Brits speaking softly and carrying small stick

Victor Davis Hanson:

We admire speaking softly and carrying a big stick, while deploring speaking loudly and carrying a small stick, but the British apparently are both speaking softly and carrying a small stick. This incident is sort of a scraping off the veneer of a generally known, but little discussed truth: that the U.K. has become often not the exception to, but the nexus of, a new sort of European thinking antithetical to the U.S. Blair's stalwart role in Iraq has disguised that fact; but any who read the U.K papers, both right and left, look at the opinion polls, or consider the Islamic problems in London, can easily conclude that Anglo-American exceptionalism is coming to an end for existential reasons that transcend this administration.

Since 9/11 we have been lectured on the advantages of "soft" power, especially in the context of the economic engine of the EU used for moral purposes. But if the Europe Union is still extending trade credits to a belligerent that has committed an act of piracy against a fellow member, then there is neither soft or hard power, but no power at all.

... This "incident" has proved a multilateral trifecta: a patrol sanctioned by the U.N. gets no support from the U.N., a member of the EU is left hanging in the interest of EU trade, a NATO member finds no NATO allies, other than the U.S., to offer support. So what is the purpose of these alphabetic organizations? Perhaps Ahmadinejad should start holding seminars, Henry Kissinger style, to instruct the Islamic world on how to deal with the West, given his instincts that Western rhetoric is in inverse proportion to Western willingness to stand up for a principle.

...

He goes on to note the blame America stories coming out of the Independent headline. It makes the absurd suggestion that our capture of Iranians plotting the death of Americans in Iraq caused them to go after the Brits. This story was also pickup up by Drudge last night and overwhelmed the Independents web site with hits. My guess is that most of them were from liberals looking for an excuse to blame Bush.