Posted on 02/10/2003 11:14:49 PM PST by kattracks
The "petulant prima donna of realpolitik" is leading the "axis of weasels", in "a chorus of cowards". It is an unholy alliance of "wimps" and ingrates which includes one country that is little more than a "mini-me minion", another that is in league with Cuba and Libya, with a bunch of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" at the helm.Welcome to Europe, as viewed through the eyes of American commentators and newspapers yesterday, as Euro-bashing, and particularly anti-French sentiment, reached new heights. In a barrage of insults and invective which ranged from the basest tabloid rants to the loftiest columnists on the most respected newspapers, European-led resistance to America's war plans in Iraq was portrayed not as a diplomatic position to be negotiated as a genetic weakness in the European mindset which makes them reluctant to fight wars and incapable of winning them.
The front page of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post yesterday shows the graves of Normandy with the headline: "They died for France but France has forgotten." "Where are the French now, as Americans prepare to put their soldiers on the line to fight today's Hitler, Saddam Hussein?" asks the pugnacious columnist Steve Dunleavy. "Talking appeasement. Wimping out. How can they have forgotten?" A cartoon in the same paper shows an ostrich with its head in the sand below the words: "The national bird of France."
If such language is proving a headache for the diplomats, then spare a thought for the French translators, who have struggled for words to convey the full force of the venom. "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - a phrase coined by Bart Simpson but made acceptable in official diplomatic channels around the globe by Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the rightwing weekly National Review (according to Goldberg) - was finally rendered: " Primates capitulards et toujours en quête de fromages ". And the New York Post's "axis of weasel" lost much of its venom when translated as a limp " axe de faux jetons " (literally, "axis of devious characters").
American wrath has been reserved for those nations which oppose their leadership, particularly following the decision to oppose shifting Nato resources to Turkey. "Three countries - France, Germany and their mini-me minion, Belgium - have moved from opposition to US policy toward Iraq into formal, and consequential obstructionism," argued the Wall Street Journal in an editorial yesterday. "If there is a war [the Turks] will face the danger of direct attack that is not feared in the chocolate shops of Brussels." The front page of the National Review blares "Putsch" with a sub-headline: "How to defeat the Franco-German power grab."
While the jibes may be puerile, the possibility that the Bush administration and commercial outlets might follow them up with punitive measures has struck some as pernicious. An ad, due to come out soon, shows three German-made cars, including an Audi and a BMW, driving towards the camera with a voice saying: "Do you really want to buy a German car?"
If there has been any European country that has attracted more contempt than others, it is France. In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens described Jacques Chirac as "a positive monster of conceit _ the abject procurer for Saddam ... the rat that tried to roar". In the Washington Post, George Will opined that the "oily" foreign affairs minister, Dominique de Villepin, had launched France into "an exercise for which France has often refined its savoir-faire since 1870, which is to say retreat - this time into incoherence".
And in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman argued that France should be removed from the security council and be replaced with India: "India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly." The Wall Street Journal editor, Max Boot, argues: "France has been in decline since, oh, about 1815, and it isn't happy about it." What particularly galls the Gauls is that their rightful place in the world has been usurped by the gauche Americans."
At its ugliest, the transatlantic bile is becoming increasingly personal. When France Inter radio's correspondent in Washington, Laurence Simon, started to explain her government's position to Fox News (owned by Murdoch) she was interrupted by the presenter. "With friends like you, who needs enemies," she was told as she was taken off air.
I don't recall anywhere that I said that. The point about the death camps is that this is a war where the "absolute proof" will come AFTER THE WAR IS OVER. Already, we have Saddam turning over details on WMDs he claimed he originally didn't have.
The Pearl Harbor illustration, also, is apparently lost on you. I'm saying: You're asking for a Pearl Harbor in order to justify "concerns" you have.
Again- Iraq has not even been plausibly connected to 9/11 by Powell.
Does it need to be SPECIFICALLY, *incontrevertibly* linked to the 9/11 attacks? Not just following money trails, etc., no, I suppose that doesn't satisfy you. You won't accept numerous links from Iraq to al-Qaeda and God knows how many other terrorist groups? *What*, may I ask, would convince you? A Pearl Harbor? You want more American civilians dead to quiet your concerns? That's reprehensible.
I'm with Bush; I'm not willing to stake the life of *one* American citizen on the sanity of Saddam Hussein...or the hand-wringing of the doves who use the ideals of freedom for convenience and nothing more.
Japan's culture was a feudal, militaristic monarchy even more isolated from the west than is Iraq. Iraq has an educated population, a prior history of self government, and a willing group of exiles who want to return and rebuild their country.
While I think we will not get out of Iraq in one year (because we will be hunting down all the hidden munitions, chemicals, and bio-weapons), I also take this administration at its word. We go to liberate Iraq, not to colonize it.
Hussein's government officials, his diplomats, have been engaged in assorted acts of terrorism wherever possible and they have worked with al Qaeda for years. Iraq's leadership is one which has expansionist aims, which is quite a contrast to Noth Korea's, for example.
TIraq isn't content to just isolate themselves behind a fence and paint aggressive posters to wave at "imperialists."
It's silly to even consider letting a regime like Iraq obtain those weapons. Iraq had the sense to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, and Israel had the sense to bomb Iraq's. The world would be a good deal better off if we had prevented nasty regimes from getting such weapons- if we had, North Korea wouldn't be the cesspool it is. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
And thank God for that, it set them back several years in their WMD programs.
In a nutshell.
Haven't *you* learned from Chamberlain's Munich?
When war is thrust upon us, we cannot afford the luxury of insisting on a foolproof exit plan. We do have a clear objective, removing Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction as a threat to the USA. We can never seal our borders, and we cannot ever make America safe by defensive means alone. We must take the war to the enemy. Despite your skepticism there is ample evidence of Saddam's co-operation with Al Qaeda and many other terrorist groups. The Saudi government may give ideological support to terrorists, and some individual Saudis provide funding, but Saddam actively shelters trains and arms them. This is well documented to any who are willing to be conviced. As for whether you son will be based there 20 years from now, some parent could have asked in 1942 if his son would be based in Japan or Germany 20 years later. The answer might well be yes, but not in the way you mean it. I think Bush was quite clear when he said that any country that arms, supports or shelters terrorists will be treated as a terrorist. He also predicted some people would get tired and begin to question the need to wage the difficult, world wide war needed to prevail against them. Your post proves him correct.
Absolutely. I knew we could never keep the support for the WoT going strong for long...but I'm amazed at how quickly the worm turned. Truly.
The whole point of his using terrorism is DENIABILITY. The connections Powell and others have made are quite clear enough for me. By the way, what do you call sending operatives into Saudi Arabia to assassinate the elder President Bush? It seems to me that THAT would indicate Saddam's intentions, and they aren't peaceful.
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