After French Criticism, Washington Drops Payment Demand

The Wall Street Journal ^ | January 20, 2013 | By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS in Paris and ADAM ENTOUS in Washington

[MinorityRepublican]

France is increasingly upset by what it sees as limited Obama administration support for the war it is waging in Mali against al Qaeda militants, including an initial U.S. demand, since dropped, that Paris foot the bill for any Air Force transport flights, French officials said.

After the French went public with their complaints over the weekend, the Pentagon yielded on one of them, saying Sunday night that it would not seek reimbursement from Paris for the flights.

However, the unusually harsh criticism from Paris underscored the longtime U.S. ally's growing frustration with the U.S. commitment to the Mali mission.

The U.S. is providing "invaluable" intelligence-gathering help for the Mali campaign, the French officials said. But the U.S. has yet to decide on whether to agree to France's request for U.S. planes to refuel French fighters in flight, they said. France has a small fleet of aging refueling tankers and says more are needed to maintain the tempo of air operations in remote Mali.

France also has asked the U.S. to send additional manned and unmanned surveillance planes to spy on rebel communications, but the White House so far hasn't responded to that request either.

Obama administration officials have said they support the French campaign but want to get a clear picture of the mission and the rebels being targeted in French strikes before providing more assistance.

A spokesman for French President François Hollande said "joint intelligence-gathering efforts and the sharing of information with the U.S. was essential" to the Mali campaign and the broader attempt at defeating militants spread across the vast Sahara desert. He declined to comment further.

[ansel12]

You are confusing talking about fellow Americans and prejudice among American neighbors, with running military operations in Africa and siding with the enemy, as President?

Come on now, get real.

[FlyingEagle]

Get real? Ok. Here is a real quote. I do not believe that Obama sides with America, neither as president, nor in what little we know of his previous life. He clearly adores the Muslim Brotherhood, banned for extremist Islamist during the 3 years I lived in Cairo.

Actual quote from “Dreams from My Father” [pg. 100-101]: To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed necolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.  But this strategy alone couldn’t provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.

[ansel12]

“Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

You are confusing talking about fellow Americans and prejudice among American neighbors, with running military operations in Africa and siding with the enemy, as President?

[FlyingEagle]

All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.

SOPHOCLES, The Sons of Aleus [fragment]

[ansel12]

Uhh, sure.

[Pilsner]

After all the requirements and demands we put on the French with Afghanistan and Libya, and we screw them with Mali.

Iraq: French refused to even hold our hats while we fought.
Afghanistan: French have been moderately useful.
Libya: French went to war to preserve and expand Total's (French oil company) stake in Libyan oil. We bail out the French, who found that their military could not handle the Libyans, even with the feeble aid of the Brits. After we bomb KaDaffy into defeat for the French, KaDaff's Tuareg mercenaries take their guns home to Mali and take over the place for Al Queda.

Yeah, Al Queda needs to be defeated in Mali. Yeah, I trust Holland to make a better effort to do so than BO. Yeah, we ought to help defeat Al Queda. But because it is in our best interests, not because the French have any great moral right to our resources.

[oldbill]

Hey all you Europeans who loved Obama - get used to it.

After France, it will be Briain that gets stiffed when the Argentines try to take the Falklands again.

Then the Philipines when China takes a few islands, then the Dutch when Chavez takes Curacao and Aruba.

You love the guy - suck it up.