shocking propaganda against France

I am very shocked by the current propaganda against France and, in a minor extent, Germany and the EU, which is developing on the American web and media. As we are some "old Europe" countries, let me tell you that some elements of this propaganda remind me of the atmosphere that existed between European peoples of 1914-18 : the Frenchman is the USA's Jew, the traitor, the coward, which plants knives in the back. These are paranoid ideas. Bush has declared "you are with us or you are against us"… your enemies are "evil's axis"… A deeply thought political theory which reminds me of older simplistic speeches. Believe the experience of "old Europe", who knows a lot about the matter, and is not proud of it : your war has already begun, you're under propaganda, and rational arguments don't prevail any more.

France was on the Gulf ten years ago, when Irak invaded its neighbour, and when the coalition was covered by the UN to free Kuwait.

According to the NATO alliance, France made clear during the first hours after the 11th September that it was ready to respect its engagements if necessary.

But with the future Anglo-Saxon crusade against Bagdad, things are very different. The OTAN was a defensive alliance against the Pact of Varsovia. To be an ally of the USA doesn't mean to give its allegiance to the USA. It means, in case of aggression by another state, that solidarity becomes effective. Irak has not yet attacked anyone. NATO should have nothing to do with "preventive wars".

Can't you all simply understand this : as you are so powerful, rich, and influent, it's more courageous for France to refuse to engage in this war. There will be retaliation against France for such an attitude. To send a few planes in the Gulf and drop a few bombs, just like the UK or Italy, would have been so simple for France.

French people are not the stupid blind nationalists that your propaganda is pretending they are. French people know they have lost their weight in international politics. But they don't want to abandon their sovereignty to an other organisation than the European union. Is it so scandalous that they want to be free and independent ?

Well, it's true that "we are not with you". Because this is not a war for Irak's freedom and democracy. This is not even a war against terrorism ; this war will create thousands of new terrorists full of hate for America. A government only makes war for its own interest. This war is for the Iraki oil, and to be more independent of Saudi Arabia, the country of the 11th September terrorists, where Al Qaida money comes from. It's a war to completely change the Middle-East and so the world-wide energetic map. I find logical for the USA to defend their interests. The powerful countries have always acted like this. It's cynic and amoral, but, somehow, "natural". But stop talking about democracy, and the Good against Evil. This is not Starwars. This is not a Tolkien's story.

S. Hussein is a dictator, he has massacred and tortured. He probably owns and surely has owned chemical and biological weapons. But what about Libya, Iran, North Korea, China in Tibet, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Palestine, etc… ? If democracy in Irak is the aim, why does it become urgent right now ? Were the Afghans free when the Talibans were installed to stabilise a country where pipe-lines had to go through ?

France is a traitor, France is isolated - isolated with the rest of the world except the OTAN. That's what your leaders need to make you believe because they don't want you to know that you have mainly a simple Anglo-Saxon coalition. OTAN : approximately 20 countries with the new eastern members - less France, Germany, and Benelux. The rest of the world : Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East… And the rest of the world fears you but it doesn't love you.

Is it so necessary for the USA to crush all possibility of counterbalancing power ? Do they complain about the treason of an ally or the independence of one of their own "satellite countries" ? They have succeeded in being hated by the whole Moslem world - which owns the main oil reserves. Is it so enjoyable that they now need to invective and humiliate the western European countries trying to build their political union ? Do they love so much to be hated ?

To conclude, here's the dream your government is currently destroying by its politics in western Europe - it was made by an "old", "disloyal", "nationalist", "chauvinist" Frenchman (even a bit socialist, what a monster ! …) :

"Un jour viendra où vous, France, vous, Russie, vous, Angleterre, vous, Allemagne, vous toutes, nations du continent, sans perdre vos qualités distinctes et votre glorieuse individualité, vous vous fondrez étroitement dans une unité supérieure et vous constituerez la fraternité européenne, absolument comme la Bretagne, la Bourgogne, la Lorraine, l'Alsace se sont fondues dans la France […]. Un jour viendra où l'on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, les Etats-Unis d'Europe, placés en face l'un de l'autre, se tendant la main par-dessus les mers, échangeant leurs produits, leur commerce, leur industrie, leurs arts, leurs génies, défrichant le globe, colonisant les déserts, améliorant la création sous le regard du Créateur."

