Europeans Calling American Travelers ‘Wimps’

When Americans instantly curtailed international travel following the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War, a number of European newspapers were moved to comment. Here are four excerpts:

“GROUNDED CHICKENS”

The haute couture collections taking place in Paris next week will be sparsely attended, especially by Americans. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Many American fashion editors won’t be attending, nor fashion buyers, nor the superstar American models.--

Americans are notoriously windy travelers. In contrast to their gung-ho F-111 pilots who are kicking Saddam’s ass in the Gulf, American civilians have yielded superiority in the air. They won’t fly to Europe. Nor to Thailand, nor Australia, nor the Philippines, and some of them are even a bit leary about shuttling to O’Hare or Dallas/Fort Worth, for fear of Abu Nidal and the Nidalites.

Last Wednesday, Terminal 2 at Heathrow stood tense and empty, even for the last businessman’s flight out to Paris. Sniffer dogs lolloped about, the knuckles of the Sock Shop girls were white, the strained-looking staff on the information desk were discussing security plans to remove all the letter boxes from the building and flights to anywhere east of Suez were showing canceled or 10 hours’ delay. I felt a bit windy myself and had to lie across six empty Club Class seats to recover. I got the VIP treatment from the riot police at Charles de Gaulle, as did the other 30 or so passengers on an airbus that carries 300. The luggage came up PDQ as well, presumably because the loading staff were desperate to get rid of it.

“Nobody from the New York office will be coming, of course,” said the American fashion magazine I write for on Day One of the war. Nobody? Why? “Because all employees have been told that on no account must they step on a plane.” But what about me? “You’ll be coming from London, of course. Not from New York.” But I’m a British citizen. I’m a target, too. I mean, we’re allies and everything. (Brief pause.) “Have you considered coming by train?”

There’s something about the Americans that differs wildly from me and thee.

Americans are scared of living and scared of dying. You can’t cook breakfast for an American house guest without inducing timor mortis . You see prime Suffolk bacon and eggs and sausages, and they see cholesterol (death), saturated fatty acids (death) and high levels of sodium (death). You can’t buy champagne in America without the Surgeon General reminding you not to point the cork towards your eye: It May Be Dangerous To Your Health (blinding followed by death). The Rayburn in my kitchen could not be sold in America, because the handles on the oven doors get hot. I use an oven glove, but the American housewife is protected by federal law.

How does a nation like this ever raise an army? And, having raised it, how does it let it overseas to chew gum, kick ass and bomb the bejesus out of Baghdad? Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf looks like a robust sort of a bloke to me. Does he stick to a low-cholesterol diet? And why is it that the American army is encouraged to display the sort of truculence that stiffens the nerve at this frightening time, while the civilian population is expected to panic and cancel their flights? Americans don’t mind admitting that they’re panicked. I suppose that makes them a sensible people with wonderful parenting strengths (“I should get on a plane that some maniac wants to blow up? Leave my kids fatherless?” and so forth). But mass panic is a terrible thing to let loose, and it is genuinely odd that an entire nation should be paralyzed with fear because of the minute statistical probability that a Nidalite will get some scores of them.

One doesn’t want to sound like Mrs. Miniver, but shouldn’t we carry on flying and to hell with it? I know absolutely that terrorist bombs will come, but I can’t know absolutely either that they will or they won’t get me. Who can hope to avoid a random fate or “the inescapable will of God,” to quote King Fahd. “I was thinking about driving across,” said a fashion editor I know. Well, I’m going back this week and I’m not thinking about driving across, or getting the train across. I’ll damn well keep flying across, and I hope to find lots of Kenneth More types sitting in the airport lounge, making jokes through their stiff upper lips. Are we downhearted? No.

--From The Spectator , London, Jan. 26

“TOURISM

AND THE FEAR FACTOR”

It is not known how high the ruin of the European tourist industry featured on Saddam Hussein’s war aims. Probably he never gave it a thought. So he may be chuckling in his bunker at the impact of his threats to spread terrorism across the world. Thousands of Americans and Japanese have canceled trips to Britain. Even on this side of the Atlantic, where terrorism is scarcely new, leading companies have instructed or advised their executives not to travel by air. “Safe” cross-Channel ferries are doing good business, but airlines and hotels are stricken. January is not a brisk month for trade. This year it is disastrous. London’s theaterland has been hit, too. It may soon be possible to get into “Les Miserables” or “Phantom of the Opera.”

