Europe greets Bush with a yawn instead of a snarl this time
President Bush this week swept across a Europe that has largely moved beyond him.
An American president who enraged and infuriated Europeans over everything from military intervention in Iraq to climate change and once provoked massive street protests was greeted this time like a former boyfriend who is no longer even worth fighting with.
The Olympic flame's passage through the streets of Europe brought out more protesters than Bush did. By a lot.
"This is an American president at the end of his mandate who awakens more indifference than passion," the right-leaning French newspaper Le Figaro said on the eve of Bush's arrival here.
Bush himself captured the spirit at the start of his tour in Slovenia when he said: "Lots of people like America. It's possible that they don't necessarily like its president." The left-leaning French newspaper Liberation congratulated him for his lucidity.
In fact, in speeches and interviews, Bush expressed regret over the tone and Western-movie, "dead-or-alive"-type rhetoric he used during his presidency. At the same time, he reaffirmed his fundamental belief that Western democracies have a calling to stand up to the "enemies" of freedom.
Though wildly unpopular across most of Western Europe, Bush was treated more with indifference than animus. Still, he tried to convince Europeans that he was right. During an address in Paris, in what was billed as the centerpiece speech of his trip, he noted how skeptical many people were after World War II that Europe could emerge free and democratic. Comparing skeptics then and now, he said:
"Something happened in Europe that defied the skeptics and the pattern of the centuries, and that was the spread of human freedom. . . . We should be confident that one day the same determination and desire that brought freedom to Paris and Berlin and Riga will bring freedom to Gaza, Damascus and Tehran," he said.
As if to counter his image as a unilateralist, Bush used this farewell journey both to seek more financial and military help from allies for Afghanistan and to stand with European leaders stressing that diplomacy was the first choice in the confrontation with Iran. But he also said Iran would face further isolation if it didn't halt its nuclear program.
