Let me start by saying that in spite of the fact that I talk about politics in this post, it isn’t really a political post. It is just a set of observations with no particular conclusion intended. <\/p>\n
A week and a few days ago, I returned from a trip to Europe, mostly in France. I was at a conference center in a chateau in Normandy, Cerisy-la-salle. The conference was good; its only drawback, for me, was that it was an interdisciplinary conference. I think my presentation and the discussion afterward went well, especially considering the fact that my French is, to put it mildly, barbarous. Contrary to popular mythology, people were not rude about the state of my French. They worked hard to understand me and gave me the benefit of the doubt. I was the only person there for whom English was the mother tongue. <\/p>\n
I was in France during the 60th anniversaries of the D-Day landings and the liberation of Paris, and I was touched by how many American flags and other recognitions of the US that I saw, both in Paris and in Normandy. I think every village in Normandy was flying an American flag, not just those where one might expect tourists. Just outside the entrance to Cerisy-la-salle is a large monument to seven Allied airmen killed in a plane crash at the site. Not only were the national flags of each airman flying at it, there were fresh flowers each day. On my visit to Point du Hoc, where American rangers lost 160 of 250 men taking a German artillery site on D-Day in an exercise that was more-or-less futile because the guns had been removed before they arrived, most of the large number of visitors were Europeans, and most of the Europeans were French. They were there to honor the sacrifice of those Rangers, and I heard more than one parent explaining that sacrifice to children. The country road that goes near Cerisy is called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Voie de Libert\u00c3\u00a9\u00e2\u20ac? because it is the route that Allied forces took as they came inland. Time explains why, but we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the same remembrance for the great aid that the French were to us at the Revolution. Perhaps we ought to be more explicitly grateful for their help, even hundreds of years later. <\/p>\n
In contrast, though no one was hostile to me personally as an American, I met no one in France, the Netherlands, or Belgium, who wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hostile to current American policy and, in particular, to President Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven those who supported our incursion into Iraq, such as Dutch people who support keeping their troops there, are deeply angry about the way we have done things. And the anger wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t confined only to the intellectuals. I found it among shopkeepers as well. Because of those feelings, it was almost impossible to talk with Europeans about the issues. Though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a Bush supporter, I frequently found myself defending him against sincerely held, but in my opinion outrageous charges, such as those implied by Michael Moore. <\/p>\n