“Schadenfreude” is a German word that is difficult to translate into English. Roughly, it means taking perverse pleasure in another’s trouble.

A friend of mine in Vienna, Austria emailed me earlier this week to tell me that this word pretty well describes European attitudes towards America’s difficulties in Iraq right now. As the Europeans see it, America went into Iraq in disregard of European opinion, and is now paying the price for its own arrogance.

Well, that’s one way of viewing the situation. But just a couple of days after I received this email, the Wall Street Journal printed a public threat that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued to the European powers last week.

Ahmadinejad said this: "We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt. It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals [Israel] . . . This is an ultimatum."

Europeans may disregard such warnings as so much bombast, intended more to appease Islamic extremists than to seriously threaten Europe. But then, they took the much same attitude toward another crazed anti-Semitic dictator over 70 years ago. Too late, they realized that they should have taken his rantings seriously.

Much of Europe is already within the reach of Iranian missiles. Those missiles may well have nuclear warheads before too long. If that happens, Europeans may look to America for support – only to discover that America is not only “far away”, but too full of schadenfreude to care. Schadenfreude cuts both ways.

In this day and age, democratic nations need to stick together in the face of nuclear blackmail from terrorist states, regardless of our differences. Schadenfreude is a luxury that none of us can afford.