If the Americans were a tough audience, the foreign devils were even tougher -- not counting the Mufti, I mean. A Jordanian guy asked the Veep if he could possibly have a word with the Attorney General about not treating every Arab visitor to the United States like blood-sucking terrorist scum. Cheney said he'd see what he could do. A Brit asked, in effect, whether the United States intends to continue running its own Caribbean version of the Gulag Archipelago. "Yes," Cheney replied, in effect.
Even Klaus Schwab -- the World Economic Forum's founder and maximum leader -- got into the act. Schwab is about as old school as it's possible for a Swiss economist to get. He's as likely to run through the streets of Davos stark naked as openly insult the vice president of the United States. Yet he managed to get in a nasty dig at Cheney's recent faux paux of sending out Christmas cards inscribed with this quote from Ben Franklin:
"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"This, Schwab gently pointed out, might be a bit alienating to the overwhelming majority of the world's population that does not believe eternal American supremacy has been ordained by a white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian God.
Cheney said it was all Lynn's fault.
...The Mufti of Bosnia, no less, asked the Veep to convey his deepest thanks to the American people for the blessed liberation of his country.
....Cheney, after all, was one of the tough guys in the Bush I crowd who opposed saving the Bosnians. And his party certainly made it as hard as it could for Clinton to do it. If the Veep saw the joke, his poker face betrayed not a clue.
...Basically, I do think the Times was right when it said the hostility here is not as raw as it was last year -- when many non-Americans were trying to get their minds around the fact that the world's only superpower now claims the right to invade anyone, anywhere, anytime -- without so much as a by-your-leave from anyone. But then I've never gotten the impression that the ill will was directed at Americans per se (except, perhaps, by some of the younger Europeans on the WEF staff, who clearly detest us.)
No, what's blossomed here over the past two years isn't anti-Americanism, but anti-Bushism, which is why Joe Biden was able to get a big round of applause at a session this afternoon simply by observing that Bush, Cheney and the neocons do not represent the views of the vast majority of the American people.
Personally, I'm not sure that's true...
Me either.
The entire post at Whiskey Bar.
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