Posted on 02/17/2003 10:01:27 AM PST by elhombrelibre
France and Germany: Our Burden; their Shame
A great American and columnist, R. Emmett Tyrrell, wrote the other day that France and Germany are being mischievous. Unfortunately, what they are up to goes beyond mischief all the way to malice aforethought.
Over the last 12 years, France more than any country broke the economic sanctions the UN had imposed on Iraq. France profited more than any country doing business with Iraq. France now says the US must obey that same UN. France functioned since the first gulf war as Saddam’s ideological hit man and used every opportunity to beguile the ignorant into believing we must remove Saddam’s Iraq from its pariah status as a rogue nation. France claimed sanctions hurt the Iraqi people too much. They did not mention that no nation has made more money in oil from Saddam and in effect done more to assure his dictatorship survived. And no nation has shown more concern for crass commercialism and contempt for the Iraqi people than France. France’s record is so sordid that one shudders and realizes that France has been led by cynics as jaded by right and wrong as Saddam himself.
France’s past and present weave so well together that one fears the national character never changes.
France fought to maintain its colonial power in cruel ways long after it was capable and in ways that showed contempt for any Just War theory.
Yet, it was France that barely fought for its capital in WWII, reached a quick arrangement with Hitler, collaborated with him to the point that the French betrayed and rounded up Jews during WWII so Hitler could kill them, and fired on American troops as they liberated North Africa.
It was France, after all, that sold Saddam a nuclear plant knowing full well he intended to use that plant to make nuclear weapons, which he then would have used to destroy Israel. Only Israel’s foresight and courage prevented France’s treacherous collaboration in that case. Israel knows malice when it sees it. Israel doesn’t seek France’s permission to survive.
It is France that blew up Green Peace’s unarmed Rainbow Warrior and yet pretended in these last few weeks that force can never be used as anything but a last resort!
It is France that jumped into Ivory Coast, mucked up the country by insisting those in power share it with Islamic gangsters, and lectured the US on the dangers of unilateralism almost simultaneously in these last few weeks.
Until just yesterday, it was France that blocked NATO from sending defensive missiles to Turkey to safeguard that NATO ally should a war breakout with Iraq. But as soon as NATO had a forum without France present, even Germany and Belgium agreed with all the other nations in NATO that Turkey could have these defensive measures.
The only other European country effete and nihilistic enough to be as obnoxious to liberty, humanity, and equality as France is Schroeder’s Germany.
For too long Germany has gotten a pass because people perceived that it’s only desire is for peace. I grant that most German people are peaceful and frightened of war, but I do not believe Schroeder’s motives have anything to do with a love of peace. Schroeder cares only about power. He’s stifled the free press on everything from his hair color to the latest failing of his fourth marriage. [Schroeder’s foreign policy is led by a former left wing street-fighting goon who beat one policeman with a gang of helpers and may have thrown a Molotov cocktail at another. This same man was alleged in the German press last year to have been trained in Libya.]
But Schroeder failed to stifle some of the German press who picked up on certain parts of Iraq’s recent declaration to the UN on WMD. Based on what those newspapers saw, they reported that 80 German companies have sold Saddam WMD. So far, the US press has failed to report much on this or to discover the scope of this mind boggling disregard for the danger those sales created. But the fact remains that German corporations have been the biggest enablers of Saddam’s WMD projects. This explains better than the peace marches why Schroeder’s Germany stands firm in its obsessive desire to protect Saddam and keep the Iraqi people locked in a dictatorship. Schroeder is desperate to conceal corporate Germany’s role in arming this evil man. And the irony of a left wing, “peace-loving,” socialist German Chancellor supporting a military dictatorship is totally missed by the masses duped by Schroeder’s demagoguery. But as goes Saddam, so goes Schroeder. Decent Germans will vote again some day, and Schroeder won’t be able to stifle the press when that time comes. His government’s willingness to risk wrecking NATO, the UN, US-German relations, and the German economy won’t be saved by claptrap about peace in Iraq when American soldiers are greeted as liberators.
There is a happy note on all of this. The US can go its own way. We can ignore France since its hypocrisy is blatant and beyond morality, reason, or explanation. We can and must move or forces out of Germany to countries that share our values just as viscerally as we do and will not hesitate to protect humanity. Defenders of France and Germany remind us that these countries are not US states or cities. How true. We are stuck with Massachusetts and San Francisco. We are not stuck with France and Germany.
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Give up?
Quebec of course.
Thanks for pointing out that Iraq is France's largest supplier of oil. The largest French owned company in Iraq is named Elf Aquitaine, I believe.
It's about d@mned time that Gerhardt caved and France was shut out. France has FAR too much power in NATO while contributing nothing of value.
So true, and well said.
France overstepped her legimate legal bounds on the NATO issue, aided by a anti-American press, into duping the entire News Listening/Reading world into thinking that France could actually VETO NATO as surely as France has the right to VETO the UN. France has been called on this arrogant diplomatic ploy and send like a bad child to her corner to think it over.
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