FLORENCE, Italy - Europe is a good place to come to catch your breath and reorder your senses. The pace of life is slower here and the view of the United States is quite different from the perspective you get at home. European cultures are centuries older than the American way of life and Europeans have learned some lessons over time that might be of value to us.
Our first stop in Brussels was sobering. This ancient city has been the seat of NATO and is the new capital of the European Union. Flemish and French are spoken here, and the country is so small that Belgians can't help but be aware of other nations, other cultures and other languages. Several embassies and consulates cluster around the Boulevard de Regent but only one has barbed wire, antitank guards and armed police stationed outside; it is ours. The American flag drooped sullenly in the spitting rain last week as if dispirited by the sudden lack of respect shown to it by most Europeans. Antiwar graffiti slogans were scrawled in many parts of the city.
It is not as if the Belgians, or the French for that matter, have forgotten our role in two World Wars and our generosity after the last one. But they do seem to wonder about our bully-like behavior now. The construction of the cathedral of St. Michael was begun in the 13th century and it took 300 years to complete. The Belgians and their neighbors have seen things happen over time, long stretches of time. There is evidence of past conflict in the pockmarked buildings and in the hearts of those who worship here. The churches and the people have known war and deprivation in a way we have not.
CNN World is available in most European hotels, and it offers a different view compared to CNN at home. One story on a recent Saturday morning showed some scenes from Iraq that contrasted sharply with anything I'd seen in the States and helped me understand the difficult position we're in. Instead of Donald Rumsfeld standing before his blue Pentagon curtain, arresting footage showed a young U.S. soldier rushing toward an Iraqi man shouting, "If you touch my f------ truck again, I'll f------ shoot you."
This was the first time I understood the potential for disaster that we face in the post-invasion period. Scenes from a meeting in Kirkuk, where a group of U.S. military men were pictured trying to hold an election, gave more evidence of the challenges we've brought on ourselves. It looked as if the U.S. soldiers were trying to force democracy down the throats of several contentious factions of Iraqis, some of whom stormed out claiming that the Kurds were over-represented in the election process. A two-star U.S. general looked petulant, exasperated, and out of his depth.
These scenes and the measured tones of the English announcers were in stark contrast to the breathless reporting that we see on CNN at home. CNN World had an in-depth look at the mass murder going on in the Congo. As the film played I was struck by the natural beauty of several of those interviewed; handsome people in an ugly situation which can only be imagined dimly by most Americans who are exposed mostly to reports of Jennifer Lopez's new dress.
Florence is a city of beauty and peace. Many buildings here were built in the 14th century. The Italians have an eye for style and appetite for food and fun. Eighty-five percent of them disagreed with our decision to invade Iraq. CNN interviews with Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy were distinctly discordant with the surroundings here. Both politicians exuded a fleshy arrogance. Leahy: "We will have even more troops in Iraq soon, but we'll be less visible. More people with a "lighter footprint.' " I looked out the window at the River Arno and wondered, How many people around the world will buy this? How many of us at home, existing on a diet of heartbreaking stories about families who have lost relatives in the war, will swallow it?
At dinner one night a young American couple struck up a conversation. The woman was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, where she works for our Department of Defense. She's been an employee of the Army and the DOD for 13 years. She said, "I had no idea until I came to Europe that so many people hated us. I had thought they liked us." Her comments reminded me of our great size and strength and blissful ignorance about most of the rest of the world. Our self-absorbed tunnel vision is so hard to detect at home. Our nightly news features our politicians decrying the bad people in Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but there is no mention of the atrocities in the Congo. Three-million dead? The Balkans are a vague, poorly understood memory. I'm reminded of a scene at my workplace a few weeks ago. I came into an employee lounge to see several people watching live footage of looting in Iraq. One overweight white male, about 45 years of age, sneered at the idea of an Iraqi man stealing a broken table. Such desperate straits were unfathomable to him. When I asked if he'd ever been to Haiti or to India, he said: "No, and I don't care to." We are just so smug in our calculations about the world.
The automobiles are smaller here and people fold their side-view mirrors in when parked so that others navigating the narrow streets won't hit them. Gas is more than $4 a gallon and the Europeans have learned to get along with cars that don't use much fuel. Contrast this fact with a common sight in our part of the world: a young woman weighing less than 110 pounds alone in a Lincoln Navigator talking on a cell phone. We just seem so oblivious from this Italian vantage point.
I was last in Italy on Sept. 11, 2001 and didn't hear about the terrorist attacks until we'd landed unexpectedly on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I remember the emotional relief my wife and I experienced when we finally made it back to the United States, one of the first airplanes to touch down in Atlanta where there were hundreds of airplanes at the gates and nobody in the terminal. I shared our mutual bewilderment that we'd be so hated by others that someone would fly our airplanes into our buildings and kill so many innocent people. I, too, thirsted for justice and for revenge.
But Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, as is Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction have not yet been found in Iraq. We have a difficult task ahead of us in many places around the world. It seems we've lost a good deal of the post-Sept. 11 sympathy that was initially showered on us by almost all nations and peoples. It has been replaced by a wary skepticism and the worried arched eyebrow of experienced diplomats.
I wish each American could go outside the country and look back in at ourselves. We'd come home wiser. Europe is an especially good place to recalibrate our sensibilities. Here one can contemplate time, beauty, cultures and life at a pace not easily found in the United States. No, at home we have our minds on money and fame, power and oil, might and markets. The edgy adolescent hubris of our nature seems aptly captured by our righteous president, who sees the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, and who may have talked us into something we'll regret.
- Richard Karl is the Connar professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of South Florida College of Medicine and the author of a book of surgical stories, Across the Red Line.
