 "...antidemocratic sentiment was not merely an ephermeral trend, but a defining feature of 20th century French political culture. |
Posted on 04/25/2003 1:46:51 PM PDT by mrustow
Toogood Reports [Weekender, April 27, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
Immediately after the onset of the war on Iraq, our French "allies" decided — yet again — to punish us. Foreseeing the inevitable coalition victory, Pres. Jacques Chirac announced to the world, that the American and British "belligerents" had no right to administer postwar Iraq, or to profit from contracts rebuilding the country. According to Chirac, the French, on the other hand, who had for years illegally armed Saddam Hussein, and who had not sacrificed any blood or treasure to remove him from power, were uniquely deserving of such contracts.
The moment the war was won, the French attempted, with the help of the Russians, to blackmail America, by refusing to lift prewar U.N. sanctions on Iraqi trade — sanctions which they had fought, tooth and nail, while Saddam Hussein was in power. The U.S. needs the trade to generate money to help rebuild the country. The French are concerned solely with getting full value for their prewar investments in, and inflated arms loans to Iraq — and then some.
Beaten back by a hailstorm of ridicule from pundits such as Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and William Safire of the New York Times, and realizing that we would have either ignored them, or proposed the dissolution of the sanctions, and forced them to veto the proposal, on Tuesday the French backed down from their demand that U.N. sanctions remain in force. But they have not given up their plan to milk postwar Iraq. As William Safire observed on Thursday, the French, along with their new best friends, the Russians, want to keep Iraqi trade under U.N. control, since the corrupt U.N. regime has for years permitted them to get rich, while impoverishing the Iraqi people.
In response to the shameless preening and hypocrisy of the French, in recent months joke writers have not been able to keep up with the demand for French jokes. On the David Letterman Show, former Sen. Bob Dole, a World War II veteran, quipped regarding surrendering Iraqis, "There were so many hands in the air, I thought we were in France."
Unlike our Gallic former allies, Americans have shown a healthy historical sense, in recalling how the French killed the Nazis with kindness during World War II. But the history of French vanity is considerably older than that. Indeed, the myth that the French are suave, urbane, and diplomatic, has long been one of France's leading exports.
Those Suave, Clever ... Germans?
As historian Gordon Craig chronicled in his monumental work, Germany, 1866-1945, following Prussia's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the 1866 Seven Week War, France, which had remained neutral during the war, clumsily and belatedly demanded she be given Luxemburg and Belgium as war booty.
French foreign minister Drouyn de Lhuys was adamant in his demands, and felt honor-bound to pursue them. Meanwhile, the clever Prussian Minister-President Otto von Bismarck, suckered French Ambassador Benedetti into putting the French demands into writing, and later revealed them to the world, leaving the French humiliated and emptyhanded.
The French were again tripped up by their vanity, on the way to losing the 1870-71 war against Prussian-dominated, newly unified Germany.
In trench warfare in World War I, the French Army heroically fought the German Reichswehr to a bloody stalemate, but it took American "doughboys" to save the day.
The French promptly lost the peace. The insatiable French hunger for revenge and reparations, preordained the economic collapse of Germany's fledgling Weimar Republic, and prepared the ground for Hitler and national socialism.
While living in West Germany from 1980-85, I crisscrossed the continent. In East Germany and Hungary, I saw countless pre-war buildings that were pockmarked with gunfire. But not in Paris. The stunning, pre-war architecture was in such pristine condition, you wouldn't know that France had even fought a war. So much for the official story, according to which the French were all Resistance fighters.
At the University of Tuebingen, I had only one French classmate, a gregarious Parisian named Antoine. I once asked Antoine why French university students so rarely studied abroad. Came his self-assured response, "Because we know that we have the world's greatest university system."
A Zone Of Their Own
During and just after World War II, FDR and Truman let themselves get snowed by Charles de Gaulle, and the next thing you knew, the French had been transformed from patsies into "allies." When the real Allies carved up postwar Germany, along with American, British, and Russian zones, respectively, they even gave the French a zone of their own. But contrary to the French tradition, rather than milk our conquered enemies through "reparations," we rebuilt their countries.
In the early 1950s de Gaulle, who was then losing French Indochina (which in 1954 became Vietnam), managed to talk Ike into subsidizing one-third of the costs of the West's most inept military's fight against Ho Chi Minh, and into holding American foreign policy hostage to French colonialism. In 1966, de Gaulle showed his "gratitude" to his American patrons, by deciding to pull French forces out of NATO, just to spite the U.S. But de Gaulle insisted on France remaining a "member" of NATO, with a say in its structure, even though the organization's sole purpose was military defense. (Once the Soviet Union fell, and NATO became a dinosaur, France fully rejoined it.)
More recently, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin sandbagged U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, by claiming for months to be negotiating in good faith, when in fact the French had planned all along to make fools of the U.S. Ultimately, it was the suave yet steely Colin Powell, who gave the French a lesson both in diplomacy and its limits.
A Mayonnaise Republic?
One wonders how, since Napoleon's 1821 death in exile on St. Helena, anyone could have taken the French seriously as a world power, outside of contests of cooking and baking prowess. (I am generally unimpressed with French wines, preferring those from Germany's Wuerttemberg region — where I lived — the best of which, unfortunately, are not exported.)
These days, two groups of Americans still speak fondly of the French. One is comprised of American socialists and communists, who have embraced the myth of European sophistication and principle (which merely masks cynicism, greed, and an envy which expresses itself as anti-Americanism), and who, in their contempt for George W. Bush, approvingly cite anyone who insults the President. The other group is composed of "paleoconservatives" and "paleolibertarians" — overlapping, allied schools of thought, each of whose distinctiveness is lost on neoconservatives — who are merely reacting to their neoconservative archenemies' French-bashing. ("My enemy's enemy is my friend.") If anything, the neocons would find the centuries-old French tradition of centralized government much more sympatico, than would paleos of any stripe.
And yet, when all is said and done, I refuse to give in to the temptation to hate the French. That would be so petty, so silly, so ... French. Granted, the French have afflicted the world with Robespierre, Sartre, Foucault, centralized government, and by setting the standard in European arrogance. And yet, I am grateful to them for Escoffier, Descartes, Montesquieu, croissants, and — as a Miller High Life ad once noted, sardonically ("Got to give it to you, Pierre") — mayonnaise. Above all, I remain grateful to them for Lafayette, and for the lady who, her torch held high, watches over New York Harbor.
Grateful from a safe distance, that is.
| "...antidemocratic sentiment was not merely an ephermeral trend, but a defining feature of 20th century French political culture. |
How could someone who pretends to know so much history, be ignorant of what was once the most popular phrase regarding the French, not to mention its historical background?
Prior to the 20th century, the term "race" referred to races and nationalities alike.
...The French, they are a funny race,
They box with their feet, and f**ck with their face.
Regards,
GtG
Kato, someone has killed Napolean...
O.k., o.k., I surrender! (And I'm not even French.)
Regards,
GtG
Thank you for your spirited public service!
Is that your work? Have you shown it to Mark Steyn yet?
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