Under the rubric of a review of the current remake of The Quiet American, Mark Steyn holds forth on European and Canadian attitudes towards America and its President.

The American is still quiet but the Euro-Canadians get noisier in proportion to their impotence. American naivety transformed Japan and Germany. Anglo-French worldliness gave us Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and thereby September 11. If it takes centuries of "experience" in the region to invent Pakistan, then how much worse can a blundering Yank moron do?

Of course, Claude Rains (as Capt Luis Renault) said it best:

Major Strasser: [About Rick.] You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American.

Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.

(Steyn, incidentally, has a new site providing pointers to his latest writings; link courtesy of Sarge.)