(The day will come when you, France, you, Russia, you, England, you, Germany, all of you, nations of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individualities, you will melt closely into a superior unity and you will constitute the European brotherhood, absolutely as Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace have melted into France […]. The day will come when we'll see those two huge groups, the United States of America, the United States of Europe, facing each other, offering hand beyond the seas, exchanging their products, their commerce, their industry, their arts, their genius, clearing the globe, colonising the deserts, improving the creation under the look of the Creator.)

9/11? We were attacked with box cutters not WMD.

Did you forget the anthrax so soon? Or did you buy the lie that the Czechs discounted the Atta-Iraqi meeting, when in fact he reaffirmed it? Last time I checked anthrax was a biological weapon.

Did you forget the ricin incident in Great Britain? The folks with the ricin are linked to Iraq.

How does that anything to do with Iraq at all? 19 men got into this country and highjacked four planes with box cutters. No chemicals, No bio weapons, no nukes.

Evidently you fell for the domestic theory on the anthrax. Did you forget about the first WTC bombing and its Iraqi connection, and forget the cyanide gas - a chemical weapon- which fortunately did not work?

Did you forget the Iraqi agent who attended the Malaysia meeting with the hijackers of 911? He made it back to Bagdhad.

And besides Sadaam there are a dozen other countries with crazy dictators that WMD programs that don't like us.

Yeah, there are. And some of them we're stuck with because they have succeeded in obtaining nukes; too bad we didn't stop them before they obtained nukes. If we had, millions of people would be alive today, and many millions more would be free.

Iraq, however, has gone further than to merely let people know it has WMD. It demonstrated the stuff. It invaded Kuwait and Iran. Hussein has expressed a desire to annex other nations and has even done it, albeit briefly.

Iraq started the war, and Iraq ignored the cease fire arrangements and decided to continue this war. It's time to deal with the problem because it will not simply "go away."

We lived with it before 9/11- hell we lived with it for 50 years.

I for one didn't like seeing 200 + marines get killed in Lebanon. But we didn't do anyhting about that and so, we ended up getting more and more people killed because of our perceived weakness. Lebanon is Syrian property now, for all practical purposes, and is a haven for terrorism which did, does and will murder more Americans. Ignoring the problem empowers terrorists- it does not make them wimp out and go for less important targets and it sure as heck won't make them retire and get into a harmless hobby. And regimes like Hussein's keep the profit margins up enough to ensure that terorists have a home and base of operations. I for one didn't like the Kobar Towers bombing, the scud launches against a country which wasn't even in the first Gulf War, nor the people who pay families to train their kids to be human bombs. I for one didn't like seeing our embassies blown up and hundreds of Kenyans killed or maimed just because they had the misfortune to walk by or work there. I for one didn't like seeing US sailors turned into human peanut butter between the decks of a US warship in a Yemeni port. I for one don't think it is acceptable to just allow people to take unlimited hits at you without responding or taking their arses out. I for one don't think we should twiddle our thumbs while Iraq or Iran drop mines in navigable waters to cripple third party shipping. I for one don't think we should sit idly by while Iraq sends assassins and thugs into our country to harass American citizens who were formerly Iraqi scientists or officials. I for one don't think it is funny to see Americans get decapitated on video or to read about Americans being tortured because our enemies have no respect for us owing to our annoying willingness to simply forget people languishing in prisons or to forget people who were incinerated for Greater Babylon or some twisted religion be it Islam, pan Arabism, or its more westernized marxist-socialism. Just because you find the attrition rate acceptable doesn't mean it is ethical for you to do so.

I for one don't forget it when someone declares war on us. It's hardly "preemptive" to strike when someone does so.

I don't think you appreciate what a revolutionary foreign policy doctrine Bush is extolling.

There is nothing revolutionary about resuming a conflict when the cease fire has been violated, nor about responding to a surprise attack against all involved, nor about laying low a nation whose leader has threatened us or our citizens.

Why anyone would expect the rest of the world- even our allies- to accept a foreign policy that reserves the right to premptively attack percieved threats to us is beyond me.

