Not Your Sweetie

Even NY Times
Noticed: the Entire World Hates Bush*


PARIS, Jan. 23 - In Europe, it often seems that it is not
only the wisdom of a war against Iraq that lies at the
heart of trans-Atlantic differences, but the personal style
of George W. Bush himself.

To European ears, the president's language is far too
blunt, and he has been far too quick to cast the debate
about how to separate Saddam Hussen from his weapons of
mass destruction in black-and-white certainties, officials
in Paris and Berlin say. They add that his confrontational
approach, his impatience with the inspections and even his
habit of finger pointing as he speaks undermine the
possibility of common strategy against Saddam Hussein.

"Much of it is the way he talks, this provocative manner,
the jabbing of his finger at you," said Hans-Ulrich Klose,
the vice chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the
German Parliament. "It's Texas, a culture that is
unfamiliar to Germans. And it's the religious tenor of his
arguments."


"Much of it is the way he talks, the rhetoric, the
religiosity," he said of Mr. Bush. "It reminds them of what
drove them crazy about Reagan. It reminds them of what they
miss about Clinton. All the stereotypes we thought we had
banished for good after Sept. 11 - the cowboy imagery, in
particular - it's all back."