You'll find the following article on the
USAToday.com website... It's reprinted without permission, but it's greatly relative to Europe's support of the UN's/USA's retaliation against terrorism.
10/22/2001 - Updated 11:08 PM ET
Europeans stay united with AmericaBy Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY
MADRID, Spain — In the Café Gijon each day, Spanish painter Antonio Granados, 83, watches the world pass by. His eyes are bright even behind thick glasses. A mane of white hair sweeps elegantly over his shoulders.
But beneath his calm exterior, Granados is deeply worried about the threat of further terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA.
He's seen Osama bin Laden's face before in men with names like Franco, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. "We owe the United States our liberty and our democracy. If not for the Americans, the Nazis would have ruled us," says Granados, who spent World War II exiled in Morocco. He fled Spain after being imprisoned and tortured by Franco's fascist forces. "Now Europe is united behind the United States."
Six weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, polls show that old sages like Granados are more in touch with the public mood in Western Europe than the 5,000 pacifists who marched last Friday in Ghent, Belgium, at a summit of 15 European Union chiefs of state. The popularity of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the United States' closest war ally, approaches Winston Churchill's during World War II, says Market and Opinion Research International in London.
MORI pollster Roger Mortimore says, "There's no doubt the (European) public were profoundly shocked by what happened Sept. 11. The natural reaction to that is, 'We're all on the same side.' " And, though conventional wisdom holds that heavy casualties would undermine allied support, European polls continue to show strong backing for a sustained U.S. campaign despite the risks.
Seventy percent of Britons surveyed support military action. Nearly half of the British are willing to accept heavy casualties to maintain the war effort. Nearly two-thirds of the French back the armed conflict. Russia's government supports U.S. retaliation even though a significant number of Russians believe the conflict presents security concerns for their own country, polls show. Support remains solid in Germany. On Oct. 12, a group of German Green Party members of Parliament tried to push through a resolution calling for an end to the bombing campaign, but they were routed.
Disagreements exist. Last week, some European leaders voiced reservations about a broader offensive beyond Afghanistan. Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said, "We will never take part in a wider world conflict." The leaders also criticized Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for excluding them from a private war council just before the EU summit.
But other signs demonstrate that America's fight against terrorism is forging closer ties within Europe. EU heads of state, joined by Russia, ended Friday's summit with a statement declaring "total solidarity with the United States."
The war on terrorism has brought Russia closer into the allied orbit. And the conflict provided new impetus to NATO, which is changing from a Cold War fighting machine into a nimbler force ready to fight less visible enemies.
"Sept. 11 has re-established a common trans-Atlantic sense of purpose," says Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the United States. "Europeans and Americans share not only the same values — above all, the dignity and freedom of every human being — but also the same challenges."
Spain's foreign minister, Josep Pique, says, "I see the European response as very solid."
That's certainly the view from Spain's capital. Here at the Café Gijon, Spanish poets, painters and writers have assembled since the 1940s to talk about life. Age has decimated their ranks. Today, young couples and tourists outnumber the elderly artists, but some of the senior sages still sit each afternoon at the tables reserved for them. The men's memories reach the recesses of time when they draw parallels to this fight against terrorism.
Poet Rafael Morales, 82, says the terrorism risk is comparable to earlier threats posed by fascism and communism. "It's an enormous possibility that bin Laden will infect the Muslim nations for a confrontation against the West."
Spain, at Western Europe's southern boundary, has been the flash point for clashes of civilizations since Islamic Moors invaded the country in the eighth century.
Morales calls the United States' war on terrorism "a noble fight."
Painter Granados recalls how allied and Muslim interests alike were served during World War II when British Gen. Bernard Montgomery's tanks rumbled through Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. "The only good terrorist," Granados says, "is a dead terrorist."
[ 10-23-2001: Message edited by: MadridMan ]
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