Europe is very pacifistic by the US standards precisely because of the wars and totalitarian states experienced in the past. Remember, the "historical memory" doesn't vanish with a generation that experienced Nazism or Communism. It is passed on to the next generations. My guess is that what USG is claiming is that given the US had the same sad and tragic historical experiences as the Europeans did, they would have thought twice before engaging in all the wars.
Just to give you some perspective: I live in Poland. 20% of the population - 6 million (not 10,000) civilians - was killed in WW2 by Germans and Russians. Our neighbors. We lived through it. We have quite good relations with both countries. Now - forgive me the language - but how many Poles look at your 9/11 - it's a non-event. And you go like crazy on a 1000-year war with billion Muslims because some idiots blew up a couple of buildings. I'm sorry but that's how I and I'm sure many in Europe perceive it. Completely and totally overreacted. Just bring the responsible before the Court give them the due process and hand them or something.
You are totally inexperienced as a nation with just 200 years of history with the phenomenon called "shit happens" and totally, totally overreact to the point it just looks comical. You are like this big fat guy with a machine guy at a bar doing shooting-frenzy trying to kill a fly.
As a scandinavian I totally agree. The US should learn from Norway and the Breivik mass shooting to see how one deals with madmen. Capture them, put them before a judge just like every other criminal and then unceremoniously lock them up.
The obvious problem with Breivik is lack of the capital punishment in Norway. Not Norway following the law and due process.
To use an analogy, it looks like in the US they would have tortured Breivik for years before letting him to go to face a Trial but without a defense attorney. It's another extreme. Taking into account that the US is the world superpower, much more concerning one.
EDIT: Now thinking about it, Breivik spent a lot of time in France. It's a stretch, but if the Norway had the US attitude, it would just invade France now, lol. My point is that they are really, really over the top with that "terrorism" thing.
I think that this line of thinking is part of the problem in the US. The lack of capital punishment in Norway is a feature not a bug, and if you look at the results it's a good feature. Norway has very low crimerates compared to the US, far fewer homicides and almost no problems with guns and violence.
The Unites States has a mentality of punishing the perpetrators, often very hard, in order to gain revenge and maybe act as a deterrent to others. This is why the US is one of the onlycountries in the world that use capital punishment, and the country in the world where most people are in prison.
Unfortunately research shows that this doesn't work, as evidenced by crimerates and homicides in the US. Norway takes a different approach, and instead of looking for revenge they ask "how do we prevent this from happening again". This is why there is no capital punishment, why you see drug offenders in nice rehabilitation homes, and why Breivik was convicted like any other murderer within the Norweigan system.
The Norweigan system works, and the American doesn't. Just look at the numbers.
To act as the devils advocate I do have to note that Norway has less social problems than the US in general which also affects the level of crime, e.g. you have no minorities recently out of slavery and not much immigration (Sweden and Denmark have way more immigration though but still have quite little crime).
I am a firm believer in the Norwegian style of punishment and rehabilitation. The goal of a justice system is not to punish or get revenge but to create a safe society with little crime, and if rehabilitation does that (which is what I believe) then we should have more rehabilitation.
