The other global divide: U.S. vs. Europe
Posted at AlterNet on March 18, 2004

Two excellent articles bring into sharp focus the widening rift between the United States and its allies across the pond. A Newsweek story reveals that Spanish authorities effectively shut the FBI out of the investigation into the Madrid blasts. Rejecting the Justice Department's offer to send a team of specialists, the Spaniards have instead turned to European intelligence agencies for help. The result is that we've been "frozen out of the biggest terrorist case in Europe since September 11," a trend that bodes ill for future cooperation in the battle against terrorism.

This Christian Science Monitor article places Madrid within the context of the profound differences between the two views of terrorism, best epitomized in Europe's refusal to characterize the effort to combat terror as a "war."

According to the Monitor, "After decades of battling terrorism on their own soil, Europeans continue to believe that the best counterterrorism work is done through police intelligence and cooperation. And they believe that characterizing the fight as a 'war' only antagonizes the populations that have produced terrorist groups and makes it harder to address the root causes of terrorism."

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