'Cheese-eating surrender monkeys': American anger at 'arrogant' Europeans' muted reaction to Bin Laden killing



What happened to post-9/11 solidarity as Europe asks questions over legality and morality of killing unarmed man?

Blogger calls Europeans: 'Arrogant, smug, thoughtless and thankless'

Archbishop of Canterbury says killing of unarmed Bin Laden left him with 'a very uncomfortable feeling'



Religious reaction: The Archbishop of Canterbury said the killing of Osama Bin Laden while he was not armed has left him with 'a very uncomfortable feeling'

Europeans have been labelled 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' by bloggers in the U.S. angry at being chastised for celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden.



While thousands of Americans took to the streets to celebrate the killing, the reaction in Europe was much more muted.



Many have questioned not only the manner of the killing of an unarmed man, but also the taste and dignity of the American public who celebrated the act by chanting 'USA' in the streets, mocking up T-shirts and generally revelling in the moment.



One of those expressing these sentiments is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who said: 'I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done.'



'In those circumstances, I think it's also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help.'



However, he went on: 'But I do believe that in such circumstances when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted it is important that justice is seen to be served.'



When Bin Laden's men flew airliners into New York's World Trade Center ten years ago, it sparked an outpouring of solidarity from Europe, best captured by a French newspaper headline 'We are all Americans now'.



But that solidarity seemingly hasn't lasted.

At the Pentagon Memorial in Washington, tributes include an image of the Statue of Liberty holding the severed head of Bin Laden Celebrations: The American response to the death of Osama bin Laden was an outpouring of wild emotion - particularly at the former site of the World Trade Center

Jubilant Americans poured into Times Square to chant 'USA, USA, USA!' and hit the Internet to snap up T-shirts reading 'We Got Him' and 'Hey Osama, Tell Hitler We Said Hello.'



Europeans, also targeted by Al Qaeda, kept satisfaction more contained, even if tabloid headlines - 'Bin Bagged' and the like - were no less triumphant than in the United States.



And, crucially, some began to question the legality and morality of the killing and the risk of revenge attacks.

That attitude has simply outraged many Americans.



When Tony Metcalfe, the British editor-in-chief of the Metro newspapers in the United States, ran a Reuters story on European qualms over what a former German chancellor called a breach of international law, he said, 'We knew it would cause a reaction.'



Writing on his blog on Wednesday, Metcalfe said: 'Given the celebrations around the U.S. on Sunday evening, the objections from France, Germany, Spain and parts of the UK came as no surprise, and fitted neatly into many Americans' view of Europeans as a bunch of, well, cheese-eating surrender monkeys.'



Reaction in the U.S. to the death of Bin Laden has included a series of mocking internet virals Balance: President Obama has to tread the line between being feted as a hero, and maintaining dignity, as he has tried to do by suppressing the death photos of Bin Laden

Divisive: Many in Europe have found the U.S. celebrations to be in bad taste

A glance at Metro's online comment thread shows near unanimity among the paper's American readers on the European criticism: 'Arrogant, smug, thoughtless and thankless people,' wrote LisaC - in one of the less vitriolic posts.

The phrase 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' was first used by Groundskeeper Willie in a 1995 episode of the Simpsons (scroll down for video) and regularly borrowed, even before 9/11, by conservative U.S. columnist Jonah Goldberg.



Undaunted, Metcalfe continued in his editorial blog to explain how Europeans admire American commitment to shared values of democracy and the rule of law but are anxious that U.S. policy, particularly toward the Muslim world, risks harming those values and creating problems for the future.



'Democratic states do not execute people without first going through the judicial process,' he wrote.



'If that process is circumvented, then you are no better than the terrorists.



'Is that harsh? Should I, a European, be sent back across the pond with mockery in my ears? You probably think so.



'But I defy you to argue with that logic.'



SEPTEMBER 11 MEMORIAL TEAM REVEAL ORDER OF VICTIMS' NAMES

The order of names on a memorial for the victims of the September 11 atrocity has been revealed by its makers.

The monument will list almost 3,000 names around the waterfall-filled pools where the original World Trade Centre towers stood, the site now dubbed 'Ground Zero'.

A complex arrangement of the names is designed to tell some personal stories, rather than being just a list, such as the names of Victor Wald and Harry Ramos, who did not know each other until that day but died together trying to flee down a stairwell of the World Trade Center. Michael Arad, the memorial architect, said he tried to balance the need to make the memorial significant both for the victims' families and for the rest of the world. 'It's a memorial about individual loss and collective grief,' he said.

