More on the Euro/U.S. ideological divide on the issue of international terrorist threats, this time from Amity Shlaes, writing in The Financial Times:

The White House was disconcerted by European incomprehension over its concerns about Iraq. As Mr Bush noted, Iraq is a country that has gassed its own people. Europe may believe that the US is exaggerating the risks, universalising its problems out of an apocalyptic sense of its own importance. The US administration believes the terror is not a psychological construct; it is an external threat to western survival, like a hurricane or a volcano. America wishes the war would go away too, but thinks it will not.

One could argue, of course, that Europe is making a cold calculation: that it is not a terrorist target, while the US is. But such a calculation ignores terror’s incoherence: Osama bin Laden killed Europeans and American Muslims along with the others on the upper floors of the World Trade Center. Europe and America are in this battle together. It would be a tragedy if it took an attack on their home soil for Europeans to recognise that.

Indeed. And this despite attacks on Europeans abroad. As Shlaes observes: “Especially shocking has been the German reaction to the burning of German tourists by a fundamentalist terrorist who firebombed a synagogue in Tunisia. This was treated in the German press largely as a story of humanity — how to save the survivors — rather than a signal to go to arms.”

What giant buildings must crumble in Europe before its leaders decide to forego appeasement in favor of proactive anti-terrorism measures — if only as a matter of self-interested practicality (or, as the Europeans themselves like to couch it, in the name of “complexity”)?