Yankee Team Offers Good Example

It's not only fans of the Boston Red Sox who hate the New York Yankees. In the words of a sportswriter, Mike Vaccaro, "We are everyone's Great Satan." In his column last week for the New York Post, he also wrote: "We are the enemy. The Yankees? Man, it's easy for people to hate the Yankees."

In much the same way, this year we are also hearing how the entire world hates America and President Bush. Seems like the New York Yankees and we Yanks have a lot in common - we are both despised and envied for the same reasons. We are successful, we are wealthy and when we have the right leadership, we are pretty much invincible.

For some strange reason, Bushhaters seem to care very deeply about what the world thinks of us. Whenever I ask people why they are voting for John Kerry, I get the same answers: "We have lost our friends and allies," "We no longer have global authority," "We need to regain the respect of the world." Senator Kerry wants our actions to pass the global test - whatever that means.

The New York Yankees don't care whether they are loved or not, and neither should we. They like to win, and that's what they do. They are working toward their 40th World Series and are the most successful sports franchise ever. It's important to note that they are a team composed of players from all over the world, yet they play together as a team. The highest-paid player obeys his manager's instructions and will bunt to advance a man on base rather than hit away to boost his own home-run statistics. Right now this country should be following the Yankees example and working together to win the war on terror, but unfortunately there are too many egomaniacal players up at bat.

If the members of the intellectual elite who seem to crave the support of our so-called European allies would only open their eyes and do a little research, they'd realize that we've been despised by some of them long before our military entered Afghanistan and Iraq. Did we really expect a country whose Vichy government shelled our troops coming ashore in Normandy on D-Day to join us in battle?

Explain to me how a country that claims to be part of Western civilization allowed 11,453 of its citizens to die from a heat wave last year. Yet France demands our respect and rattles its veto on the Security Council at the United Nations as if it really meant something. Perhaps Jacques Chirac should have invested in air conditioners instead of paying Saddam Hussein all those millions in oil contracts.

I received an e-mail from someone who actually thought I'd be eager to interview a European editor-in-chief of an international magazine, whose name I will not divulge out of sympathy. That journalist had moved to the United States two months ago, and I imagine it was his publicity person who had sent me a copy of his column. The subject of the e-mail was "The whole world is watching," and while that phrase might have meant something in 1968 during the Democratic convention in Chicago, I knew it was being used by the sender to compare the war in Iraq with the Vietnam War.

The column was supposed to present the European perspective on the current election. The writer praises Senator Kerry's Vietnam experience and defends his antiwar criticism upon his return. He mentions being scared of Vice President Cheney's tough talk and insinuates that because either Mr. Bush nor Mr. Cheney has experienced the horror of war as Mr. Kerry has, the president and vice president think that war is the answer to the fight on terrorism. Then the magazine editor writes the most ridiculous statement I have ever read:

"It seems that many people have forgotten that it was not so much Ronald Reagan's military strategy but his support for the free market that defeated the Soviet Union. It was Hollywood and McDonald's. In other words: ideas and entrepreneurship. These are the things that America is loved for worldwide. With the same tools, terrorism can be defeated and security can be provided to the world."

Earth to space cadet! We are not fighting the Soviet Union, which may have been an evil empire but it was not insane. We are dealing now with an enemy who loathes Hollywood and would gladly behead everyone who lives there.

This Euro clearly does not understand whom we're fighting, but I can assure him it's not the Boston Red Sox or anyone willing to lay down arms for a Big Mac.