'I think those individual stories will communicate very powerfully to generations to come.'

Listed will be the names of the 2,976 people killed in the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and the six people who died in the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center.

The September 11 victims are grouped on the memorial according to which flight they were on, whether they were first responders, worked at the Pentagon or were in one of the World Trade Centre towers. Victims' families and friends had asked that certain victims' names be placed together and the memorial's designers worked to accommodate them. For instance, Donald James McIntyre, a 38-year-old Port Authority police officer who died as he tried to make his way to the 84th floor of the south tower, where his 35-year-old cousin John Anthony Sherry worked, are listed side by side. One of the reasons the listing of the names is so important is because 40 per cent of the victims in New York have no identifiable remains, and thus no graves.

Brigitte Sion, a professor of religion at New York University who has studied memorials worldwide, said; 'The need to create a memorial that has names is a surrogate for a cemetery.

'There's no other place to mourn, there's no other place to have a connection with the victims except there.' The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has announced the memorial, entitled Reflecting Absence, will open on the tenth anniversary of the attacks this September.

However, many Americans simply will not countenance any dampener on their celebration.



When Hyojin Jenny Hwang, a mother from New Jersey, wrote on Facebook that she was saddened by the sight of young Americans like herself jubilantly cheering Osama Bin Laden's death, the angry response was swift, even from friends.



'One friend told me she felt judged for feeling happy,' said the 30-year-old.



'And another one simply unfriended me on Facebook.'



It was impossible to tell whether those Americans feeling uneasy with Sunday's scenes of celebration were in the majority or minority, but for three women who lost husbands on September 11, the jubilant scenes were disturbing.



Kristen Breitweiser said they brought back images of Bin Laden supporters celebrating in the streets on that infamous day in 2001.



'Forgive me, but I don't want to watch uncorked champagne spill onto hallowed ground where thousands were murdered in cold blood,' she wrote on The Huffington Post blog site.



'And it breaks my heart to witness young Americans cheer any death - even the death of a horrible, evil, murderous person - like it is some raucous tailgate party on a college campus. Why are we not somber?'



Another 9/11 widow, Marian Fontana, wrote how her son, Aidan, who was five when his father died, had gone to school on last Monday and called at lunchtime, wanting to come home.



'Everyone is talking about Bin Laden. In every class, they are happy he is dead, but I don't feel happy,' she said he told her.



And Deena Burnett Bailey, of Little Rock, Arkansas, who lost her husband Tom Burnett, said she was struggling with how to talk to her teens about Bin Laden's death.



'To say that I'm happy that he was killed just seems odd, and it goes against my Christian faith,' she said.



'The girls and I were talking about it. One of them said, "What can we say, Mom? We can't say praise the Lord, he's dead."



'I said, "I know. You just have to know that someone else made that decision, and that he will now stand before judgment for having killed so many people".'



It's one thing to be satisfied that the world's most wanted terrorist has been killed, argue some, but where does satisfaction end and gloating begin?



It's a question bound to be on President Barack Obama's mind as he treads that fine line in a visit to ground zero today.



Could Obama's visit in itself be interpreted as gloating?



The president, who decided this week not to release gruesome death photos of Bin Laden seems well aware of the dangers.



He planned a somber and quiet New York visit - no speech, the White House said, just laying a wreath at the World Trade Center site and meeting privately with families and first responders.



'The president thinks it's entirely fitting and appropriate to visit the site... in the wake of this significant and cathartic moment for the American people,' White House spokesman Jay Carney said.



The trip had support from the city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who said the president 'should be here meeting the families,' and from the tabloid Daily News, which called the visit 'most welcome at this hour of national unity and uplift.'



Not surprisingly, the question reached the late-night comedy shows and even the likes of Jon Stewart - feted as a voice of reason in U.S. political debate - said: 'I suppose I should be expressing some ambivalence about the targeted killing of another human being. And yet - uhhhh, no!'



But serious concerns have also been voiced by religious leaders.



The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that Bin Laden's death was justified as an act of war but not as an act of justice. He said death should never be celebrated.



'Such celebration points to the danger of revenge as a powerful human emotion,' he wrote on his website this week.



The Vatican said Christians could never rejoice about the death of any human being. But spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that bin Laden was responsible for having caused the deaths of countless innocents and for having used religion to spread 'division and hatred among people.'



Too much? President Obama, speaking here at an event for the Wounded Warrior Project, has been accused of gloating with his visit to the Ground Zero site

Preparation: A New York City police officer stands guard near the World Trade Center site, with President Obama set to visit today

And the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an association of about 700 conservative congregations in the U.S., said its tradition 'warns us not to celebrate the death of any human being, even of our worst enemies, but it does not stop us from gratitude that some measure of justice has been exacted'.

