The Washington Post successfully exposits the "root cause" differences in the American and European weltansichten and what it means for the Global War on Terrorism:
LONDON -- While President Bush was giving an address earlier this month describing the war on terrorism as "not a figure of speech" but "an inescapable calling of our generation," the official in charge of overseeing Europe's counterterrorism efforts was offering a far different assessment.
"Europe is not at war," Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union, told a German newspaper. "We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn't change the way we live."
The most persuasive (and cogent) analyst they interview says,
"The Europeans are simply not as shocked by terrorism as Americans were," said Michael Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at King's College London. "March 11 in Madrid was a wake-up call to Europe, whereas September 11 to America was the beginning of a new kind of war. So we say we've got to do more of the same, only a bit more vigorously, which is a very European reaction. But for the United States, September 11 meant not just new policies but a new way of thinking about the world."
Ultimately, said Clarke of the International Policy Institute, Europeans and Americans have a fundamental cultural divide. "You're a can-do society," he said, "and there's an American cultural propensity to see terrorism, like other issues, as a problem that has to be solved. But the European attitude tends much more to see it as something that has to be managed."
Or, to put it in other words, Americans are Mexi-cans, while Europeans are Mexi-can'ts.
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