We may disagree with the US, but we share the same goals
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Your support makes all the difference.Yes, it is a heavy-booted parading of America's virtues. Many Europeans will feel patronised by the stage-managing of President Bush's trip to France, with all the subtlety of a Hollywood script, to take in a Normandy cemetery where 10,000 US soldiers are buried.
Yet Mr Bush is quite right to remind the French – and other Europeans – of the great sacrifices his nation made on our behalf during the Second World War. It was the US which bore the brunt of the costs, in both human lives and materiel, of the Normandy landings and the liberation of western Europe. According to the American Battle Monuments Commission, nearly 77,000 US citizens who fought in that war are buried in France. That sombre statistic should put past disagreements over Vietnam and present ones over Iraq into perspective.
It does not mean we Europeans should adopt a posture of uncritical and grateful subservience. It is no bad thing for the so-called Most Powerful Man in the World to face protesters on the streets of Paris and Caen.
With those protesting against the US inaction on climate change and against US policy in the Middle East, The Independent broadly agrees; with those protesting against the US as an imperialist aggressor for capitalist globalisation, we broadly disagree. But those differences are healthy. All voices should be heard, especially those making arguments to which the President is rarely exposed at home.
Equally, if some Europeans resent being reminded of America's role in defending democracy, freedom and tolerance on this continent, we would defend their right to express such a view but would submit that it is profoundly mistaken.
The US is both an ally and a nation founded on more or less the same values that we claim to hold dear. In its attempts to live up to the ideals of its republic, the US often falls short, just as we Europeans fall short of the values enshrined in our Convention on Human Rights. But we should not overlook the fact that our goals are the same.
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