WHY DO WE CARE, AGAIN? Slate has an unintentionally hilarious piece of selections from European newspapers stating that the cause of U.S.-European tension is President Bush's unwillingness to listen to their sagacious counsel. Or something like that.
Now, for the take-downs:
1) In the Times of London, Michael Gove:

This unseemly pattern of resentment towards US power, free-riding on US strength, and then patronising insistence that US decisions be subjected to “civilising” restraint, marked EU behaviour before September 11. And it has got even worse since then. From griping about Guantanamo Bay to deprecating the vulgarity of the axis of evil and sniping at US support for democracy against terrorism in the Middle East, Europe has never missed an opportunity to bite the hand which shields it.
...The current trajectory of European political development is driven by elites who, unlike America’s political leadership, find the moral burden of operating in a world of nation states too onerous. The direct accountability of parliaments is being supplanted by the closed power-broking of European bodies insulated from effective scrutiny.
...Instead of being able to project power against threats to our interests and values, Europe’s leaders seek to manage conflict through the international therapy of peace processes, the buying off of aggression with the danegeld of aid or the erection of a paper palisade of global law which the unscrupulous always punch through.
Europeans may convince themselves that these developments are the innovations of a continent in the van of progress, but they are really the withered autumn fruits of a civilisation in decline. Elites that shy away from electoral competition, demur at shouldering military responsibilities and temporise in the face of danger are destined for eclipse.
The Middle Kingdom sought to convince itself that behind its ramparts a uniquely cultured mandarinate preserved values to which the West’s barbarians could never aspire. Now, behind the tariff walls of the common agricultural policy and the borders hostile to new immigrants, Europe’s elites tell themselves that their low-growth, low-birthrate, low-wattage home still has something to teach America. It does. The dangers of failing to keep your nation free, open, vigorous and proud.
2) The inestimable Charles Krauthammer:

Everyone knows that all the talk of the "coalition" in Afghanistan was a polite fiction. Europe, in particular, was reduced to the sidelines because its technology is so far behind America's that what little aircraft, munitions and transport it might have contributed would only have gotten in the way.
For a continent that for 500 years ruled the world, this impotence is difficult to accept. It helps explain Europe's petulant complaints about American "arrogance" and "unilateralism." It also explains why NATO, as a military alliance, is dead. It was not always so. For four decades the alliance fielded huge land armies that successfully deterred the Soviet Union at the height of its power. With the end of the Cold War, however, NATO lost its enemy. With the demonstration of its military irrelevance in the Afghan war, NATO lost its role.
What to do? Madeleine Albright, never at a loss for offering yesterday's conventional wisdom, says that we should make clear to our allies that they must modernize their militaries. Why? Europe is a collection of democracies. And grown-ups. They make choices. Toward the end of the Cold War, they made the conscious, near-continental decision to radically reduce their military forces and turn inward in order to build "Europe."
They slashed defense spending and essentially demobilized. It was a perfectly reasonable response to the end of the Soviet threat.
Why should we be hectoring them to reverse that, to divert money from their cherished welfare states to their militaries? So they can become America's junior partner in policing the world against "axis of evil" threats that they believe are exaggerated in the first place? To join us in wars that they have no desire to fight anyway? If Europeans want to rearm and join the posse, fine. But we should not be pressuring them. America neither resents nor inhibits European strength. On the contrary. For a half-century, we supported the project of European integration and enlargement. For almost as long, under the rubric of "burden sharing," we urged the Europeans to increase defense spending.
They politely declined. Why should we be greater advocates of European power than the Europeans themselves? They have practiced international affairs long enough to know that diminished power means diminished influence -- and a radically diminished NATO, their place at the decision-making table.
3) Finally, Steven Den Beste:

I saw some sympathy, but I saw damned little solidarity in the aftermath of the September attack. I saw the US make plans to take out al Qaeda and the Taliban, and I saw round denunciations of nearly everything we planned or did from the capitols of Europe. I saw us accused of war crimes; I saw us being told repeatedly that we were going to lose; I saw us being told that we were going to cause a humanitarian catastrophe. None of those things happened.

I saw NATO invoke Article V, and the total extent of NATO commitment was to move half a dozen AWACS planes from Europe to the United States, to free up American planes to commit to combat. Also, a small number of NATO ships were moved into the eastern Mediterranean, far away from any potential combat. The only other thing NATO did was to try to claim that because Article V had been invoked, that the US no longer was permitted to do anything militarily unless it got permission from Europe first.
Oh, yeah, and the French moved one frigate into the Arabian Sea to help protect American carriers from any potential attack by the Afghan navy.
"If you'd just listen to what we're saying, you'd come to agree with it. We've explained it to you a dozen times before, so why can't you see the wisdom of our words? Surely it must be an intellectual deficit in you, Mr. President. Perhaps a problem with the water in Texas, or inbreeding. But we're your friends, and we're patient and kind, and we'd be glad to explain it yet again, more loudly. And maybe this time you'll come to agree with us, if only you'll attempt to apply your pea-brain fully to the task of trying to comprehend our position which is the product of our vastly greater intellectual prowess, worldly experience, and wisdom."
It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that we in the US fully understand the European position, and still disagree with it. We understand their point of view. We understand all the arguments for that point of view. We've heard them every time in the past that they've lectured us about it. And we still don't agree. Listening to it yet again isn't going to change that.
Good and honest men can come to different conclusions about things. It's not time for Bush to listen; and it isn't time for Europe to listen either. It's time to agree to disagree.