Posted on 01/27/2003 3:24:15 AM PST by Clive
It has been just two months since the UN Security Council voted unanimously that Iraq must disarm or face an invasion, but France has already changed its mind. France's president, Jacques Chirac -- nicknamed Superliar by his domestic critics -- crumbled almost as quickly as the Maginot Line did. Quelle surprise!
The only honest response, of course, can be "who cares?" France would not have been a serious ally. It has a single aircraft carrier, and it took $20-billion and 15 years to build. In a recent trial, its propellers snapped off. Canadians should not snicker -- at least France has an aircraft carrier.
A century has passed since French was the language of diplomacy; France long ago lost its empire. But what it lacks in influence it makes up in imperial hauteur.
While France does the talking, the fighting will be done by the U.S. and its principal ally, the United Kingdom. There is a nobility, a moral symmetry, to England's support for America. In his speeches, British Prime Minister Tony Blair evokes the memory of America's unconditional support for besieged England during the Second World War.
Such old-fashioned gratitude feels wholesome and enduring and meaningful -- such a different tone than the daily excuses proffered by the French, who have become little more than Saddam Hussein's lawyers.
Blair is still a socialist. But unlike some in his own caucus, and most in this country, he realizes there is more to socialism than just anti-Americanism. There must be, if that philosophy is to survive outside the irrelevant ideological monasteries of academia.
Gerhard Schroeder, Germany's chancellor, has joined Chirac in his sulk, pledging to oppose any move by NATO to attack. How exquisitely shameless that the countries liberated by England and America in the Second World War, protected by NATO during the Cold War, and whose economies are propped up by tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed on their soil, have decided to undermine and neutralize that alliance, now that they've wrung all they need from it.
Don't be surprised. Read your history. In 1859, Europe's Count Cavour was asked how he planned to repay his allies for their assistance in unifying Italy. "We will astonish the world with our ingratitude," he replied.
Let us seek to understand today's Count Cavours. Europe does not just lack military might; it long ago lost its moral conviction too. It took the pathologically amoral Bill Clinton to lead Europe to intervene in the Balkans -- to stop ethnic cleansing in Europe, less than a lifetime after the Holocaust!
It is understandable that France, Germany and other geopolitical eunuchs should curse the sole superpower, if only for psychological comfort.
With their teeming populations of unassimilable Arab immigrants, Europe does not want to foment domestic unrest. And Saddam has always been a loyal patron of German, and especially French, weapons.
Iraq's nuclear reactor was built by the French. So was much of its air force. And France and Germany buy tens of millions of barrels of Iraqi oil to this day.
A theory: Could it be that France and Germany are protecting Saddam because they have something in Baghdad to hide from any would-be U.S. liberators?
Would a U.S. occupation show that France and Germany continued to help Saddam with his weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War, in violation of the UN sanctions? Could they be so amoral, so ungrateful to America?
We are about to find out.
I think it is about time that we stop referring to France as our ally. I mean, they really haven't been for fifty years. The Krauts I'll give another few years, and then it's off with their heads as well.
You lost.
Screw France and Germany ... let's re-call every re-built brick.
Bump for the Brits.
Therein lies the crux of the matter, i.e., Militant Islam.
Dollars or Francs? big diff
It has a single aircraft carrier, and it took $20-billion and 15 years to build.
What's the latest news on that carrier? I heard about a year ago that it was heading to the waters off Pakistan, or at least to the Mideast region, but I heard no news after that. Did another propeller blade fall off? Did someone try to do a load of laundry and rip the ship apart?
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