There are those times when I laugh outloud at Mark Steyn

Today is one of those days when I laugh so hard as to make up the missus upstairs. Today's piece in London's Telegraph, is a howler centered on the US policy of Europe. The power graf:

The EU isn't the Arab League, though for much of the past three years it's been hard to tell the difference. But it, too, is out of step. The question is whether the Europeans are smart enough, like the savvier Sunnis in Iraq, to realise it. The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt compared the President's inaugural speech with Gerhard Schröder's keynote address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last week and observed that, while both men talked about the Middle East, terrorism and 21st-century security threats, Mr Bush used the word "freedom" 27 times while Herr Schröder uttered it not once; he preferred to emphasise, as if it were still March 2003 and he were Arab League Secretary-General, "stability" – the old realpolitik fetish the Administration has explicitly disavowed. It's not just that the two sides aren't speaking the same language, but that the key phrases of Mr Bush's vocabulary don't seem to exist in Chirac's or Schröder's.

He goes on to opine that Europe simply doesn't matter any more. Whether economically -- Germany has an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent and has for years -- or in dealing with a nuclear Iran, Europe is impotent. Indeed, Iran doesn't even pay attention to the EU except as a market for it's two primary exports: oil and Islamic fascism. As far as Iran is concerned, both are doing swimmingly. Indeed, this piece by that notorious grouch Christopher Caldwell shows that there is even trouble in that socialist paradise that so many undergrads fawn over once they complete their semester abroad, Sweden. Seems that have lots and lots of unassimilated Arabs and that these "communities" have, in some cases, unemployement rates of 60 percent or more. Apparently these Arab transplants have fugured out how to game the system.

Which brings me back to Steyn's piece. His take on the Bush administration is that they have figured out the EU diplomatic corps are sock puppets from whom every international problem is another excuse to convene a committee meeting and promptly find that the US is at fault, then adjourn without taking action. Meanwhile, the Bush administration understands that Europe has it's own problems that are their own creation: a static economy coupled with a massive unassimilated Islamic population and unsupportable cradle to grave welfare state. We are well advised to stand clear and let them sink under their own hubris, er, I mean impotence.