Here’s an unsurprising statistic from Spiegel Online, in an article about Europe’s incredibly dysfunctional, deranged anti-Americanism: Opinion: Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs. (Hat tip: St. Pancake.)

Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans’ fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it’s high time for a new bout of re-education.

Yes, since that last bout of re-education was so successful.

Here’s the important bit:

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country’s foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a “critical dialogue” between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they’ve been naughty, they’ll stop condemning their women to death for “unchaste behavior” and they’ll stop building the atom bomb.

Another word for this is “appeasement”—the European malady.