What really separates Washington and Brussels? Salim Mansur thinks it is European attachment to appeasement. He tells of Matthias Dapfner, chief executive of the large German publisher Axel Springer, AG, who wrote a revealingly trenchant column for Die Welt, Germany's largest-circulation daily newspaper, on the eve of Bush's visit to Europe:

Describing appeasement as the defining aspect of European politics, Dapfner observed it"generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush ... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, tens of billions, in the corrupt UN oil-for-food program."

Why is this so? Dapfner suggests"because we (Europe) are so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass."

There, in an explosive nutshell, is arguably what is pushing Europe and America apart beneath the surface of public diplomacy.

The future Arab citizens, if not the current corrupt elites, will remember.