Offensive

Senator Jon Kyl (R.-AZ.) appeared on C-Span's Newsmakers today to slap Europeans in the face. Oh, that wasn't his primary objective but he made clear his attitude toward our allies across the Atlantic. Watch (video below) Senator Kyl, responding to a question about Guantanamo Bay, complain

You know, the fact that some European leader — first of all, they didn’t like the fact that we invaded Iraq and replaced Saddam Hussein either.

There are two ways to view this. Writing on the Center for American Progress (the organization responsible for thinkprogress.org) website, Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, Laura Conley (not in response to Kyl) argue

The Bush administration’s decision to take us into a needless war has also made the American people less secure. After six years of fighting in Iraq, we have emboldened new enemies, created a pocket of terrorist activity that did not exist before our invasion, severely limited our ability to provide adequate resources to Afghanistan, the real central front of the war on terror, and undermined the capability and readiness of the military.

True enough. Additionally, however, Kyl's politically correct swipe at Europeans obscures the fact, of which Kyl should have some semblance of awareness, that as of August 16, 2008, 297 Europeans had lost their lives in our nation's war of choice. The number pales in comparison to the number of Americans who have been killed, but the European nations are much smaller than the U.S.A., and did not initiate the war. And that is at least 15 nations which, misguided or otherwise, did not complain about the U.S. invasion, in contrast to Ky's whine about Europe.

Sometimes ignorance is no excuse.