I don't know what the US leadership has on EU governments, but from their behaviour on the CIA secret flights it's obvious they think they cannot afford to contradict the US.

I am convinced "Atlanticism" is inimical to Europe's interests, but it's one thing not to join an alliance and a very different proposition to leave it. Either I am hopelessly out of touch, or on the radical fringe, or it would take the US using a nuke for anyone to even consider quitting NATO, and even then they might remain out of fear.

When's Europe going to come to my aid?

A serious answer: what kind of aid are you talking about?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

I really don't feel I should write a diary about it, because I don't have the background and education to have an informed opinion about it.

Sorry, I sound awful dumb.

Mind you, I´m not saying anything at all about the article Mimi translated. I´m simply asking you about some information about your "international defense organization"?

Is it the UN?
The same organization that really failed in Bosnia?
Remember Srebenica and Tuzla? The UN is pretty good at peace keeping missions once both sides agree but its record is more than mixed if one side doesn´t agree.

Why do you think that the UN or any other international defense organization is suddenly more able to protect innocent people?

Any international organization is only as strong as its members permit. The UN got 190+ members. How many of them would agree to human rights interventions if the next target might be them? How maynof them are democracies? Not to mention China. A veto power in the UN security council. Only interested in economic relations (access to raw materials) while disregarding domestic political problems.

I just fail to see how your "international defense organization" is supposed to work?

Still, you wanna give Sudan or Burma a veto power on how we might deploy troops?

NATO certainly isn´t perfect but at least every NATO government is responsible to its voters. Am I wrong to assume that this isn´t the case in most countries now members of the UN?

Crime doesn't play well on American TV, either, but Americans don't demand that, say, the Texas National Guard go and "pacify" South Central LA, do they? Or the California National Guard, for that matter.

Humanitarian disasters don't play well on European TV either, but I guess we're more aware of the fact that we're not likely to be greeted with flowers.

It would go a long way towards solving the problem of brutal dictators if we started by not propping them up, or selling them weapons, or using them as proxies.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

As a recovering interventionist, let me emphasize the other point beyond legality: practicality. It's one thing to know that a dictator is evil and want to stop it, it is another whether we have political leaders capable of maintaining oversight and making the right decisions, the army trained for both fighting and building trust and institutions, and the public support that lasts throughout such a mission. Let me quote from something Billmon wrote prophetically on March 2, 2003 (two weeks before the war officially began), criticising Joshua Marshall (of Talking Points Memo):

Is there anything that suggests America
is the right country to overhaul an ancient culture, riddled with
religious and ethnic tensions, that got hung up on the conveyer belt
between medievalism and modernity? Us? The guys who couldn't find most
foreign countries on a map, and don't care?

And are the American people really prepared to sacrifice the blood and treasure it would take to try?

 A dictator gets in power, and since the West is barred from making judgments, the dictator can destroy his own country, kill a big chunk of his country's population, make the rest of them miserable, and generally be a horrible person who causes lots of suffering. Or, you get a nasty civil war that you ignore because it's politically impossible to resolve. This does not play well on American TV, and inevitably leads to interventionist sentiment. I don't know why it plays acceptably on European TV, but apparently it does--if your proposition is widespread.

I don't know if I had a proposition (it's just my private wishful thinking) is widespread in Europe. I don't live there anymore since a long time and that's why I have so many difficulties to understand what's going on.

I am dreaming about a happy big family alliance of European, Russian (may be China) and the US all agreeing when it is appropriate to intervene in a civil war conflict of a sovereign nation to prevent genocide and massive destruction of infrastructure and property of civilians. The problem is they all disagree over the morals and laws nowadays as to when to intervene militarily. I thought that Europe and Russia were right now a bit more closer in their thinking about when it would be appropriate to use peace enforcing military defense forces, but I learned already in this thread that it's obviously not the case.

I think the reasons, why Europeans might not be as easily turned on by nasty civil war images on TV to jump up and believe they should intervene and teach other cultures how to behave civil and fair with the might of their weapons, is the fact that they remember too much how hard it is to teach a misbehaving member of their own community exactly that.

The only real difference in American civilian and European civilian experience of the elder generation is that America's wars were never endured by their own civilian population at home.

Why did Bush believe (and why do so many Americans believe) that they "just can go in and teach someone morals and helas, they accept and become "good people" according to their standards?" You know it's this "just say no to drugs - kind of way of solving all problems - and if that's not enough - please get some councelling and that will do it). I always wondered about that.

Why was it that almost all Europeans were utterly sceptical about the invasion of US troops in Iraq? Nice to watch our scepticism be equated with cowardness by the US media. Nice to watch how we were hold accountable by questioning our morals. But why did the majority of Americans believe that it could work? Get rid of the evil man, try to not kill too many civilians on the way, and helas, we will have peace and freedom in Iraq? Where did this US way of thinking come from?

So, what is it? Are we European nations in the NATO or EU more coward than the Americans to protect victims of aggression and murder in dictatorships and civil wars in other countries? Or are the Americans more "naive" or are they "more moral" or "more courageous"?

Or is it that European civilians have more say in what their government can decide upon their participiation in military engagements? May be the US government is more authoritarian and can pretty much "do what they want" and deploy their forces "independent what the poor guys, who do the fighting for the US politicians" for whatever they seem fit? May be it's just that the US is less democratic than European democracies, when it comes to who decides when and for what causes their military is sent to war?

And I don't quite agree that the images of starving people, cut off hands and other "uncivilized, undemocratic" images of theocratic or dictatorial cultures and regimes,  don't touch Europeans as much as Americans, but may be the press in Europe and many politicians don't use them as easily and fast as an internal political tool and justification for their ideologically drivien policies as it is in the US.