4.
October, Greece
Language and even the Greek alphabet made it difficult for me to find out what the Greeks think. The Cold War started when President Truman supported the Greek government against the Communist guerilla fighters who had fought the German occupation. The government won that civil war with our help. I saw anti-American graffiti in Greece--"No war," "Stop Bush" in Latin script--and rarely was an American flag displayed where hotels or restaurant invited foreign guests by flying their flags. One such establishment left one flagpole empty.

Parts of Europe did join Bush’s war. Iraq after all was founded by Great Britain which took it from the Turkish empire after the First World War. Britain is no longer strong enough to keep order in its former colonies; it needs the United States, its own former colony. The British Labor government’s loyalty to the United States inverts the old colonial relationships. America is now the protector of its former colonizer.

Poland sent a token force to Iraq because it desires American protection, remembering the time it was a satellite of the Soviet Union. it’s the Poles’ union with Russia before the First World War was more a colonial relationship than a union of equals. The traditional fear of Russia made Poland join NATO and seek the protection of the United States. This relationship is also colonial. It can be said that living under the American nuclear umbrella during the Cold War made the whole of Europe into a kind of colony. Europe is torn between its old Cold War association with American power and a budding resistance against that power which more and more resembles the old colonial liberation movements. Very slowly the potential for estrangement develops.