Posted on 07/29/2005 8:35:32 PM PDT by quesney
What???...shocking I say!...but what of their civil rights???...where's the ACLU in all of this?
There was an article on here a couple of weeks ago about this very thing. It stated that the French were very helpful with intelligence about terrorists, more so than the French.
hey france, too little too late. You sissy boys might just as well surrender now, you know you'll bow to the muslims in the long run and you also know you won't stand up and fight.
And this time American boys won't come rescue your sorry asses.
"I know it is fashionable for Americans to bash the French, but as an Israeli, let me say that the French take terrorism more seriously than just about anybody. If I were an Al Qaeda terrorist, I'd rather be just about anywhere than in a French interrogation facility. They're methodical and they're ruthless. That doesn't mean they won't stab allies in the back, but when it comes to anti-terrorism efforts and law enforcement, they're as good as it gets."
Yes, this is so.
Except that France does not "stab allies in the back".
France follows its policies. If allies set different policies, that is the allies' business. It is not treachery on the part of France to make French policy very clear from the outset, and then refuse to abandon that policy.
France is in Afghanistan fighting the terrorist elements there just as the USA is.
France is not in Iraq because French policy on Iraq was different from that of the USA. That is not backstabbing. France did not pretend to go along and then turn at the end. There was no surprise here. France stated very consistently and clearly from the beginning that it did not think that a war in Iraq was advisable and did not support it. France kept saying that, and did not change its policy.
It is not backstabbing to state what you think and stick by it. It is principle. The Americans don't like it, because the Americans wanted French help. The French are helping in Iraq, because the French share practically all of the counter-terrorism intelligence they get with the US, and that includes Iraq. France thought that invading Iraq was unwise, said so, and did not change it's mind. That is no more of a betrayal than it would be in any other human interaction.
If a wife says to her husband "We are having liver for dinner", and he says "I do not like liver" not just once, but several times over the course of the afternoon, she says that he should learn to like it and serves liver anyway, she has absolutely no grounds for complaint at all if he pushes his dinner plate aside with the liver uneaten, says "I am still hungry", and goes and grabs a baguette and butter. Now, she will probably complain anyway, that he is a brute, that she does not appreciate the efforts she does for him, that she cooks, cleans and takes care of the children, and every other guilt-producing thing under the sun. All of that is unavailing: he gave warning all day that he does not like liver and isn't going to eat it. When he behaves exactly as he said he would, no woman has the right to bitch at a man.
Likewise over Iraq. France was explicitly clear with the US about that long before the US even proposed battle plans. The US forged ahead anyway, which it is in their power to do, but it is absolutely ridiculous, like a bitchy wife, to complain about betrayal. France told the US "No" consistently for two years. Why the hell should anyone be remotely surprised, much less wave accusations of treachery and backstabbing, when France did exactly what France said it was going to do all along.
I know that the Americans expect to be able to rule the world on command, and expect allies to be sattelites. But they don't and allies aren't, and they aren't going to and allies aren't going to either.
In Lebanon, France and the US agreed to oust the Syrians, and they are gone. In Afghanistan, France and the US agree that the terrorists must not regain a training camp, and French and US armed forces operate there.
In Iraq, France expected a civil war - that is the French experience in North Africa when attempting to occupy and rule rebellious Muslims. France did not, and does not, expect that the US will have the will to do what is necessary to win such a war: depopulate large swathes of the country. De Gaulle pulled out of Algeria not because France had lost any battles, but because he saw, well, that with 1-2 million Algerian dead and the rebellion percolating along, the only way France was going to win was through a systematic genocide of the North African Muslims. Only their extinction would cause the end of the war. De Gaulle did not start the war in Algeria, he inherited it when he was called to be President of the 5th Republic. He understood the military equation well, and understood that the PRICE of holding Algeria would be to turn France into a genocide. He decided that holding onto Algeria was not worth destroying France, and he pulled France out.
Iraq is not stabilizing.
The French expected this.
This is what the French said was going to happen.
The Americans and their allies rushed in and defeated Saddam Hussein, but now face an intifada which is not weakening. Iraqis voted in an election, but they cannot agree on a constitution. Meanwhile the intifada continues to grow and American support for the war in Iraq is beginning to buckle. This is not happening because of anything that France did or did not do. Were France to have a division of troops there, the circumstances would be identical.
To really win the war in Iraq will require the Americans and their allies to arm the Shiites and Kurds to brutally subjugate the Sunni minority through a civil war, and dramatically thin out the Sunni male population. It will not take 3 weeks and 100 dead, but 6 years and 3 million dead, at least. The Americans have never had any intention of doing that, and everyone knows it.
Which means that the Americans can't win there.
At the end of the day, American public resolve will collapse before the Sunni barbarians stop fighting.
The world has seen this before.