Of terrorism that might be attributed to the long arm of President Saddam, there has so far been little--thanks, perhaps, to measures taken by the security forces.

Yet in the United States, the mere threat of terrorism has been enough to create a psychosis of fear--especially in New York, which the high Jewish population is thought to make a prime target.

If the home scene is hazardous, to travel abroad is even worse: Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone, bywords for courage and machismo on screen, are among film stars who have canceled trips to Europe.

If there is a sense of deja vu in all this, it is because it happened only four years ago, following President Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Libya. It was possible then to assume that the Americans were not strong on geography. From a quick look at a map, Libya might seem unnervingly close to Europe; and had not many of the U.S. bombers taken off from bases in England? In the present conflict, no such error is possible. Fear is sometimes rational, but more often not. On any statistical basis, it must be more dangerous to venture on to the M25 in a car than to travel by air to any country outside the immediate war zone. On the basis of a few appalling tragedies, planes are associated with terrorism. Yet such are the security precautions taken nowadays that air travel must be among the least terrorist-prone forms of transport.

Those who allow their travel plans to be dictated by Saddam Hussein are giving terrorism a small victory.

--From The Independent , London, Jan. 29

“AMERICANS AFRAID”

Many Europeans have been shocked over the past week by the near-panic that appears to have seized many Americans following the outbreak of war in the Gulf. Saddam Hussein’s boast of worldwide terror, to which the rest of the world has reacted with a mixture of contempt and sensible precautions, has been permitted to upheave much of American life, reviving the specter of the “great American wimp.”

In recent days, evidence of this revival has passed from the anecdotal to the ubiquitous; transatlantic travel, west to east, has fallen by over a half. Hotels are nearly empty. Agencies are laying off hundreds of staff. American companies are even banning their workers from traveling abroad, under pressure from the terrorist’s secret weapon, the American insurance industry.

Much of this is couched in weasel words suggesting that people should not behave as normal at such a “grim” time, an attitude that was considered treasonably demoralizing in the Second World War. Whatever the excuse, Americans are giving the impression that they are scared witless by the hostilities. Europe’s biggest single export earner, travel and tourism, is facing devastation as the U.S. imposes a de facto economic sanction on its allies at a cost that could be higher than the war itself.

Saddam Hussein’s threat to repeat the cocktail of terrorist outrages familiar over the past decade is plausible. But even the execution of the threat would not justify any Western citizen in altering his or her lifestyle to kowtow to Saddam. His intention is not simply to kill or maim innocent people, but by threatening to do so to undermine the West’s peace of mind, disrupt its economy and induce its public opinion to turn against the war. So successful has this threat proved in the United States that he hardly need bother to send out his killers. His terror has done its job.

--From the London Times , Jan. 28

“NERVOUS JET-SETTERS”

A London Times editorial, “Americans Afraid,” accuses civilian Yanks of undermining the war effort by canceling European vacations. Maybe our American roots are showing, but the Times’ logic seems to us a bit tenuous. We are unsurpassed in our admiration of stiff-upper-lippism, but surely Saddam Hussein’s fate is unlikely to be determined by the size of crowds in Piccadilly Circus.

It sounds crass to even suggest it, but perhaps the Times was mainly exercised over Britain’s loss of tourist revenues. Americans have indeed been staying at home, along with just about everyone else. The Japanese are also postponing European trips. Domestic flights in Germany are being canceled. Parisians are noticing that the streets are less congested. We’ve even heard talk that British caution has emptied out Heathrow.

It should surprise no one that after weeks of scare stories about Saddam’s “terror brigades,” newspaper readers have begun taking precautions.

The public, it seems, will initially err on the side of caution when confronted by reports of public danger. Later, individuals weigh the risks for themselves, realize in most cases that the media reports were overblown and everyone returns more or less to normal habits. This will no doubt happen with tourists.

It’s been commonly said these past few days that Riyadh is still a safer place than New York, as if this were proof that the stay-at-homes are silly. But at the very least, the non-travelers see merit in sparing themselves anxiety. The risks of dying on a vacation are very low, but who wants to spend a lot of money to go somewhere and feel anxious? Postponing a holiday until the world situation is more clear is not an entirely ridiculous position when put in this light.

--From the Wall Street Journal , European edition, Jan. 31