Experiencing a severe economic meltdown, Europe is reverting to its old ways.

The French are retreating, as newly-elected French president, Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande announces he's pulling French troops out of Afghanistan ahead of schedule. 

The French economy has become subservient to Germany, dependent upon Berlin to keep failing French banks afloat and solvent, yet France’s new socialist president is warning Germany that “Mediterranean ideas of ‘growth,’ not Germanic ‘austerity,’ should be the new European creed." In New York, we’d call that chutzpah, but as Victor Davis Hanson warns in Let Sleeping Germans Lie, “amnesia about Germany’s history could be dangerous to Europe’s health.”

Germany is united and very rich, and the Germans are getting tired of bankrolling Europe’s southern tier. The Greeks held elections, and like the French, turned to the radical left. As columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner writes in “’Club Med’ Socialism Seals Europe’s Fate”:

“The big winner [in Greek elections] was Syriza, a coalition of socialist parties, which finished second behind the center-right New Democracy. Yet, while New Democracy — and other mainstream parties — lost ground, the election saw the rise of fringe movements. The Communists surged. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party got over 6 percent of the vote, and it will enter Parliament for the first time. Greece’s political center is breaking apart.”

The European Union is poor and cracking up. A ragtag NATO is confused by the new ‘lead from behind’ America.

The Arab/Muslim world is convulsing, and Islamists are gaining substantial footholds in newly-created governments throughout the Muslim world (see here and here). 

Armed Forces chief Hasan Firouzabadi salutes during an annual military parade which
marks Iran's eight-year war with Iraq, in the capital Tehran on September 22, 2010. 
(ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images) Courtesy: dailycaller.com

Iran is threatening to hold the Middle East and the entire world hostage to its nuclear activities, and declaring its dedication to the annihilation of Israel on a daily basis. As Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the Islamist regime’s military chief of staff said on Sunday, in a speech to a defense gathering in Tehran: “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel.”

Islamic terrorism continues to spread its nasty tentacles throughout the world, as state sponsors of terrorism, e.g., Iran, Syria, Pakistan, et al, aid and abet.  Christians are being persecuted throughout the Muslim world (see here, here, here and here), but nary a peep is heard from the so-called civilized world. 

N. Korea continues to be just as menacing if not more under the newly-installed Kim Jung Un, and Kim Jr. may eventually decide that simply following in his narcissistic father’s (i.e., Kim Jung Il), footsteps is not as satisfying as forging his own path as a ruthless leader with nukes (see here, here and here).

China, America’s largest creditor is increasingly launching more cyber attacks against the U.S. Defense Department and other U.S. agencies in an effort to mine and collect strategic intelligence.

America, led by a neophyte President and an incompetent administration (see here, here, here and here) is experiencing its own economic woes, committing one foreign policy misstep after another (see here here and here) and, in sharp contrast to growing world threats, is gutting its military and defense budget. Its “reset” policy with Russia has failed miserably (see here, here, and here), nothwithstanding President Obama's open-mic comments to Russian President Medvedev.

AND, last but not least, the world continues to blame its traditional scapegoat, i.e., the Jews, for many of its ills. Europe’s Jews were eradicated in the last World War, and their descendants, i.e., the Jews of Israel, face threats of annihilation on a daily basis, not to mention: Ignorant and hypocritical movements like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, i.e., the rabid anti-Israeli/anti-Jew hatefest infecting U.S. college campuses (see here, here, here, here and here) and countries throughout the world (S. Africa - yes, the apartheid one - is the latest to jump on the BDS bandwagon); farcical but dangerous flotillas to Gaza (see here, here and here); and global cesspools like the U.N. (see here, here, here and here), successor to the failed League of Nations. 

Déjà vu anyone? Perhaps the only variable today is the existence of the State of Israel. Everyone else, including and most notably American Jewry, is heading down familiar paths, poised to repeat familiar mistakes committed 70 years ago (see here, here, here and here).

Remember: History never looks like history when you are living through it.