Posted on 06/06/2004 8:13:28 PM PDT by quidnunc
Tell that to the almost 10,000 American soldiers buried beneath crosses and stars of David at the American Cemetery at Colville-sur-mer.
This is the France that admires intellectual sublety and complexity. A France that see itself not as the France of Maréchal Pétain and the Vichy Government, but a different France,one of liberty, democracy and freedom.
Just as one cannot separate Vichy from France, one cannot separate president Bush from America.
Huh?
Not sure I understand your question here. What I meant by that was that Europe no longer enjoys the luxury of playing both sides against the middle and devoting the funds that would otherwise be dedicated to her defense to building wasteful and futile welfare states. My apologies if that was unclear.
In point of fact, that strategic tension was the only thing that gave the European ruling elite of the time the illusion of importance that today leads them to attempt to exercise a power they never earned and do not possess. Bush has committed the unforgivable sin - from the French point of view in particular - to cease to pretend what Clinton did pretend, that a French "non!" shakes the world. .
The same poll shows that 50% of all French believe that France owes no debt to America for dying on the beaches of Normandy so they might live in Freedom from fascism.
Shame on them.
They will do anything if the price is right, as their under-the-table deals with Saddam Hussein prove.
Underneath their self-professed high-mindedness they are among the most crassly mercenary people in the world.
Some say Europe has always had an anti-American streak. Perhaps, but it was a minority opinion. Something has changed and quite recently.
Some say Europe is so left, they have opposed us since the end of the cold war. Perhaps some pols on the left have. But most of them liked the Clinton 90s just fine.
Some say it is a hatred of just Bush. But they did not care about our elections - minutae to them - or know much about him. Some say it is pacifism about the war on terror or in general - but they supported the Afghan war, when even our own left was defeatist out of pacifist sentiment. Rumblings perhaps. But no split.
Some say it was a matter of cynicism among bought pols. Perhaps leading pols were bought by Saddam. There is certainly some evidence Chirac was paid, and a few left wing British MPs. But public opinion did not oppose their policies. In fact, public opinion led, and even leaders who approved our policies on principle (like Blair) faced serious internal political pressure against doing so. Saddam did not buy every man on the street that broke with us.
Some might speculate that is the issue is simply failure in Iraq. But there hasn't actually been any failure in Iraq. It is pure media hype that anything is going badly. For a while there might be claims about failure to find Saddam but now we have. There is a low level insurgency that we are systematically beating. That is all. Our losses to date have been trivial by the standards of past wars.
Some claimed beforehand that it was a cynical misperception of our motives, thinking it was "all about oil". But we've spent around $100 billion of our own money on the effort by now. The Iraqis haven't lost a penny in oil revenue. We have formed an Iraqi government, promised it sovereignty, and explained the timetable of elections and the transition to entirely local rule.
Clearly the split came over Iraq. Not Bush, not the war on terror generally. And not afterward, due to failure to do this or to accomplish that.
Some claimed at the time that their was no real disagreement of principle, only a disagreement about process. But the US jumped through hoops to meet every concern expressed on this. We spent months before the UN. We put up with the inspections farce, the "two resolutions" farce, 19 security council authorizations. Opposition was already there and only became harder as we made concessions over process.
We are driving by process of elimination to an isolated cause. European public opinion opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein from the government of Iraq by outside force of arms. The people, not a few pols. On their own, not because they had been bought. On principle, not over process or motive or estimated outcome.
Why?
It is not that no bad government may ever be removed by outside force. They did not object this way to Afghanistan. They do not object to interventions on the Ivory Coast or in Sierra Leone, by the French or British.
It is not that they love Saddam so much they are opposed on principle to ever doing anything against him. They did not react this way to the first gulf war. Their left was just as pacifist. But the French sent a division and the UN signed off on all of it.
No doubt part of the depth of the reaction comes from being asked to approve, and our going ahead despite many of them not approving. They do not like feeling unnecessary. And some from predicting doom, and it not happening. They do not like feeling stupid. But this does not explain the initial opposition to removing Saddam.
I can see three reasons tied closely enough to the actual split to qualify as real possible causes. Dislike of "pre-emption" or thinking the "aggressor" is always wrong and thinking the US was the aggressor in this instance. Second, wanting to limit US power in the world. And last, the unflattering things that justifying Iraq might imply about past European actions and principles. (Why did they decolonize? And leave the world littered with such tyrants, and deal with them for decades?)
But I don't think these are entirely on point. I think European opinion was against the war in Iraq out of a kind of PC self hatred. I think they think it would be racist and chauvinistic and first world imperialist of them to support it. They could approve of the first gulf war as helping Kuwait. But this one actually helped us, directly. It is PC guilt and self-loathing. The idea that any use of force in advancement of one's own interests against foreign countries and especially civilizations, is evil and fascistic. If it were in somebody else's interests, they might approve. Since it is in ours, it gives them the willies.
In other words, their moral self image is based on a kind of studied self-effacement - largely imaginary to be sure. This operates as a sort of substitute piety. They are allowed to hate us without violating this because we count as part of the self they want effaced. When this attitude is exposed as unjustified if not downright silly, a nerve is touched.
They have intellectually convinced themselves that morality is a form of self hatred. Anybody who combines moral rhetoric with self assertion drives them to distraction. Morality consists in finding oneself in the wrong. Morality is guilt, not a standard. To feel oneself justified is a sin. To feel oneself justified in using force - unless it is selfless, on behalf of a mascot felt as "other" and against one's own interests - is the greatest sin.
One man's diagnosis...
bump !
Well, if you asked them, the Germans liberated the Sudetenland, Austria, and eventually, France, back in the forties. You could look it up. :)
Interesting analysis BUMP.
Hey there Nunc!
When I lived in France in the 80's and 90's they always called him Jacques Iraq because of his ties to Saddam
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