Liberals, and this includes virtually all Europeans, believe that masculinity is unseemly as well as passe. When President George Bush said we want Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," liberals groaned. This sort of talk makes us look primitive, they lamented. The French immediately confirmed this by getting an attack of the vapors.
Europeans live in a protected cocoon of civilization, purchased with their own and large portions of American blood. Inside this cocoon, disputes are settled by bureaucrats, not armies and navies. And diplomacy calls upon the feminine more than the masculine virtues. Still, it would be nice if the Europeans might, once in a while, recognize that we Americans have taken on global responsibilities and stand nose-to-nose with some of the nastier characters on the planet -- and that you cannot deal with Saddam and Osama and Charles Taylor across a polished conference table.
During the war in Afghanistan, as Jay Nordlinger reminds us, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked why the United States was deploying such heavy bombs. Rumsfeld explained, "They are being used on frontline Al Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them." Any other questions? That sort of brisk attention to the task at hand as well as disdain for euphemism is very manly.
Manly men may begin life as riotous boys, but they can grow up to become the pillars of civilization.