Krauthammer: The French Challenge

Washington Post ^ | 02/21/03 | Charles Krauthammer

[Pokey78]

"It is not well brought-up behavior. . . . They missed a good opportunity to shut up."

-- French President Jacques

Chirac, berating Eastern

European countries for

supporting the U.S. position

on Iraq, Feb. 17.

Chirac's outburst made headlines. It was clumsy, impolitic and revealing. But the bullying of New Europe by Old Europe is not new.

[Pokey78]

Pinging the Krauthammer list.

[Tax Government]

So, why would any country join the European Union, knowing that France was in it?

[AntiGuv]

So, why would any country join the European Union, knowing that France was in it?

€

[McGavin999]

Yep, last week was Chiraq's high point and it's all downhill from there.

Eastern europe has experience with the ultimate weakness of France and their total inablility to remain loyal to any cause let alone any people.

[DeFault User]

France is a flea floating on a turd in the river of history, screaming for someone to open the drawbridge.

[Lurker]

"Not a bad vocation for a country whose closest brush with glory and empire today consists of patrolling the swamps of Ivory Coast. "

Ivory Coast....that's funny.

L

[MHGinTN]

Chiraq is the Bill Clinton of Europe ... totally unprincipled egomaniac.

[Slyfox]

Sure, France has contracts and loans that will be jeopardized if Saddam Hussein is deposed. And French leaders may have dirty hands from dirty dealings that will show up when Hussein's archives are opened after a war.

So, maybe the protestors are right when they say the war in Iraq is really all about oil.
Only thing is they've got the wrong country.

[MCH]

So, maybe the protestors are right when they say the war in Iraq is really all about oil. Only thing is they've got the wrong country.

More likely, it's all about nuclear weapons, reactors, and weapons grade material.

And Jacqass Chiraq's hands are glowing.

[VaBthang4]

"France is reaching to become not only the leading power in Europe (hence the pique with those pesky Eastern Europeans) but also the leader of a new pole of world power opposite the American "hyperpower."

Not a bad vocation for a country whose closest brush with glory and empire today consists of patrolling the swamps of Ivory Coast." -The Krautmeister

Hit'em where it hurts.

[American in Israel]

Indeed in another article a freeper dug up yesterday it was shown that France sold 6 charges of WEAPONS grade Uranium to Sadam along with the reactor. Even by crude Hiroshima methods that was enough for 5 nukes.

Even though the uranium could have been 3% enriched to run the reactor, what they sold Sadam was 95% enriched.

Chirac's hands indeed glow.

[Catspaw]

When did Chirac make these comments? Before or after his tantrum?

[MeekOneGOP]

Excellent Krauthammer article. Thanks for the post and ping...

The division between the New Europe (newly liberated Eastern Europe) and the Old Europe (centered on France and Germany) has long been visible. As the center of gravity of American influence in Europe has shifted east to the Iron Curtain countries, it is no accident, comrade, that the only state dinner President Bush has hosted (apart from the traditional one for the president of Mexico) was for the president of Poland.

Europe did not take to the streets against America last weekend; only Western Europe did. The streets of Eastern Europe were silent. The Poles, and their Eastern European neighbors, have an immediate personal experience of life under tyranny -- and of being liberated from that tyranny by American power. The French and their neighbors are six decades removed from their liberation. They think freedom is as natural as the air they breathe, rather than purchased at the price of blood -- American blood in no small measure.

This division in experience sets the stage for the division in politics. And for France's fury at finding an American fifth column in the New Europe. When 13 Eastern European states came out in support of the United States on Iraq, Chirac lost all reserve. His scolding of the Eastern Europeans has inadvertently demonstrated how much France's current dispute with the United States is not really about Iraq.

Sure, France has contracts and loans that will be jeopardized if Saddam Hussein is deposed. And French leaders may have dirty hands from dirty dealings that will show up when Hussein's archives are opened after a war.

Yet the lengths to which France has gone to oppose the United States show that the stakes are much higher. France has gone far beyond mere objection, far beyond mere obstruction. It is engaged in sabotage so active that it has taken to verbally attacking weaker states that dare take the American side.