In the UK, the manner of the killing has been criticised by the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said today, 'The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it does not look as if justice is seen to be done.'

More criticism: Former London mayor Ken Livingstone said killing Bin Laden made Obama look like 'a gangster'

He added that the conflicting reports from the White House 'have not helped'

The former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has also been outspoken on the issue, claiming that the killing made President Obama look like a 'mobster'.

Livingstone said the U.S. decision to 'blow out' the Al Qaeda chief was wrong and he should have been made to stand trial instead.

'We should have captured him and put him on trial,' he said.



'It's a simple point - are we gangsters or a Western democracy based on the rule of law?



'This undermines any commitment to democracy and trial by jury and makes Obama look like some sort of mobster.'



Across the ocean, Americans living in Europe were also aware of the gulf in perceptions.



Bernhard Warner, a social media entrepreneur and freelance journalist working in Rome, said European friends compared the sight of Americans 'dancing in the street at the death of someone' to the very scenes of jubilation from the Middle East after September 11 that drew cries of barbarity from the United States.



'I have family and friends back home who are euphoric and I have family and friends in Europe who don't understand the euphoria,' Warner said.



'It's really incongruous to Europeans... There's a sense of being appalled.'



Californian Daniel Leraul, who works in Spain for a non-governmental organisation, said: 'My European friends... are very cynical about it.



The gloating U.S. newspaper headlines captured the mood of the nation for some - but the feeling of celebration is by no means shared by all Americans

International reaction: These headlines and clippings from American newspapers were on a wall inside a staff office at the White House. Right, how Australian papers covered the event

The death of Bin Laden made headlines around the world but different countries - here in Spain - covered it with a different tone

'They don't agree with Obama's statement that justice was done... I've heard stories of people dancing in the streets and I found that a bit much.'



There is no shortage of comment in Europe that would be at home in the U.S. media.



Recalling the 2001 attacks on the United States and 2005 bombings in London,



British newspaper The Sun used the headline: 'Bin Laden Unarmed - Just like his 9/11 and 7/7 victims'.



Its sister paper the New York Post brought news of the killing under the title 'Got Him! Vengeance at Last'.



Writing in Germany's top-selling Bild, commentator Joerg Quoos said of critics of centre-right Chancellor Angela Merkel, who welcomed the killing of bin Laden: 'What chance did Osama's killers give the people in the World Trade Center, who were incinerated, atomised or jumped in panic from 100 floors up?'



The Bishop of Winchester, The Rt. Revd. Michael Scott-Joynt, yesterday echoed the sentiments of Dr Rowan Williams, describing the killing as 'an act of vengeance' rather than one of justice

Yet the extent of questioning in Europe has been in marked contrast to the United States, a feature some put down to broad cultural differences, others to differing understandings between Europeans and Americans of what bin Laden's killing may bring.



The European affairs correspondent of British weekly Economist, writing in a blog, recalled a famous phrase from a 2002 research paper that highlighted Europe's hesitation to join in U.S. military interventions after the Sept. 11 attacks - 'Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus'.



The columnist noted contrasting responses among journalists to news of Bin Laden's death: 'In Brussels... reporters repeatedly tried to get the (EU) Commission spokeswoman... to denounce the raid as either an extrajudicial killing or an affront to Europe's opposition to the death penalty.



'In Washington, by contrast, many wanted... the White House counter-terrorism adviser to give the technicolor detail of the raid in Abbbotabad... Plainly, Americans and Europeans (or at least their journalists) still inhabit different planets.'



In Rome, journalist Bernhard Warner said he understood the importance his fellow Americans attached to 'bringing back the scalp' of Bin Laden after years of frustration:



'The thing for Americans is the feeling they've got the job done,' he said.



On the other hand, 'Europeans clearly understand that things are much more complicated than that.'



Hall Gardner, professor of international politics at the American University of Paris, said the key difference was not in antipathy to Bin Laden - that is shared - but in how different the future looked from Times Square or the Champs-Elysees.



'It is often forgotten... that the French were the first to support the United States in the UN Security Council to engage in military action in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks... commanded by bin Laden,' Gardner said.



'The French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed, 'We are all Americans now!'



'Almost 10 years later the French, just like the Americans, are relieved, if not elated, that Bin Laden has finally been killed.



'Yet the difference lies in the general pessimism that pervades France. The French do not believe that the death of Bin Laden will... lead to an end to the global war on terrorism.