Now, France considers this a DISASTER, because it will mean a radicalized, oil-rich Iraq as the hub of mayhem in the Middle East. If one goes back and reads the French objections, this was the concern all along. It was why France thought the war was unwise, and still does.
That is no backstab, it is a difference of opinion.
And it is very probably the truth too.
America is struggling in Iraq, and it is convenient to blame someone, the French, for it. If France sent the whole army to Baghdad it would not end the intifada there.
Only genocide will do that.
And the Americans are unwilling to permit the Shiites to thin out the Sunni male population.
This business about treachery is absurd.
There was no French treachery.
The French disagreed with the Americans over how to deal with Iraq. And the Americans are not proving to have been right.
That someone is Sarkozy, who continues his rise to succeed Chirac.
Keep your eye on this guy. I'm sure De Villepin is.
""French" is not a race like "English" or "German" is. It is an idea."
Hate to break this to you, but that's totally false.
The French may be trying to MAKE it *merely* an idea, but it has always historically been an ethnicity.
The USA, OTOH ironically, was not founded as ethnically based and is, in fact, as it always has been, based on an idea. Not based on indigenous populations as has every other country been.
The French are going to require bathing?
"Hate to break this to you, but that's totally false.
The French may be trying to MAKE it *merely* an idea, but it has always historically been an ethnicity"
Not really.
France is composed of ancient provinces that have different cultures and different languages.
The Bretons of Brittany speak a form of Gaelic and are Celts. Nextdoor, the Normans of Normandy are descended from the Vikings. Next to them, Picardy is peopled by the Flemish. Just to the south, Alsace and Lorraine, of World War I fame, are heavily Germanic provinces of France.
In the south, Savoy and Provence were once Roman and are heavily Italianate. Toulouse and Carcassone regions are Catalan in roots.
Auvergne is Gaulois.
The overseas departments are largely black African or polynesian in origin.
All of these people are French because their lands were provinces of the King of France, and were incorporated into the French Republic. That gave them one law.
Universal education has given them one language, and this unity in language and law and faith, wrought by the government, is what makes the Alsatians, Bretons and Guadeloupeens French. They are not the same ethnicity or race, and they do not have the same cultures in very many respects.
German, Irish or English are ethnicities.
French, British or American are nationalities.
The difference is pretty clear.
Not to me! By your reasoning, you must consider NO country, as is, also a "nationality". How many tons of tribes were there throughout Europe alone, before the Romans "united" them? Germans until very recently were notorious for forever fragmenting and never uniting. I suppose 1 could say there are Bavarians, Hessians, and Mecklenburgers instead of an ethnicity called "Germans"! And Lord knows how many others of much more ancient origin (Saxons included, who I guess screwed up the whole English thing)!
I vaguely understand your meaning (and appreciate your metered dialog here on this thread incidentally), but I see little difference between the "French" model and others in Europe. Perhaps you are talking about "types", as opposed to specific nationalities? There are thus, Germanic (Teutonic), Gaulic, Gaelic, Nordic "types". And I would agree - there was never a "French" type. However, how can 1 deny there is NOW a French ethnicity, derived of many types or part of 1?
This to me is about the same discussion as trying to get people straight that the "pit-bull terrier" is a TYPE, not a specific BREED as e.g. an American Pit Bull Terrier.
The French are going to require bathing?
Only for muslims.
So9
The difference between the German provinces and the French is illuminating.
In France, there was a monarch, and the different pieces of the country, with their different languages were incorporated into one state because of the monarchy.
In Germany, the Emperor was so weak that there was no political unity. And yet, there was still an identifiable "Germany" because there remains a common language. Language, especially, is an identifier of commonality that distinguishes an ethnicity, at least in its home lands.
Pre-literacy, there was still something intrinsically German about Germany. Low Deutsch and High Deutsch are different, but they are not mutually incomprehensible. The political divisions of Germany were many, but these divisions did not constitute a difference in ethnicity. The German Swiss and the Austrians are still ethnically German. That common tie of language is the most crucial feature, although not the only thing that makes for a distinctive ethnicity.
France was not linguistically unified until universal education. Bretagne and Alsace were as ethnically different as Ireland and England were in the age when the British government ruled both. There is a greater difference, ethnically, between Brest and Paris, and between Strassburg and Paris, than there is between Magdeburg, Zurich and Vienna, and that is despite the fact that the latter three are across national borders from each other, but the former three are all within the same state.
In truth, "ethnicity", "race", "culture" etc. are all very nebulous terms, politically charged terms used to score points historically, to justify things (for example, the German culture and language of Alsace and parts of Lorraine were used by the Germans as justification for war against France).
Native language is probably the best single indicator of any of these things, although it is certainly not absolute.
Religion is another historically important qualifier. What is the difference between a Belgian Flamand and a Dutch? The difference between Catholic faith and Protestant was sufficient to overbear the native tongue.
