Opinion/Mark Steyn: I watched a short news story about Spanish troops leaving Iraq the other day. During the brief report, the American pal with me grew increasingly agitated. He still couldn't quite believe the Spaniards were going ahead and pulling out.
Americans don't get Europe. On the day of the Madrid massacre, I received a tonne of e-mails from US readers along the lines of: "3/11 is Europe's 9/11. Even the French will be in." Friends told me: "The Europeans get it now." Doughty warriors of the blogosphere posted the Spanish flag on their home pages in solidarity with America's loyal allies in the war against terrorism. John Ellis, a Bush cousin and (or, in deference to Irish Times sensibilities, "but") a savvy guy with a smart website, declared: "Every member-state of the EU understands that Madrid is Rome is Berlin is Amsterdam is Paris is London is New York."
All wrong.
Within 72 hours of the carnage, Spanish voters sent a tough message to the terrorists: "We apologise for catching your eye." Whether or not Madrid is Rome and Berlin and Amsterdam and Paris, it certainly isn't New York.
One reason why Madrid isn't New York can be found by taking a trip to the multiplex to see the new Starsky and Hutch movie, based on the old Seventies cop show. Don't worry, you won't have to sit through the whole thing. You can leave after 10 minutes and go to some dreary Miramax thing with Nicole Kidman valiantly spending four hours in make-up each morning to look wan and sallow.
But my point is a simple one. Starsky and Hutch is one of a zillion 1970s retreads around these days. They're all the same: S&H opens with Barry Manilow, but it could as easily have been the Starland Vocal Band or the Partridge Family or the Village People. And after the song come the cheesecloth shirt jokes and the flyaway collar jokes, and afros and discos and all the rest.
That's the difference. If you're American, the 1970s mean tank-tops, Charlie's Angels and Jimmy Carter. If you're Mediterranean, the 1970s mean Franco, Salazar's grim successors, and the Colonels. Not so funny. In Madrid and a good half of the enlarged European Union, the day before yesterday means dictatorship.
The men and women who run Spain today grew up under Franco; they were young adults when King Juan Carlos stood firm against a coup determined to overthrow the country's new democracy. For many Spaniards, the desire to reach an accommodation with the forces of history is natural - indeed, the default mode. So, three days after their fellow citizens got blown up, they shrugged to the Islamists: "You're right. We'd rather sit this one out. Go blow up the Anglo-Saxons."
"Don't mention the war," John Cleese instructed Manuel in Fawlty Towers. Manuel has no intention of mentioning the war, and if the British are foolish enough to keep doing so they can take it up with al-Qaeda themselves.
Just over a year ago, in one of those wretched Security Council performances before the Gulf War, the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, turned to Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, and offered the umpteenth variation of the familiar argument that, if we Europeans are resistant to ze idea of war, it is because we have seen so much of ze horrors of ze war. The reality is the other way round: the reason they've seen so much of the horrors of war is because they're so resistant to the idea of it - until it's too late and conflagration is all that's left.
If one had to cast the great continental fatalistic shrug in a less jaded light, one would do it this way: the Second Republics and Third Empires, fascists and communists and European Unions come and go; they're mere political forces. What matters are the ancient buildings, the old vineyards, the big stinky unpasteurised cheese your village has made for centuries and which the wimps at the US Federal agency responsible for regulating all the taste out of American food won't even let into the country: this is the essence of a man's identity; political tides ebb and flow, but underneath you endure.
By contrast, an American's sense of himself as an American is much more explicitly political - it's about First and Second Amendments, or, according to taste, a "woman's right to choose".
Most Americans can't understand why, barely a moment after crawling out from under the Soviets, Central and Eastern Europe can't wait to sign on to the latest crazy "big idea" - the European Union. But it's precisely because no-one in Mitteleuropa really thinks the EU's going to be the last word on their political identity, any more than the Third Reich or the Warsaw Pact were.
They're right in a way. For most communist or Nazi foot-soldiers, the label was a flag of convenience. But that's not true of the jihadi. And the tragedy for the continent is that this time it's their core identity that's at stake. If Americans think that Spanish election result is a disgrace, look down the road two or three years, to the next election cycle, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands.
In the US, psephologists speculate on the impact of Ralph Nader's 2 or 3 per cent. Think about an election where 20 per cent of the voters are a culturally unassimilated Muslim bloc. If Washington has a hard time getting any useful contribution to the war from Europe now, you do the math five years hence.
The incompatible buddy-cop routine works in Starsky and Hutch, but America and Europe have stretched the formula way beyond breaking point. It can't be put back together.