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Separated by Civilization: Trans-Atlantic Impasse (1)
The war in Iraq has made the Atlantic seem wider. But really it has had the effect of a magnifying glass, bringing older and more fundamental differences between Europe and the United States into focus. (2)
These growing divisions? over war, peace, religion, sex, life and death? amount to a philosophical dispute about the common origins of European and American civilization. Both children of the Enlightenment, the United States and Europe clearly differ about the nature of this inheritance and about who is its better custodian. (3)
Start with religion. The United States is experiencing a revival of the Christian faith in many areas of civic and political life, while in Europe the process of secularization continues unabated. (4)Today the United States is the most religious-minded society of the Western democracies. In a 2003 Harris poll (5) 79 percent of Americans said they believed in God, and more than a third said they attended a religious service once a month or more. Numerous polls have shown that these figures are much lower in Western Europe. In the United States a majority of respondents in recent years told pollsters that they believed in angels, while in Europe the issue was apparently considered so preposterous (6) that no one even asked the question.
Terms that President George W. Bush has used, like "crusade" and "axis of evil," and Manichaean exclusions like his observation that anyone who is not on our side is on the side of the terrorists, reveal the assumption of a religious mantle by a secular power, which in Europe has become unthinkable. (7) Was it not, perhaps, this same sense of religious infallibility that seduced senior members of the Bush administration into leading their country into a war with Iraq on the basis of information that has turned out to be false? (8)
Another reason for Europe's alienation from the United States is harder to define, but for want of a better term, I call it American narcissism (9).
When American troops in Iraq mistakenly shoot an Arab journalist or reduce half of a village to rubble in response to the explosion of a roadside bomb, there will inevitably be a backlash (10). Only a fool would maintain that an occupying power could afford many such mistakes, even if it is under constant threat of suicide attacks.
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