Marshall Plan an aberration? No, rather, a data point.
Our aid to Europe also meant with resentment. That's why they talk of the "ugly American" over there, and are always going on about our arrogance and bad taste. And it's why there are so many pomos in France. Remember, the modern existentialist movement started with Sartre, who was arguably a Nazi collaborator of sorts, and never could come to terms with his guilt.
But it doesn't get out of hand there, as it does in the Muslim world. What's different? Let's enumerate variables:
1. Cultural tradition. The Muslim world is a thick surface layering of Islam rooted in a core of ancient familistic dysfunctions. Europe was a skin of Nazism that had oozed out of a dead and gangrenous Judeo-Christian/Liberal tradition.(1) We wiped the skin off, and partially embalmed the underlying tradition. But it still oozes postmodernism.
2. Capacity for guilt. The Muslim world is repeatedly humiliated, but never takes the lesson to heart. They simply project their failings onto the West, and cast themselves as the noble longsuffering victims. They have no capacity for guilt, or shame, or even chagrin. You can't teach people like that. Even the nuns can't get through to them... oh wait, different group. By contrast, Germany at the end of WWII was utterly aghast and ashamed of itself. The festering corpse of Christianity had just enough power left to make them feel guilt, given a sufficiently enormous sin and the sight of piles of dead Jews. And guilt was what they were most in need of at that juncture. Also, France at least was able to feel embarrassment at how quickly they'd caved in to the enemy. Italy disowned Mussolini, and with him, most of what he had stood for. That's not quite the same thing as guilt, but it's repentance of a sort, and good enough to do the job. (In the case of England, guilt is moot. The English had nothing to be ashamed of, having long since put aside the appeasers.)
3. Totality of defeat. We crushed Nazi Germany into the dust. We didn't have to crush France into the dust, because the Nazis had done it for us. England didn't need crushing, apart from the appeasers, who had been more or less crushed at the start of the war. We levelled Japan's cities, and truamatized their surviving population. It was drastic, barbaric even, and arguably a war crime, but it got through to them when nothing else had.(2) But the Muslim world desperately needs crushing, and has never had it. We've stomped on them plenty of times when they got to be a nuisance, starting with the Barbary pirates and continuing through to the present day. But we've never followed through and finished the job. A policy of containment, even an aggressive one, is a poor substitute for victory.
1) According to Kierkegaard, Christianity was already dead in Europe in the 1840's.
2) Brutality is a language of sorts, sorely lacking in richness of expression, but quite unambiguous and compelling in what little it can convey. And it's the only language some people understand.
