Opinion Journal:
It has been quite the spectacle this week, with Condoleezza Rice touring Europe amid mock dismay over the fact that the CIA may have detained terrorists in European jails. If the Secretary of State weren't so diplomatic, she'd cancel her tour and say she won't come back until the Continent's politicians decide to grow up.
One of Europe's moral conceits is to fret constantly about the looming outbreak of fascism in America, even though it is on the Continent itself where the dictators seem to pop up every couple of decades. Then Europe dials 9-11, and Washington dutifully rides to the rescue. The last time was just a few years ago, as U.S. firepower stopped Slobodan Milosevic, who had bedeviled Europe for years.
In return, it would be nice if once in a while Europe decided to help America with its security problem, especially since Islamic terrorism is also Europe's security problem. But instead the U.S. Secretary of State has to put up with lectures about the phony issue of "secret" prisons housing terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans.
We put "secret" in quotes because the CIA could hardly carry on operations in Europe without the knowledge of the countries involved. Rather, as Ms. Rice dryly put it, the U.S. often engages "the enemy through the cooperation of our intelligence services with their foreign counterparts." So the so-called "rendition" programs at issue--involving the transportation, detention and questioning of terror suspects--are precisely the kind of anti-terror efforts that multilateral Europeans ought to love.
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What gives? Mostly opportunism and political cowardice. The two countries mentioned in the press for helping the U.S.--Poland and Romania--ought to be applauded for doing so. But the European media have spun so many wildly false stories about U.S. detention policy that anti-American demagogues see an opening and even friendly European politicians are afraid to push back.
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More dangerous for the longer term, the Continent's preening anti-Americanism has also been duly noted on this side of the Atlantic. Europeans should worry that their moral hauteur may well be repaid by American popular opinion the next time they call on the Yanks to put down one of their homegrown fascists.
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