As Aznar put it, ?those who try to be neutral, I think, are the ones who are going to be paying the highest price. The terrorists are not going to forgive them, and they will have no understanding from those who are fighting against terrorism.?
Of course, even strict neutrality would be an improvement over what some Europeans did before the war in Iraq. Some actively opposed the U.S. As the Sunday Times of London noted last year, documents recovered from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry show that ?Paris shared with Baghdad the contents of private transatlantic meetings and diplomatic traffic from Washington.?
And as Nile Gardiner and James Phillips note in a recent Heritage Foundation paper, ?Details of talks between French President Jacques Chirac and President George W. Bush were also reportedly passed on to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry by the French ambassador in Baghdad.?
These are the very people Sen. Kerry wants to work with. ?I will build alliances and cooperation,? he said on ?Meet the Press.? And he vowed to appease Europeans sensibilities by making the war on terror into a police action. ?I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It?s an intelligence gathering, law enforcement, public diplomacy effort,? he told Russert.
Most Europeans don?t want us to fight an aggressive war on terror. They?d prefer we go back to the pre-Sept. 11 days, when we treated terrorism as a police, not military, exercise. That?s what Sen. Kerry wants, too. But that?s not the way to win this war. And make no mistake -- we are going to win. We must.
Europeans are welcome to work with us, if they?re willing to. If not, we?ll win on our own. And when we do, we probably won?t resort to Solon?s law. But Europeans will still have to live with themselves, knowing they sat on the sidelines of the most important conflict of the 21st century.