Well, for one, there is nothing preemptive about this, and much of the rest of the world is with us, so it is reasonable to expect those will remain with us. And becasue people follow leadership, I expect more will join once we engage. Not that it matters.

What Bush wants- an unprovoked attack against Iraq (quibble all you want- that is what it will be)

Only a fool thinks this is "unprovoked." Saddam Hussein's support of Abu Nidal was more than sufficient for us to go after him long ago, as he and others have used Abu Nidal and other groups to try to cover their hand in the acts, attempts which at times failed to cover adequately. Assassination attempts on US leaders after a cease fire is an act of war. All have been engaged actively in trying to destroy or damage this country and its citizens wherever they can discreetly do so. And this isn't even mentioning the very violation of the cease fire is sufficient reason.

We're not obligated to treat Iraq as an equal, nor any nation whose citizens are not free, as "an equal." There is no obligation for us to "play fair," with regimes whose stated goals are to annex our allies, destroy our allies, bomb our bases, choke our trade, block our trade routes, or to threaten Americans, etc. A preemptive strike on Britain, for example, would be inappropriate and wouldn't come up in any case because Britain is no threat and does not threaten anyone, not even its own citizens. Iraq has and continues to threaten its neighbors, who are also our trading partners. We do not need to wait around to see if our enemies are true to their word.

is revolutionary in world diplomatic history.

Nonsense.

Not to mention, we don't live in an age where it takes two or three weeks for the enemy's ships to arrive. We live in a world where millions can be killed by a few, in the blink of an eye.

To expect the rest of the world to passively accept that and be happy with it is not realistic.

I don't care if they passively accept it or are happy with it. But I do expect a country which sank a Greenpeace ship to quite whining when we want to kill a notorious murderer who has already expressed his intentions. Notice that we do not preemptively strike France? That's because as obnoxious as the French are, they haven't tried to assassinate US citizens, they haven't invaded one of our allies or trading partners, they haven't tried to shoot down our planes, they haven't violated a cease fire, they haven't sent agents to meetings with hijackers in Malaysia, they haven't met with al Qaeda several times in Afghanistan and the Sudan, and they haven't gassed the people of Luxembourg.

(Of course, they sure haven't tried to stop such things, either.)

The survival of my country trumps our concern for the emotional well-being of France. We do not have to let pedophiles run preschools so we sure as heck shouldn't let mass murderers desiring to rebuild Babylon have nuclear weapons with which to blackmail their neighbors or ourselves.

Could the Iraqi's give WMD to AQ and could it be used here and kill thousands?

They can kill more than thousands. It's only a matter of time- and not much time, before they can kill hundreds of thousands or millions.

Yes. Just as easily a rouge Russian mercenary nuclear scientist could be working right now in a cave somewhere building a suitcase nuke for AQ as well.

Yes, but in this case we know where the "rogue" is and we know what he is up to, and we have been engaged in a war with him already, and we have patiently abided by all the international protocols and concerns and all it has gotten us are more dead Americans and many more dead Iraqis, threats to anhilate our allies, and a place for terrorists to hang out in a very strategic central location in the Middle East.

Is invading Iraq going to make us more or less likely to be the target of terrorist attack in the future?

Less over the long run. We know for a FACT that doing nothing results in an ever-escalating use of terrorism as a political tool not just for groups but for nations who use terrorists as proxies.

Fighting the NAZIS got us a lot fewer NAZIs. Executing a murderer means that murderer will never kill again, and if done swiftly and preferably with a rope so potential criminals will see how humiliating it is to die with a pantload, others will be reluctant to join the company of murderers. This isn't rocket science, it's common sense.

You know why the Arabs on 9/11 succeeded? The succeeded because Americans (and everyone but Israelis) had been trained to sit mutely, draw no attention to themselves, and do nothing when terrorists take over a plane. We were trained to "wait for the authorities," to expect a negotiation and eventual freedom even if a few Americans or Jews were picked out of the passenger lists and tortured and shot like a certain Navy man in Europe some ears ago. so when 911 came, there the people sat, and they watched in horror, frozen, as the hijackers slit the stewards' and stewardesses' throats and tok over the cokpits. And they stayed in their seats because the terrorists threatened them with an imaginary bomb. Heck, it wasn't even a real one. And because they sat there and did nothing, not only did they die, but their own plane and thoier own bodies enabled the mass murder of 3 thousand innocent people. It could have been far worse- it took over an hour for the buildings to collapse.

