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I've noticed that it is very much de rigueur to mock the French these days.

These days?

I remain astonished that people mock the French as reluctant soldiers

Reluctant soldiers they are not. They should perhaps be more reluctant though.

good only for surrendering en masse.

This attitude probably comes from the results in WWI, WWII, and afterwards and us forgetting all of their great victories 400 years ago and before.

There was only one possible reason for the US to enter World War I on the side of the allies, and that was out of a sense of loyalty to France

Now thats an indepth historical analysis.

For those who mock the French defeat in 1940 it might pay to consider what the French did to the Prussians in 1806!

Oh well hell! That makes up for everything. So the French are having a couple of down centuries.

In 1813 the Prussians repaid him in kind, having learned the lessons of warfare the hard way.

Musta been a fluke. LOL

Which brings me to my point: why do we consider England a natural ally, and France virtually an enemy?

Just a guess, but I would say that its because the British don't blast every foreign policy move for the sole reason that it is not a French foreign policy move, didn't carp at us and leave the NATO table in a huff during the Cold War, and allow us overflight rights so our pilots don't have to fly exhausted over Libya, and lets us preposition supplies on Diego Garcia to defend the developed world's oil supply and all sorts of stuff like that.

In our revolution and again in 1812 we were fighting as allies of France against the hated British!

Yeah but don't forget the French and Indian War LOL!

It was the British who despised us and tried to topple us and contested with us for Maine and Oregon and mocked us as backwoods hillbillies, unworthy of a place in the family of nations.

I forgot that the French consider us a cultural equal unlike the British.

It was Britain who tricked us into sacrificing one hundred thousand of our best men in that horror called The War To End All Wars.

I thought this article just said a few paragraphs ago that we did it because we loved the French????? or have things changed in the time it took me to read 3 paragraphs?

So we make fun of France for losing so ignominiously in World War II, forgetting that the French had literally lost an entire generation in the First World War II and had little left to give.

Didn't Germany also participate in World War I? Or did the French just lose an entire generation and Germany come away unaffected and ready to crush France in the next war?

Feeble as France had become, they none the less went to war against the fearsome Wehrmacht because their ally Poland was in danger. Surely there is some honor in that?

Hmmm, didn't England declare war for the exact same reason? Those honorless Brits! How dare they steal France's reason for going to war.

Now France is again in trouble because the French ambassador to London complained that the world was being drawn into war over a "shitty little country."

Surely there is some honor in that???? LOL

No freakin thanks. I'll stick with the Brits, at least until the French start back on the upswing in a couple hundred years.

"Which brings me to my point: why do we consider England a natural ally, and France virtually an enemy?"

Check your copy of "The War in Afghanistan".....you'll notice that it was the British that showed up and not the french.

Check your copy of "The Persian Gulf War" and you'll notice that it was the french who had to constantly be ordered to get their asses moving not the British.

Check your copy of "The President's Address to the Nation" immediately following the September 11th attacks. If you'll notice.....it is Tony Blair in the balcony....not Chirac.

The french people and government are longer allies of the United States of America.

Allies do not have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a war when you have been attacked.

Idiots in the media can spin the french story six ways from sunday....but the American people will long remember what happened after Sept. 11th.