“’Sarkozy is secretly planning on sending our military to Iraq to Fight Bush’s war of imperialism, we have secret insider information on this..’
And the media will run with the story.”
Yes, but then Sarkozy will respond firmly that he opposed the American war in Iraq, and still opposes it, and state categorically (and truthfully) that France will never be sending any troops to Iraq during his Presidency.
Sarkozy has always opposed the American intervention in Iraq.
He is of the same mindset of many in the French right. Americans never listen to this, and they won’t now, but I am really going to try to explain where some thinking French people, people like Sarkozy (and Chirac, actually), who have no dislike for America at all, were and are on Iraq.
The problem for Sarkozy and Chirac, and those on the French right who like America but opposed the invasion was this, and always this: the belief that America could not possibly win in Iraq, that America would never be able to devote the amount of force or the degree of force necessary to actually conquer the country. The French know the Arabs better than anybody: their empire was the Muslim world, they fought an endless insurgency against the Algerians. They think of themselves as understanding the degree of fanaticism and of ruthlessness that the Arabs would bring. They also looked at the Middle East and saw, and see, a whole bevy of bad regimes. It was never just Iraq. It was Iraq and Iran and Syria and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and Libya and the Sudan and Somalia too. And Pakistan. The problem of terrorism and support for it, and bad government, and Islamism, was not and is not confined to one country. To invade the Middle East was to invite open-ended war, and the French did not believe that America had anything like the political will to commit the sort of resources necessary to win, for as long as it would take to win. What France feared was another Vietnam, another Lebanon, another Mogadishu, in which the Americans faced fanatics, suffered a lot of casualties, could not militarily win a political problem in so many countries, and would end up leaving in defeat, and leaving the place worse off and more radical than ever.
That was what the French feared. Of course, they also feared losing their oil concessions, but that was then. The concessions are lost. NOW Sarkozy looks at Iraq and sees that America is losing the war. Public will in America is slowly but steadily declining. Tony Blair is practically cooked given how discouraged and disgusted England is with the war. The “Coalition of the Willing” has fallen apart. The Americans still don’t have enough troops. The adventure turned into precisely the fiasco that Sarkozy and other well-meaning French conservatives thought it would, and for precisely the reasons they thought it would. So, obviously Sarkozy is not going to hitch France’s star to the falling American star in Iraq. The Americans are going to lose the war in Iraq. The French were convinced of it from the beginning. The French thought that Iraq would be another American Vietnam. They were convinced of it, and time has borne them out. So, folks like Sarkozy AND the French left are more confident then ever of their own strategic insights, given that they opposed going in with the US on the Iraq adventure.
If there were a way to bail America out, Sarkozy probably would, because he and Chirac both have stated what a disaster an American defeat and pullout will be. But France is not going to send in a bunch of troops to lose a war anyway. The French are going to simply watch, and folks like Sarkozy will shake their heads sadly and say it’s a tragedy, but if you had just listened to us in the first place you would have never gotten into this mess.
Americans do not want to hear it. It enrages them. But enraged or not, that is PRECISELY what Sarkozy and the whole French nation thinks about American in Iraq: America will lose, for the same reasons America lost Vietnam, France was right to refuse to get involved and to counsel so loudly against it, we told you so, you didn’t listen, and now it’s come to the ugly end we predicted all along.
That’s what he thinks.
That’s what they all think.
Now, he’s still pro-American, but he isn’t going to be sending troops into Iraq. He is not going to hitch his own star, and France’s, to an American defeat.
Hopefully, he and Chirac and the rest of France will be proven wrong, and resistance in Iraq will collapse before the American electorate gives up and elects a government that will end the war. But as of right now, the French think they were right, and Sarkozy is no different from Royal on this. Whether it is Sarkozy or Royal, or had it been Bayrou and Le Pen, no matter who is elected, France will continue to firmly oppose the war in Iraq, and will not be sending any assistance to the United States effort in that country. The reasons are different. Royal may well like to see an American defeat. Sarkozy never wanted an American defeat, but in Sarkozy’s eyes, an American loss was inevitable from the moment that America committed to invade Iraq. That’s why he opposed the war from the beginning. And now that, in his eyes, the war is nearly loss, sad as it is, he cannot allow France to be dragged down in defeat along with the Americans in the foolish operation that America launched against Chirac’s and his advice.
So, in Sarkozy America does have a friend. But America has a friend that expects them to lose the war in Iraq, and who is not going to commit France to what he always saw as a monumental strategic error.
Expect Sarkozy to be gracious to the US in public discourse, much moreso than other French Presidents have been. But do not expect on troop or dime of support in Iraq. Sarkozy, in his own view, was right. Had America listened to him she wouldn’t be in this pickle. She didn’t, and now it’s up to America to do what she can. France cannot bail her out of her own self-inflicted wound, executed contrary to the advice of France.
That’s the way it is.
That’s the way Sarkozy thinks.
And that’s the way he’ll behave as President.
I think your mistake is assuming that Sarko is anyting like Chirac. Different generation, different experience. The son of an Hungarian refuge,someone who fled the economic, religious repression of Communism, his experience is something Americans can relate to. Never forget that Hungary has always been the most conservative country in Europe. The Hungarian community in America, which votes almost 75% for the GOP is carefully following this election.
Chirac, aka Jacques Iraq, is a lifelong Arabist with close personal and financial ties to the repressive regimes in the Middle East like Syria and libya. His great close personal and financial relationship with Saddam explains more his anti-US policy than anything else.
Americans are smart enough to understand the arrogance and anti-Americanism of the French elite. They are also smart enough to recognize a friend and an ally in Sarko.
They don’t call him “Sarko the American” for nothing.
Interesting, I will say the book on Iraq has not been closed ...yet...but the final edits are being drawn up. It would have been better if the Neocons had been jettisoned earlier and a practacable strategy been implemented, but it is what is, the dog barked but the caravan left anyway...
For myself, nations act in their own best interests, if France’s interests are not in fighting for a pie in the sky vision of Iraq, the Democracy, that is understandable.
Sarkozy Imo, would be far more helpful to the US than Royal would ever be, she is running against Sarkozy but mentions the US all the time, Sarkozy mentions the US but in a different light.
As I recall, France had “won” in Algeria, the insurgency was defeated, but when the methods that were used were made public in France, the public outcry forced a withdrawal from Algeria.
It is also my opinion that France perhaps needs and economic shot in the arm, just for the good of France as whole, I think Sarkozy is far more likely to do that, then Royal would ever be.