The Perfidy Of The French...

January 24, 2003: The utopian fantasists in our State Dept., having persuaded Pres. Bush to place his faith in the UN are now obliged to face reality. Will they?

Colin Powell, the chief utopian, argued against deposing Saddam in 1991 in favor of the wishful fantasy that military defeat would be sufficient to defang him. It wasn't, because in Saddam's psychopathic world of brute force, survival against the United States constitutes victory and is concrete evidence of our weakness. Saddam would never allow an enemy to escape alive if he had the opportunity to kill him, for it would indicate weakness and would embolden his foes. Consequently, after the '91 war, he redoubled his efforts to acquire devastating weaponry against what he sensed was a pusillanimous foe, while we politely looked away. The danger steadily grew in the 1990's while our then President turned his attention to more pressing matters, like obtaining sexual favors from interns in the oval office.

Meanwhile, despite his disastrous advice in 1991, Colin Powell rose to ever greater power. He proved himself the quintessential diplomat whose faith lies in written agreements and who believes the way to peace is via empathic concern for our adversaries. Powell is a gifted, smooth-as-silk negotiator, who seems to have persuaded the President to treat the UN as a serious international body, rather than what it is -- a collection of mostly authoritarian and autocratic governments run by thugs with more in common with Saddam than with us. The nature of this body was again made clear by the recent overwhelming election of Libya to head the UN Human Rights commission. This placed the UN beyond parody. Yet our State Dept utopians continue to pay deference to the many countries in that august body, including some of our putative "allies," who were only too happy to see the United States suffer the blows of 9-11.

The one benefit of our seemingly endless diplomacy at the UN is the emergence of a new clarity about our "allies," France and Germany. They are working tirelessly to persuade the world that the great threat to global security emanates not from Iraq, but from the power of the United States. By appeasing Saddam through the farcical Hans Blix "inspections" (Hans Blix seems able to find his table at Rao's more easily than he can locate Baghdad), they pursue a policy that enmeshes us in endless UN process and requires us to ask permission before we can act. And while the leaders of France and Germany speak of 'peace,' what they have in mind is postponing action by the United States indefinitely. They are effectively supporting Saddam, hoping -- in the time-warmed tradition of European appeasement -- that he will turn his anthrax and Sarin against the United States rather than against his European trading partners. No doubt they will express eloquent sympathy when the U.S. counts the casualties in the next bioterror assault, courtesy of Saddam's laboratories.

And what of the endless cant about not going to war except as a last resort? Have we forgotten we are at war, a war declared on us on 9-11, that Saddam continues to wage war on his own people and on American and British pilots, and that he quite openly supports suicide terror aimed at America's one democratic ally in the Middle East?

This writer believes that it requires no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Saddam is intimately involved with anti-American terror groups around the globe. With all this, the behavior of France and Germany can best be understood as dupicitous acts of realpolitik by countries lacking in military might, aimed at taming and weakening America's global power. And if you don't buy that rationale, then another powerful explanation has been offered by Steven den Beste who suspects that France and Germany wish to conceal the fact that for years, in violation of the UN embargo, they've been selling Saddam the building blocks for his WMD programs.

Countries change their national character about as readily as individuals. For example, William Safire documents the treachery of the French, who played Colin Powell like a violin, assuring him of support and then turning on him. Yet Powell insisted to Jim Lehrer that he had not been sandbagged by the French. Not at all; perhaps it had all been a misunderstanding that requires a bit more consultation and discussion over a fine Burgundy.

We would suggest that our diplomats be forced to read Mark Twain on the French. Long before the French added the art of appeasement to their highly developed art of cuisine he commented: "There is nothing lower than the human race -- except the French." He added: "The French are the connecting link between man & the monkey."

However, if our multicultural diplomats find Mark Twain politically incorrect and therefore not worth reading, I would then recommend the contemporary wit, Fran Lebowitz, who made the following observation: "The French probably invented the very notion of discretion. It's not that they feel that what you don't know won't hurt you, they feel that what you don't know won't hurt them. To the French lying is simply talking."

Hopefully even Colin Powell will awaken from his Dream of Reason -- the fantasy that all differences are due to misunderstandings and can be worked out through rational dialogue. If he doesn't, let's hope the President takes the policy reins out of the hands of the utopians and places them in the hands of the realists -- Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney. The hour is late, the peril grows, and the temporizers are gaining strength. Peace follows victory. Hurry up please, it's time.

Thanks for the kind words. And this is what the French SHOULD have tried to learn from Americans:

"I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress."-- Alexis de Tocqueville

A great man. Too bad he was wasted on the French. Hey , I know the French had lots of great people.

