THE DIFFERENCE

An interesting position from Wesley Clark:

And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we’ll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We’ll bring you in.

The right of first refusal. I’m with Clark on consultation and on building the U.S. alliance in Europe. But first refusal? That’s tantamount to Howard Dean’s view that we should seek the “permission” of the United Nations before military action. Permission? But my deeper problem is that Clark doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the Europe of the Cold War. Things were different then. France and Germany had the Soviet Union breathing down their necks. The EU was far smaller than it is today and will be tomorrow. The truth is: Rummy was right. There are now two Europes – the core Europe of France, Germany and the Benelux countries, and the periphery that is growing faster and is far more comfortable with the U.S alliance. Draw a circle: Britain, Poland, Italy, Spain are the big ones. Throw in the Baltics and Turkey and you have a real alliance. So let’s keep our contacts with the core but let’s also reach out to the new Europe. Clark is stuck in the past. Bush has dragged us into the future.

THE TRULY NOBLE: An amazing scoop from the Sunday Times of London (whose website is pay-only for non-Brits, alas). It’s a list of notable Brits who have turned down royal honors – either medals or knighthoods. They include: the cook Nigella Lawson, actors Honor Blackman and Alastair Sim, writers JB Priestley, Graham Greene and Roald Dahl, as well as David Bowie, Isaiah Berlin, Helen Mirren and Lucian Freud. I’m impressed. the British honors system, whereby ordinary people of extraordinary ability or achievement are turned into pseudo-lords and ladies or given some medal of honor by the “British Empire” is a horrifying instance of the hold that class snobbery still has on Britain. In my view, the whole system should be abolished. But how immeasurably cool to have turned down the chance to become a “lord”. And even cooler to have kept quiet about it until a leak revealed it. The refuseniks are the true British heroes; not the establishment toadies.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to herself, so that you couldn’t hear what they were, and if she tied a bit of red thread round the child’s toe the while, it would keep off the water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman’s little bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had.” – George Eliot, ahead of her time, in “Silas Marner,” Chapter 2, 1861.