"Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean."
That’s complete bull crap. There was a complete French armored division involved in desert shield desert storm. He’s just making things up today. Also France never last NATO. They simply refused to place the fridge military under the command of an overall NATO military commander. Essentially they did not want American military officers commanding the French army. And they decided not to have any more NATO bases on French soil.
And that didn’t exactly happen in the vacuum. In the two years before, NATO and the CIA was not seen as an asset for France. People forget that the generals putsch was launched two days after the Bay of Pigs. With the world distracted by an American invasion of Cuba, Charles de Gaulle was supposed to be overthrown. The CIA claimed not to be involved, but they were eyeballs deep with the French generals. A year after that a French colonel from that era let assassination attempt against Charles DeGaulle and his wife. A machine gun ambush that failed. All of those things culminated in I’m not really seeing NATO as protection for France.
The French leaders are being retards today. But it’s very hard to find fault in the decisions of Charles DeGaulle in the early 60s.