Terror and Europe: I'll be blunt. I get the feeling that, up until last week, the whole "war on terror" thing was something of a parlor game in Europe. It was fun to joke about unsophisticated Americans, just cowboys really, seeing things in black and white. Blah, blah, blah.

Our reaction to 9/11 was outrage, anger, giving rise to vengeance. I'm more convinced than ever that the general European response, though veiled in "Nous sommes tous Americains" bullshit, was really more like, "Well, you did have it coming to you, after all." I say this because, now that large-scale terrorism (as opposed to assassination and violent demonstration, IRA style) has struck Europe, the tone has changed entirely:

EU President Romano Prodi took this lesson from Madrid: "One thing is clear: things will only start moving when we have resolved the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians." A non-sequitur for the ages, or simply a strategy of mouthing the words of fanatics? After all, scratch an Arab nationalist and you'll find someone who thinks the high price of goat milk, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and the dictatorial nightmare of a government he's saddled himself with can all be cured if only we could get those cursed Jews off the back of that great friend of peace Arafat.

Freshly minted Spanish PM Zapatero said: "Fighting terrorism with bombs, with operations of 'shock and awe', with missiles, that does not combat terrorism it only generates more radicalism . . . The way to fight terrorism is with the rule of law, with international legislation, with intelligence services . . . This is what the international community should be talking about." Oh. In other words, let's return to doing whatever it was we were doing back when these folks were only attacking America. Zapatero has formulated the tall dandelion principle for a new generation: Walk quietly, don't draw attention to yourself; maybe you'll get the part of Vichy France in the next global revival of that old classic Freedom versus Fascism, and avoid being cast as Poland. (In a fit of typecasting, Poland will no doubt get that role again. She plays it so well and, frankly, I don't see anyone in Old Europe with the stomach to handle the demands of the part.)

I won't even bother to quote from Chirac and Schroeder's bunny hug, in which they declared war on everything but cliches about terrorism (root causes, economic dislocation, and all the rest of that stuff: no doubt you've noticed the other economically dislocated populations around the world crashing jets into tall buildings).

Of course, some root causes are more equal than others. Item: "Chirac backs Mubarak in opposing US plan for Arab democracy"

French President Jacques Chirac backed Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in his opposition to a US initiative for political and economic reform in the Middle East, saying the plan amounted to "interference."

You can't make this stuff up.