The difference between France and other countries in Europe is very important in this regard: France is a lot older. Germany came together only in the 1870s, and it was able to do so because of ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties between the people living in Germany. Italy did the same thing in the 1860s, for the same reasons. By contrast, Austria-Hungary flew to pieces on account of those same forces. The unifying center of the monarchial state was not sufficient to override the ethnic and cultural differences. Poland reformed itself because of the nationalism of the Poles, but it's a new country.
Indeed, if one looks carefully at the countries of Europe, one finds that most of them, going East to West, largely confined to the geographic boundaries of a common language, ethnicity and religion. Wherever people protrude across those lines, there is trouble. Belgium is federal and constantly in danger of flying apart because of this.
But then one comes to the two really ancient kingdoms: France and England, and one finds the rule does not hold.
France has broad ethnic diversity within the country. Saxony is not nearly as different from Bavaria as Brittany is from Alsace, or Toulouse is from Flanders. Until the 19th and 20th Centuries, the people of these provinces did not speak a common language. What made them French was the state.
Britain too is a nationality forged from a polyglot of very different languages and cultures held together, mostly, by the crown at the center. In this sense, Britain and France properly resemble the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which could not survive the centrifugal forces of culture. Germany and Italy exist because of the centipetal force of language and culture naturally bringing them together. Likewise Sweden, or Finland, or Portugal.
Britain was not ultimately able to hold onto the western island, despite reaching linguistic commonality, because the centrifugal force of culture and religion and history - real ethnic differences - were simply too great to be overcome.
France is different because it has held together major Celtic, Germanic, Latin, Basque, African and Polynesian provinces. Is French an ethnicity NOW?
I would say that it is to the extent that American is, or British. There are a set of ideas and cultural practices, and a common language, which define the French, British or Americans. These ideas, this language and these practices are not native to the French, British or American constituent peoples historically (by contrast, that which is German or Italian or Polish, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Irish, Greek, Serb, Croat, Slovakian, Slovenian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian or Swedish IS native to most of the people who live in those countries, whose boundaries mostly conform to the limits of that particular ethno-linquistic group). A new ethnicity, based on common language, culture and ideas forged together by the states that govern America, France and Britain certainly has emerged.
I suppose I would accept that "French" is an ethnicity of sorts TODAY, but it includes Blacks, North African Muslims, Celts, Teutons and Latins, all still identifiably so. "British" is an ethnicity that includes Scots, Irish, Welsh and English. And "American" is an ethnicity composed of people born in America, who have only known the US culture.
I would draw a very distinct line between pre-literate and post-literate Europe. Post-literacy, culture became stronger and more regularized because there came to be A form of the language that dominated.
But before we wade deeper into the pool, I think it would do best to pull far, far back to get the 50,000 foot view.
Looking at Europe, East to West and South to North, we find that MOST countries conform almost perfectly to ethno-linguistic lines, with only a few overlaps (and wherever there are those overlaps, there are deep troubles even today).
In the far West, with France and Britain, and to an extent Spain, you have the very oldest of the states of Europes, and the ethnic unicity of these countries breaks down. These countries were NOT formed on an ethnic, cultural or linguistic principle, but in the earlier, pre-literate age based upon the power of a monarch. Disparate provinces of very different languages and cultures, in the case of France and Britain (Spain's differences lie in Catalunia and the Basque country, and Spanish efforts to repress those ethnic differences have been markedly unsuccessful, putting Spain in the league of an ethnic state with an important overlap that it is unable to digest, and not comparable to Britain and France) were held together by a monarch, like Austria-Hungary was.
Unlike Austria-Hungary, the British, and especially the French monarchies (and republic) were able to cause the ethno-linguistic differences between the parts of their countries - which are as stark as can be found anywhere in Europe - and cause them to blend into something new.
This is not an ancient thing.
That you yourself look at the French as "French", and not as Alsatians, Basques and Celts (while a Basque right across in Spain is clearly a Basque) shows you the success that the French have had in this regard.
As I say, I could agree with you that TODAY there is something of a French ethnicity, but I would say that this would be true to the extent that there is also an American "ethnicity", and for the same reason.
France succeeded in doing what Yugoslavia, for instance, or Russia, were not able to do.
And I guess the key is that if one really goes back, it is not possible to actually find a "French" ethnicity that reached out and conquered the rest of it. There are definitely the English, and where they came from is clear.
In Yugoslavia, it was clear that the Serbs dominated.
In Spain, the Castillians.
But in France?
It is tough to find a region whose culture came to dominate the rest. Unity was forged by government.
This is much like America. And "American" might well be an ethnicity, but if it is, it is based on a set of ideas and history, and not on the the same things that ethnicity mean in almost all of Europe.
France is an older, monarchial model of the melting pot, in a way like China, and really not like Germany or Italy at all.
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