On Fourth of July in Europe, old friends confront new reality

PARIS -- It's July 4 in Europe, when U.S. ambassadors from Lisbon to Ljubljana hoist California chardonnay and ask their garden party guests to toast an often rocky but rock-solid friendship.

This year, more than at any time in most people's memory, the response is mumbled and muted.

A new mood is clear in Athens, for instance, where the world will soon gather for ancient games meant to periodically wipe away any national hard feelings.

Once, Greeks just vented anti-American heat symbolically by vandalizing a downtown Athens statue of ex-President Harry Truman. Now rude graffiti is scrawled permanently near the U.S. Embassy.

The question across the Old Continent is not the oft-asked, "Why do they hate us?" In fact, not that many Europeans do. More thoughtful Americans ask, "Why have they lost respect for us?"

Iraq is the obvious short answer. In polls and conversations, a clear majority of Europeans excoriate President Bush for charging on alone into a widening quagmire that is reshaping the world around them.

Surface signs are conflicting. The French alone account for 10 percent of McDonald's new worldwide business. Across Europe, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird duke it out in English on the Cartoon Channel.

A sea change in sentimentBecause of NATO, multinational business and globalization that grows at Internet speed, the day-to-day dealings of the United States and Europe are inextricably intwined.

But analysts see something many describe as deep and troubling, a sea change from the usual ups and downs of trans-Atlantic sentiment.

This is particularly critical now, they say, as 25 European states are trying hard to build a more perfect union that is largely shaped, even if often at an unconscious level, on the American model.

"When Europeans look over at the roots they planted in America, they see root rot," said Barry Goodfield, an American conflict specialist who has worked in Europe since 1972.

In each of these nations, citizens regard themselves as no less free than Americans, he said, with elections, an unfettered press and, in some cases, foreign policy experience dating back centuries.

"They have misgivings about our judgment, our motives, our implementation," he said by telephone from the Netherlands. "Democracy is ultimately about choice, and Europeans see choice being taken away."

Style and attitudeBy giving Europe a take-it-or-leave-it option on Iraq, Goodfield said, Bush insulted old allies at a deep level.

"We bypassed the U.N. and diplomacy, and they're reacting to a slap in the face," Goodfield concluded. "They see us as not playing by the rules."

For many in Europe, it is a question of style and attitude.

At an official level, European diplomats say, Bush manages to jab continually at sore spots. Just as EU leaders reached a fragile accord on expansion, he visited Istanbul and told them they left out Turkey.

Yet, unlike earlier times when U.S. and European governments disagreed on issues, feelings run deep into every level of society.

European newspapers carry accounts of outraged travelers to the United States who end up in handcuffs and overnight cells before being sent home for what turns out to be a simple mistake.

Americans familiar with Europe over the years almost invariably describe symptoms of a changing attitude.

Outside of Paris, an American visitor heard her French friend's 11-year-old daughter announce with clear contempt that she would not learn English but rather German as her school's mandatory foreign language.

Lisa Gerber, a Los Angeles-based actress who spent her childhood in Germany, Austria and Sweden, declares herself amazed on a visit to Europe at the depth of disdain many people seem to feel.

"The other day, I heard one Englishwoman tell another about someplace she'd been, and she added, 'The best thing about it is that there aren't any Americans,"' Gerber said.

In a European Union of 450 million people, obviously enough, feelings vary widely. At recent celebrations on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, old allies and enemies hailed a firm friendship.

But a London-based public affairs group, Eurolegal Services, summed up the broad feeling on its Web site.

To Europeans, it said, some Bush supporters suggest a fond mother who watches her son at a graduation parade and notices that, while everyone else leads with the left foot, he leads with the right.

"Look," the mother exclaims to the woman next to her, "they are all out of step except my Johnny!"