In the past, I've heard the phrase "political courage" most often used to describe those who favor tax increases or more gun control. However, as this op-ed piece in the Washington Post points out, those 8 European Leaders who came out in support of the US and President Bush are showing true courage in the face of widespread anti-Americanism in their countries.

BRUSSELS -- To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you really have to live in Europe and feel the mood out here. Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming confrontation with Iraq -- at a time when polls in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted America's war on terrorism must be Europe's war, too -- at a time when, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently conceded, most Europeans do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism and, indeed, fear Bush more than they fear Osama bin Laden.



This was nothing compared with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight European leaders actually wrote of "American bravery, generosity and farsightedness" in setting Europe free from Nazism and communism in the last century and in keeping the peace in Europe for the past six decades. By using the word "generosity," they even implied that Europeans might now owe the United States a little generosity in return.

Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity. I live in Brussels, famed "capital of Europe," and have traveled across the continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists, foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn't be nicer; the food and wine couldn't be better; the conversations couldn't be more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn't be thicker. In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the "neoconservative" (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. Britain's most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory "sexual imagery." In Paris, all the talk is of oil and "imperialism" (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.



Please read the whole article. It's very good. Personally, I'll be making vacation plans and purchase decisions accordingly.