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"Seem to have grasped the surrender concept pretty well... Strategically they're cowards. The last time they won any battle was when an Italian (Sicilian) was at the helm. And Italy hasn't seen much victory either since Caesar."

Check your history again. The last big battle France won was commanded by a Frenchman, Marechal Petain, and Marechal Foch was the Commander in Chief of all Allied armies in WWI.

Napoleon was a Corsican by birth, not a Sicilian, but a naturalized Frenchman because Corsica became a part of the Kingdom of France before his birth. He would not have been granted a cadet post in the school of artillery had he been a foreigner.

1940 was an abberation. No one expected the German strategic innovation of smashing through the Ardennes. The defeats in Vietnam and Algeria were from lack of political will, not cowardice.

When Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko tried to bluff DeGaulle over the Cuban Missile Crisis, de Gaulle's response was "Et voila, messieur; nous mourions ensemble." (So, sir, we will die together).

The French can be brave and ruthless when needed. Ask many African tinpot dictators.

We may not like French policy, but we have to avoid underestimating what they can do.

As battle in WWI ? That's your reference for French military prowess ? Ummm... that leaves a bit to be desired.

As far as ruthless, the Foreign Legion can be quite so. However, only when stamping out tin-pot dictators and ill equipped and ill trained jungle villagers who they could push around by hiring a mercenary outfit instead of sending the Foreign Legion, in order to secure their economic interests. What that says, is that in addition to whatever else, the French are petty hypocrites.

Some would also say lack of political will to do what needs to be done is cowardice. And there's plenty of those in our congress.

On the lighter note :
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokefrenchmilitaryhistory.htm

The French are here--not in the numbers they should be given the side of their military (Romania has more troops here than France!); but they have some folks in the west doing the equivalent of Civil Affairs work vic Herat, they have some personnel on both the US coalition HQ staff and the NATO staff in Kabul, they have some fighter planes based in Tajikistan that have flown "close air support" missions in support of troops in contact plus their special ops guys are doing that sneak & peek run & gun kind of thing in the badlands.