Krauthammer rages! And damn, is it good! As usual, all emphasis is mine.

It is pure fiction that this pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration's hyperapologetic, good-citizen
internationalism.

Yep. The only reason France is talking to us now is because Americans have hurt France with their self-decided boycott. USS Clueless has a lot more to say on that subject.

The world apparently likes the U.S. when it is on its knees. From that the Democrats deduce a foreign policy — remain on our knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the world.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool's bargain--3,000 dead for a day's worth of nice words and a few empty U.N. resolutions. The Democrats would forfeit American freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another nice French editorial? To be retracted as soon as the U.S. stops playing victim?

Well, as far as I can tell, that is the Donk's policy.

The Europeans, Ajami astutely observes, disdain us for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990s we engaged three times in combat — in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans — to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all. And in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.; it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order.

We tried that whole "lets be friends" thing before, and it got us nowhere. So now we're going to play the "don't you dare fuck with us" game, which works so much better. Don't believe me? Al-Queda is reduced to attacking Saudi Arabia now, instead of New York City. And as long as we keep pressure on those sand-fleas, they won't be able to do even that.

We need to stop worrying so much about world opinion, and deal with reality.

Hat tip to AlphaPatriot.