America's critics in Europe, whose track record shows a consistent failure to take into account the resilience of the United States in the face of difficulty. Yes, there are problems today. President Bush clearly committed a major error in taking the country to war in Iraq in March 2003.

U.S. national security was not in imminent danger. Bush should have waited, perhaps a year or more, before pulling the trigger. That would have given more time to gather better information on what WMDs were really there, or not there, more time to bring allies on board, more time to plan what to do with Iraq after Saddam had been ousted. With any kind of luck, the war may have become unnecessary. Following the start of the war, he compounded the error by stubbornly refusing, until only just recently, to acknowledge his error and seek advice on a change of course.

But the United States is greater than any single leader. In November, the U.S. electorate sent a strong message to President Bush by handing control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats, and Bush seems finally to have heard the message. Now we will see what the Democrats will do. In all likelihood, they will not deliver as much as they promised their constituents, or even as much as they think they can today.

Yes, U.S. credibility is suffered a large blow. But credibility is always going up and down. If it's down now, it can rebound.

The United States is a country where Jews and Palestinians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and a whole host of other "enemies" can live in close proximity with each other without feeling that they have some historical obligation to go around killing each other. Its political culture is mature enough that disagreements can be settled, by in large, through the political process.

This is just one of the aspects of U.S. society that gives me confidence that 2007 will be a rather good year for the country.

As for Walker's comments on increasing economic competition from China, how is this a part of a "grim" picture? When other countries develop their economies, with much help from America as an export market and a model of economic success, that is a good thing. Better living standards in China will also benefit the U.S.