I think I knows Suzanne Fields

This is the title of Suzanne's latest article.

"Old Europe thinks it know the U.S. -- It doesn't"

I'm assuming sometime this morning someone will read that title and correct it.

The article is basically a psychological study of why Europeans hate America. It's not very good. Europeans basically hate Americans because their believe in their socialist ideology and they hate us for rejecting it. That's very comforting mythology, but it's not backed up by much and doesn't make a lot of sense.

Most of the "proof" comes from a book by Olaf Gersemann, which explodes certain myths Europeans have about the United States. The fact that Germans don't entirely understand what economic life is like in the United States isn't really proof that they hate us. And of course it says nothing about France, which is where Ms. Fields would like us all to focus.

The article suffers by ignoring the fact that President Bush, and fellow conservatives, have created or increased tension between our nation and parts of Europe. She alludes to this briefly.

The day after Sept. 11, the Paris newspaper Le Monde famously declared that "Today we are all Americans." That reads now like a dispatch from the War of 1812. Sit down for an espresso in a sidewalk café on the Champs Elysees today and you're more likely to hear, "Today we all hate America."

By declaring that Europe's disagreement with the United States is simply an irrational disdain based on misunderstanding, President Bush gets a pass for having created the problem. I mean if we can't work with them, we can't work with them, right?

And of course, if they are irrationally hating us, than all of John Kerry's suggestions that he might be able to work with them better are nonsense, as Ms. Fields makes explicit. "John Kerry is whistlin' Dixie if he think his love of all things French would be returned by the Europeans if he should become the 44th president of the United States. Old Europe would gleefully transfer its loathing of George W. Bush to him."

Of course, if Europe does hate America irrationally, why did Le Monde print that famous headline?