But on ONE plane things took a different twist, and the people, once told by the folks on the ground that other planes had become Islamic cruise missiles, resolved not to go out like sheep to the slaughter. they fought back, and thanks to them, the plane never struck its intended target, and lives were saved. And because of them Americans now know that no matter what anyone says, if there is ever an attempt at hijacking a plane again, they must attack immediately at the slightest provocation, and not wait for someone to get their throat slit, and not wait for the terrorists to take the cockpit, and above all, to not wait for the "authorities" to negotiate. If they do, it will be too late. If we had that saem philosophy all along, there would have been one hijacking in history and no one would have tried it again.

Many things could happen. It still doesn't mean it is going to.

I will guarantee you there will be escalating levels of terrorism if we do not go after Iraq. Fortunately, we are going into Iraq. And Iraqis will try to get off a few hits as they did the last time, but this time they won't have Saddam Hussein to run home to.

Bush's foreign policy is very radical and a break from hundreds of years of tradition and diplomatic history.

Nonsense.

It is radical and radical change brings about a million unforseen consequences.

The known consequences of inaction are too high. Inaction means that someone WILL use nukes sooner or later, because they would know they would get away with it. Not to mention, we won't be taken seriously nor will we be respected if we continue to hide or appease or ignore.

Bin Laden himself said that he saw America run away in Somalia and that was why he believed we would run on 911 and leave the middle east and all of the people there, to the very vicious attentions of his zealots.

We didn't have to run- we had at more than one time had Aidid in our sights and with split seconds to spare in his life; if Clinton had but given the order, the example set by Aidid would have prevented the Battle of Mogadishu, and the killing of both Amricans and many more Somalis there. And we would not have run away, and would not have shown the weakness which Bin Laden thought was our fatal flaw.

Fidel Castro and the Iranian leaders said much the same thing mere months before 9/11. Fidel said "I have seen her up close, she is weak, America is weak" and "together, we shall bring America to her knees." Weakness is always the problem. Weakness is why Iraq invaded Iran the first time- the mullahs had killed off or imprisoned the Shah's military personnel, and without leadership the Iranians were smoked for a while.

US weakness is why Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saddam believed we would sit idly by.

Weakness is why Buckley was tortured to death over a period of months- and this was followed by years of terrorism carried out by Imad Mugniyah. (Who also has made contact with al Qaeda since we kindly allowed him to breathe after once getting him into a snare years later because of another Clinton brain freeze.) We ran from Lebanon and our enemies then knew they had nothing to fear. And when you are no longer feared by your enemies, you will not gain respected from friends, either.

Sorry, your "imaginary fears" argument against taking action won't cut it with me.

So, after 58 years, the French have decided that they prefer Vichy after all. It's hardly surprising. When the Vichy regime was in power, one could pretty much do what one wanted when it came to those troublesome Jews. Yes, there were shortages and lots of Germans around, but that's not much different from the present. Plus, just like today, the truly intellectual could take pride in the notion that they were part of something larger than a piddling little nation state. And really, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité!" is just so passe. Vichy knew that too, which is why they were replaced with Travail (work), Famille (family), and Patrie (fatherland).

Not that those are any better. The modern Vichian motto might as well be ignorez, retarde, apaisez. Ignore, delay and appease describe the French character as well as anything else, excepts perhaps "Unions, Vacations and Occasional Showers!".

You can hardly blame the French. France is example number one when comes to natural selection of a nation's character.

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.
Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."
Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.
Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots
Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.
War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.
The Dutch War - Tied
War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.
War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.
American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."
French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.
The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.
The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.
World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.
World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.
War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu
Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.
War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

Let's face it. When it comes to war, France gets rolled more often than a Parisian prostitute with a visible mustache. They've been beaten so many times there's no fight left in them. There's no national anthem in the world as ludicrous as France's

To arms, to arms, ye brave!
Th'avenging sword unsheathe!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On liberty or death.

Oh liberty can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee?
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?

Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee? Or whips thy noble spirit tame? Yes, demonstrably. The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"

You should keep that in mind, Herr Schroeder.

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