French-Bashing Rolls Off France's Back

Reuters ^ | 2/10/03 | Tom Heneghan

[kattracks]

PARIS (Reuters) - It's the diplomatic equivalent of water rolling off a duck's back. Bashing the French does not beat them down -- au contraire, it only makes them more convinced they must be right.

The air has been thick with insult these days, both over the Atlantic and across the Channel, as the United States and Britain pile pressure and scorn on their reluctant ally to support an attack against Iraq.

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys," "the rat that roared," "the petulant prima donna of realpolitik" -- the epithets flung at France by the U.S. and British media can easily make a reader forget they're talking about America's oldest ally.

U.S. officials have hardly been diplomatic either. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has written off France as part of "old Europe" and said its opposition to emergency NATO measures to boost Turkey's defenses is a disgrace.

If all this was meant to bully France into changing its mind, it's not working.

France's reaction has been to redouble its efforts against a U.S.-led war, blocking NATO war preparations in Turkey and plugging for an extension of United Nations arms inspections that an exasperated Washington insists are now useless.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the easy-going prime minister who rarely speaks about foreign policy, shot back last Friday at President Bush's "the game is over" statement by saying: "It's not a game, it's not over."

FRENCH LOGIC

Paris media report on the anti-French vitriol seething through U.S. and British opinion columns with an air of bemused incomprehension, as if to say: What a faux pas! How could those Anglo-Saxons be so unreasonable?

"The French don't have a very good press in the United States these days," the left-wing daily Liberation wrote with sublime understatement Monday.

The conservative daily Le Figaro echoed pride in France's long tradition of Cartesian logic when it praised Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's plan for reinforced arms inspections in Iraq.

"Even if it worsens French-American relations, the attempt is in any event quite logical," it observed.

Pascal Boniface, a leading French world affairs analyst, said Americans suffered from a Francophobia as bad as the anti-Americanism that's politically correct in France.

"I was in the U.S. last week and couldn't turn on the television without hearing nonsense about France," he said.

Anti-Americanism has such deep roots in French thinking that no less than three serious books on the subject were published last autumn. Bashing from across the Atlantic hardly counts because the French do not take the bashers seriously.

France, as the new books show, believes it is special because the values of liberty, equality and fraternity proclaimed by the 1789 French Revolution have universal appeal.

But the United States, which declared its independence in 1776 with a similarly universal view of human rights, has long since overtaken France on the world stage.

As the Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot put it in an article echoing the anti-French mood in the United States:

"France has been in decline since, oh, about 1815, and it isn't happy about it. What particularly galls the Gauls is that their rightful place in the world has been usurped by the gauche Americans, with their hamburgers and blue jeans."

BOTH SIDES' WORST SIDES

What's worse, both states are led by men seen by the other side as caricatures of all they can't stand in their partner.

Bush's folksy talk, religious piety and unilateral stands go down in France like nails scratching on a blackboard.

"Bush crystallizes all that we hate in America," Pascal Bruckner, a usually pro-American essayist, wrote last year.

President Jacques Chirac and the flamboyant Villepin embody for Americans a haughty arrogance and spineless opportunism they say is the trademark of French diplomacy.

To rub it in, U.S. commentators recall French collaboration with Nazi Germany and the U.S. and British-led liberation of France -- a memory the Gaullist tradition prefers to play down.

In one of the most venomous articles of recent days, the Wall Street Journal ran a comment by author Christopher Hitchens denouncing Chirac as "a positive monster of conceit ... the abject procurer for Saddam ... the rat that tried to roar."

"Let's hope for Jacques Chirac's sake that he doesn't read the Wall Street Journal and the Elysee Palace forgot to include it in its press review yesterday," Liberation wrote in a short report on the broadside from the U.S. business daily.

[kattracks]

ROTFLMBO!

[xzins]

Where would we be without the Simpsons? LOL.

[ricpic]

Seely Anglo-Saxons, vous ne comprenez pas la logique du surrendeure.

[desertcry]

French-bashing? The frogs have not felt the full impact of the anger of the American people yet. Let's see who will get the last laugh, when they become an island of themselves with their beloved krauts.

[Stallone]

Bashing the French only has meaning when you are referring to their heads and your bat.

[Willie Green]

It's the diplomatic equivalent of water rolling off a duck's back.

