[ALBSA-Info] WSJ: Is Greece a Western nation?

[Bejko, Kreshnik]

Is Greece a Western Nation?		
By Takis Michas. Mr. Michas's book "The Unholy Alliance: Greece and
Milosevic's Serbia during the 1990s" will be published in the spring of 2002
(A & M University Press). ATHENS -- The Greek political class, to its great
embarrassment, is finally reaping the fruits of the anti-Americanism it has
tolerated -- and occasionally promoted -- over the last 20 years. According
to opinion polls, Greece is the only NATO and European Union member state in
which, following the tragedy of September 11, the majority of the population
expressed feelings of dislike for the United States and disagreed with the
Alliance's decision to attack the Taliban. In a poll published in a Greek
newspaper a few days after the tragic events of September 11, only 18.9% of
the respondents said that they had positive feelings about the United States
and its inhabitants. A separate poll revealed that 25% of respondents said
they felt "satisfied," and believed that "justice had been served."
Moreover, 30% of respondents said that the attacks were a justified reaction
to U.S. policies. Only 10% of respondents agreed with the view that Greece
should cooperate militarily with its NATO partners in a possible campaign
against states harboring terrorism. Takis Kafetzis, the political analyst
who supervised the poll, claims that in reality over 40% of the respondents
felt pleasure with what happened. "The fact that they did not say so was
simply due to the fact that they felt that they had to somehow control their
responses." Greece, he says, simply does not share Western values and
perceptions.
Political and Military Sins The view that somehow American was to blame for
the terrorist attack dominated public discourse from the start. In learning
about the terrorist attack, the immensely popular Archbishop Christodoulos
of the Greek Orthodox Church stated that the terrorist act was the result of
the "injustice and inequality" that pervades the world. The media, too,
joined in the fray. As ASS Press reported, television broadcasting in Greece
was consumed by discussions "over whether America brought this event upon
itself for perceived political and military sins." Not long thereafter, the
Center for New Policy Pavlos Bakoyannis -- named after the Greek terrorists'
most prominent victim -- invited the citizens of Athens to participate in a
memorial service for the victims of terrorist attacks. Only about 500 people
turned up. By contrast, the next day nearly 5,000 people participated in a
communist-led demonstration against the U.S. denouncing the CIA for its role
in the terrorist acts. Meanwhile, allegations that the Jews were responsible
for the September 11 terrorist attacks were so prominent in sections of the
Greek media that the Israeli Embassy took the unprecedented step of
denouncing those allegations as constituting "criminal, racist, anti-Semitic
propaganda resembling that of the Nazis." But perhaps the most outrageous
incident happened during a soccer match between a Greek and a Scotland club
on Sept. 13. Fans of the Greek soccer club tried to burn the American flag
before the start of the game and booed during a moment of silence for the
victims of the terrorist attacks in the United States. "What went on in
Athens disgusted me," the coach of the Scotland team said in a statement to
the Associated Press. "What badly disappointed me was that there was no
effort made by anyone, the police included, to do anything about it. I could
not believe such anti-American feeling in a European country." According to
Richardos Someritis, a writer of the daily To Vima, the four main ideas that
dominate Greek folk explanations of the terrorist attack are: That it was an
act of the Jews, who wanted to promote their own interests.  That Osama bin
Laden is the creation of CIA propaganda.  That the terrorist act is part of
the struggle of the repressed against U.S. imperialism.  That Greece is not
threatened by terrorism but by the fight against terrorism.  Such views seem
to have more in common with public opinion in Cairo or Damascus than in
Berlin or Rome. Where do they spring from? Since at least the mid-1970s, the
perception that has dominated the political left is that Greek national
aspirations required a break with the U.S. and its policies. Thus,
throughout the 1980s, the governing Pasok socialist party under Andreas
Papandreou made it a cardinal point to antagonize Western and especially
American governments. It supported the Jaruzelski dictatorship in Poland,
refused to condemn the suppression of dissidents in the Soviet Union and the
1983 shoot-down of a Korean airliner, harbored organizations perceived as
terrorist in the West, and opposed the Reagan administration's deployment of
cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. Then too, following the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe, the anti-American narrative came to be adopted
by the political right. According to recent polls, over 50% of Greek
conservatives dislike the U.S. Much of this owes to events in the Balkans
over the last decade. American policies in Bosnia and Kosovo were widely
seen as aiming to destroy Eastern Orthodoxy itself. Feeble attempts by the
present government of Costas Simitis to lessen the identification of church
and state in Greece were immediately attacked as being directed by the
"Jewish lobby" in Washington, while the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic --
celebrated all over the world -- was seen as a sinister CIA plot. Today
Greek nationalism, encompassing large sections of all political parties, has
become identical with anti-Americanism. Such attitudes are not going
unnoticed, both in the Western news media and especially by the large and
influential Greek-American community in the U.S. In an avalanche of letters
to the English language edition of the Greek daily Kathimerini
Greek-Americans expressed their outrage at the behavior of their ethnic
cousins. Greece had reached "the bottom of the swamp," wrote one. "It is
truly shameful" wrote another, "that the mainstream press of a civilized
nation would find ways to justify the terrorist attack on innocent
civilians." But perhaps the strongest emotional reaction to the events in
Greece came from Stephen Miller, a professor of classical archeology at
Berkeley. After pointing out that considerable archeological work in Greece
was carried out by private donations of American citizens, he questioned
whether this flow of funds would continue as donors became aware of Greek
responses. "After the attempted U.S. flag burning, after the anti-American
editorials in so many Athenian newspapers . . . how can I approach those
American donors and ask them to continue support of the work? How can I ask
them to take money and contribute it to a place where Americans are hated?"
Virulent anti-Americanism The leaders of Greece's two main parties expressed
their grief for the terrorist attack and pledged their support for U.S.
attempts to fight terrorism. Nevertheless, as the polls show their ability
to influence public opinion is minimal. Having for so many years tolerated
attacks by their colleagues against U.S. policies on terrorism, economic
globalization, the Balkans, human rights and so forth, they now find
themselves in the unenviable position of having to argue against the
(Balkan) version of tiersmondisme that constitutes Greece's dominant
ideology. Throughout the last decade not a single major Greek political
figure had the will, the courage or the inclination to challenge the
populist anti-Americanism promoted on a daily basis by the vast majority of
the Greek media. If today they feel embarrassed by the views of their
compatriots they have only themselves to blame. -- From The Wall Street
Journal Europe