STRASBOURG, Sept 15: European Union's external affairs chief Chris Patten launched a parting shot at the United States on Wednesday weeks before leaving office, notably lamenting "testosterone"-fuelled anti-foreign rhetoric in election campaigning.
While insisting he was not taking sides in the US presidential race, the straight-talking former Hong Kong governor did little to disguise his feelings about the Iraq war and its aftermath.
"What I most worry about is that on either side of the Atlantic we will bring out the worst in our traditional partners. The world deserves better than testosterone on one side and superciliousness on the other," he said.
In a speech to the European Parliament he noted that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a venture which has "not yet blessed (as we have noted) with the easy and benign consequences that were famously predicted and promised.
"Liberation rapidly turned into a brutally resisted occupation. Democracy failed to roll out like an oriental carpet across the thankless deserts of the Middle East. "Above all, peace in Jerusalem and Palestine was not accomplished by victory in Baghdad," he said, in a reference to US President George W. Bush's forecast that a stable Iraq would help resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Mr Patten, who steps down as EU External Relations Commissioner next month, is a long-time Atlanticist who has not minced his words in warning Washington about the consequences of last year's war both before and since.
In the sidelines of a US-EU summit in June he notably took Washington to task over the abuse of Iraqi detainees at US-run prisons as well as concerns about the fate of prisoners held at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
On Wednesday Mr Patten ironically welcomed America's newfound multilateralism over the last year, as Washington sought its global partners' help in handling the continuing violence in Iraq after the war.
"Partly because American neo-conservative unilateralism had clearly failed to establish an empire of peace, liberty and democracy, we have been more recently advised that allies and multilateralism were back in fashion in Washington," he said.
But he noted that multilateralism was far from being praised in campaigning for November presidential polls. "If you want to get a cheap cheer from certain quarters in America it seems that all you have to do is to bash the UN, or the French or the very idea that allies are entitled to have their own opinions.
"Multilateralists, we are told, want to out-source American foreign and security policy to a bunch of garlic-chewing, cheese-eating wimps." This appeared to lead, he concluded, to a situation where "the opinions of mankind, which the Founding Fathers of the United States thought their country should note and respect, are to be treated with contempt. "Unless, I suppose, they faithfully reflect the agenda of the American Enterprise Institute and Fox TV," he said, to applause from the EU assembly. -AFP