If they'd bathe now and then (using some soap) the water wouldn't do this.

[weegee]

[dfwgator]

''In countries like that [Rwanda], a genocide is not very important.'' - Francois Mitterrand.

[weegee]

Thanks and BUMP. It seemed to me that the press coverage has been particularly biased in the anti(American)war coverage of late.

Don't hear about those groups of Americans that support the effort. Don't hear about the nations that support America in this decision. Just hear about naked hippies and tired old 60s activists.

[Stonewall1]

French Military Prowess Revisited
By Anonymous
From the Net | February 10, 2003


President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld may be upset that the French are not "assisting" us in this fight, but out here at the tip of the spear, there is nothing but jubilation at their absence. Last thing we need is to be carrying the French on our shoulders.

A cursory review of French military history reveals the following:

1 - Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2,000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.

2 - Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by a female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare: "French armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."

3 - Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.

4 - Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots.

5 - Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant but still manages to get invaded. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

6 - War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

7 - The Dutch War - Tied. Dutch farmers and tulip growers are tougher than they look.

8 - War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Francophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

9 - War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

10 - American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; " France only wins when
America does most of the fighting."

11 - French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

12 - The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for the Russian winter, Prussian grenadiers or a British footwear designer.

13 - The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. For the first, but certainly not the last time, Germany plays the role of drunk frat boy to France 's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

14 - World War I - Invaded, humiliated and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Winds up a tie for les francaise. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, the American fascination with personal hygiene (a fascination totally
foreign to French women) incites widespread use of condoms by American soldiers, thus precluding any improvement in the French bloodline.

15 - World War II - A decisive defeat even by French standards. Hitler and the German Youth spend Christmas time sleeping soundly through the winter, then arouse themselves to conquer France in six weeks. Hitler dances in front of the Eiffel Tower, while the French command staff retreats to Algeria to institute a crash language program
to teach French privates how to say "I surrender" in German and French generals to say "We surrender" in German. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning he Horst Wessel Song and some small portion of the German work ethic. De Gaulle of it all...

16 - First Vietnamese war (in Vietnamese circles, known as "the scrimmage", or "the exhibition game" where the varsity squad is kept on the sideline to see how the second string will play) - Lost. French soldiers, fresh off their four year occupation by the Germans, catch a terminal case of Dien Bien Flu.

17 - Algerian rebellion - Lost. First time an Arab army has beaten a Western army since the Crusades, and produces the first rule of modern Islamic warfare: "We can always beat the French." A nice phrase, but it lacks something in originality, since it is also the first rule of warfare for the Italians, Russians, Prussians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese, Native Americans and capitalists.

18 - War on Terrorism - Lost. Incensed at not being included in the original "Axis of Evil," France refuses to participate. When it becomes clear that this is a "no-kidding war," Jacques Chirac looks at his cards and immediately surrenders to that old warhorse, Gerhard
Schroeder. For good measure, he also surrenders to five million illegal immigrants from Algeria.

The moral of the story is - give thanks to God on high that the French are not helping us!

[WOSG]

Interesting that in Reuters world it is "anti-Americanism", an ideology ... but "Francophobia" a psychological condition. ... indications of the bias here.

We should call our opposition to surrender-monkey diplomats and appeasers as "anti-Weaselism".

[bray]

Next time the Krauts conquer France, let them keep it! The French women could find out what it is to live with a heterosexual man and they could teach the French to build a car that actually runs. Everybody wins!

Pray for GW and the Truth

[1Old Pro]

Bashing the French does not beat them down

Of course not, they're like fish....no brains, no pain.

[aimhigh]

You need to add the Ivory Coast, where France brokered a surrender to Muslim rebels, giving away the northern part of the country to be under Islamic law.

[mykdsmom]

[mountaineer]

Bashing the French does not beat them down

Okay, then how about this: BOYCOTT all French products and tourism, and make sure they know about it. Write an email to Pres. Jacques Chirac and tell him exactly what you think of his government's support of terrorism and the Iraqi dictator.

[Nam Vet]

I read the greatest France-bash by another Freeper on saturday night. It was SO GOOD Tony Snow closed "Fox News Sunday" with it. (Proving he at least lurks) It read:

Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordian. heh heh

Nam Vet

[KevinB]

Wonderful!

[SouthParkRepublican]

That is absurdly funny. Thanks.