I'm just having a little fun, because right now, the French government is stabbing us in the back, by making deals with Iraq, in exchange for CHEAP OIL

PS. Get a sense of humor, man. You can make fun of the Norwegians all day long, and I'll laugh right along with you. Know what the shortest book in the library is?
"The Norwegian Book of Knowlege"! Now that's damn funny.;^D

It wouldn't hurt you to be a little more self-deprecating.
But then you wouldn't be French any more, would you. :^)

For Bush fans, and Texans: Addition to "The Perfidy Of The French"
Hey Meek, I know you are from Texas, so you will love this article,

From The Iconoclast:

Le plus on leur baise le cul, le plus ils nous chient sur la tete.
(The more you kiss their a$$, the more they $#!+ on your head.)
-- from Red Gold

By Alan Furst

January 28, 2003: America has been attacked; it faces a formidable enemy; and we turn to the nations of the world for moral support in our fight. And what do we get from our former French allies -- the finger.

That's the friendly response of the French government, the French press, and the French intellectual establishment, members of the French elite all -- eaters of oysters, drinkers of premier crus, and lovers of polysyllabic words and nuanced politics. They love to make fun of Americans, and especially of George W. Bush.

According to their patronizing view, Americans are crude, simple, inarticulate, and tasteless. And not surprisingly, Bush is depicted in the French press dressed in a cowboy outfit with a moronic smile and toting two shootin' irons.

But it's time to remember a few things:

In 1940 the great French Army -- the largest and best among the Western Europeans -- surrendered to the Germans in 43 days. And because of the rapidity with which the great French Army capitulated, it suffered the fewest casualties of any of the so-called Allies.

France was liberated by an Anglo-American army, not a French force. The Free French were not even told when D-Day was scheduled, and took no part in D-Day. A small French force was allowed to participate in Operation Anvil -- the invasion of southern France in August of 1944.

The invasion of southeast France along the Riviera was accomplished by the American Seventh Army, which consisted of three divisions, and these three divisions chased Germany's Nineteenth Army out of southern France. Two of those three divisions were made up largely of cowboys from Oklahoma (the Forty-fifth) and Texas (the Thirty-sixth).

The Texas division was made up of guys from little towns like Galena Park and Melissa where, for a few dollars a month, they joined the National Guard, which became federalized at the beginning of the war. The division was blooded in the brutal Italian Campaign the year before, and then in late summer of 1944 the Thirty-sixth started on its mission to free southeastern France.

Starting with St. Raphael, they drove northward through Cannes, Grasse, Gap and Grenoble, places these boys had never heard of before they left home and had no plans to visit. They had worked on farms and ranches back home, in shops as mechanics, in stores as clerks, but they were cowboys at heart. Not very verbal or grammatical, they wore cowboy hats mostly, the cheap kind made of straw, and talked about everyday things, but not their cowboy values -- being a square shooter, and being upright and honest men. They'd never heard of Voltaire, or Rousseau, or Chateau Petrus -- but they liberated southern France, something the great French Army couldn't do.

The Thirty-sixth Infantry -- the Texas cowboys -- closed with the German Nineteenth Army as the Germans retreated north along the Rhone. At Montelimar, the Americans blocked the German retreat and a major week-long struggle ensued until many thousands of Germans surrendered and many hundreds of Texans lay dead, like Pvt. Cecil Lewis from Houston, killed in action, or Sgt. George W. Rivers, Jr. from Tuxedo, killed in action -- cowboys who had never heard of Montelimar and had never planned to visit.

The Thirty-sixth worked its way northeast, fighting the retreating Germans and liberating French town after town. On September 2, the Division entered Lyons and it was greeted by throngs of civilians who came out of hiding to applaud their liberation. The elderly shook hands and threw flowers; the young sought autographs and climbed aboard Jeeps and trucks.

In the midst of winter, the Texans fought their way week by week through the Vosges Mountains and then through Alsace to the Rhine and into Germany. Their last cowboy adventure occurred in Austria in May, a few days before the end of the war. The Texas division had heard rumors that a number of important French personages were being held captive by the SS in a castle near Worgl, Austria, so they sent a tank crew and a handful of infantrymen of the Thirty-sixth to investigate. The patrol climbed the mountain to the twelfth-century Alpine castle of Itter where Edoard Daladier and Paul Reynaud, former prime ministers; General Maurice Gamelin, former commander of the French Army; General Maxime Weygand, commander of the French Army at the time of the French surrender; Mme Alfred Cailliau, sister of General Charles DeGaulle; Michel Clemenceau, son of the French statesman; and Jean Borotra, French tennis star, were all being held captive.

When the patrol reached the castle, the German commandant surrendered it. But it was still surrounded by a large force of German SS troops which began to attack as soon as they realized that the American group was so small. Their artillery knocked out the lone American tank and blasted gaping holes in the old castle.

Captain John Lee, the officer in charge of the expedition, organized his small force and because the castle occupied the high ground and was surrounded by a moat, they were able to withstand with minimum losses the repeated storm trooper assaults. At three in the afternoon, long after the defenders had run out of ammunition, another detachment of the Thirty-sixth drove through the SS ranks and opened the road to the castle.

So let's remember, you French bastards, the Texas cowboys who went to France even though they never planned to visit -- and who remain there to this day.

Yale Kramer, Co-Publisher, Horsefeathers

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