France Bashers Ignorant of American History (Rat droppings)

The ignorance of political ranter Dick Morris is amazing. In a spiel for the NY Post (07/02/03), which is part of Rupert Murdock’s Evil Empire, he demanded that the U.S. Ambassador to France, Howard Leach, be sacked. Leach incurred Morris’s wrath for daring to suggest that the friction between the U.S. and France, over the Iraq War, is “in the past and now part of history.”

Morris insisted that the French had betrayed America by refusing to endorse our invasion of Iraq. What drivel! The truth is the French were right. There were no WMD in Iraq, it was never a threat to U.S. security, it had no ties to terrorists, and the UN Inspectors should have been permitted to do their jobs.

The French also knew President George W. Bush was being manipulated by advisors, who had conflicted interests. I’m referring to Neocons and Super Hawks; Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith; the seriously confused Donald Rumsfeld; and the Halliburton-challenged Dick Cheney.

Morris even railed that the, “French voters are nuts.” A poll-obsessed consultant for then-President Bill Clinton, Morris, in 1996, was forced out of his cushy White House role by a sleazy sex scandal involving a $200 an hour prostitute. He has been called everything from a “Rasputin-like figure,” to “a buffoon,” to a “campaign trickster.”

As a France-hater, unfortunately, the raving Morris is not alone. Windbags George F. Will and Rush Limbaugh are even worse! Oh well, if the public can survive the idiotic babblings of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, then it can survive the daffy Francophones, too.

What Morris, and other shallow types have in common, besides their hatred for France, is their gross ignorance about America’s history and the Revolutionary War. Even if they knew that history, it still wouldn’t touch their souls. They are constitutionally incapable of identifying with the founding of the Republic and the great battles, continuing today, to maintain it. They may read of an historical event, but it never goes any deeper. This is why the people shouldn’t pay any heed to their nonsense.

The records shows that France is America’s oldest ally. Without her help during the darkest days of our Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the struggle for independence may have been lost. General George Washington himself said, on April 9, 1781, “We are at the end of our tether, and...now or never our deliverance must come.”

Under King Louis XVI, French aid had begun to flow into America as early as 1778. It consisted of “money, clothing, muskets, and barrels of the world’s finest gunpowder.” All of it was “smuggled” for the use of the Continental Army, under the direction of the famous playwright, Pierre de Beaumarchais, according to the riveting, “The Campaign That Won America: The Story of Yorktown,” by Burke Davis.

By 1781, however, the Continental Army was literally on the ropes. The British occupied parts of New England, all of Manhattan, and had a large army, under Lord Charles Cornwallis, rampaging through the Carolinas, and Virginia, too. Washington was camped, with his mostly unpaid and rag tagged army, at King’s Ferry on the Hudson. The British Navy totally controlled the seas. Washington, in desperation, sent Maj. Gen. Lafayette, then age 23, south, with a small force, to harass Cornwallis’ 7,500 men.

It was France, that then stepped boldly into the breach. With her gallant army, under Count Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau, and her proud navy, under Admiral Francois de Grasse. It came to Washington’s rescue, in early August of 1781, along with much needed additional supplies.

Surprisedly, Cornwallis overplayed his hand. As the result of his forces plundering in the Carolinas, the local “Mountain Men,” rose up and gave some of the British a good whipping at a place called “King’s Mountain.” The gutsy guerrilla faction was led by Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. They were masters of the hit-and-run raids.

Enter General Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s “most able lieutenants.” Greene, the son of Quaker minister, challenged Cornwallis forces, too, using army troops and militia, and seriously damaged them in the Carolinas. He, and Lafayette, in the Virginia campaigns, were assisted by men, whose names are writ large in the history of that period. Heroes, like Daniel Morgan, Light-horse Harry Lee, William Washington, John Eager Howard, Edward Carrington, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Mordecai Gist, Baron de Kalb, Anthony Wayne and the Baron von Steuben.

Washington’s strategy worked! A weakened Cornwallis retreated to Virginia and Yorktown, located on the York River, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. In a forced march, Washington, beginning on Aug. 30, 1781, took his battered army 450 miles south from New York, and along with de Rochambeau’s army, began to surround Yorktown, in a classic military pincer movement.

It was at that opportune moment that the French fleet under de Grasse showed up. After a ferocious exchange of gunfire, on Sept. 5th, the French chased the crippled British fleet out of the Chesapeake Bay, and blockaded it, so that no relief force could reach Cornwallis. An intense Allied siege of Yorktown, that began on Sept. 28th, resulted in the British surrendering on Oct. 19, 1781, effectively ending the war.

I leave the final words on the role of the French in the battle, to the immortal Washington. In a message to Congress, dated that very same day, and after praising the efforts of the “combined Army in this occasion,” he added this line, “I wish it was in my power to express to Congress how much I feel indebted to the Count de Grasse and his fleet...”

These last words are inscribed on a Marker that can be found at Cape Henry, VA., next to a monument to the noble de Grasse. Washington’s accolades to the French should be memorized by every school child in America, and, for poetic justice purposes, by that silly France-bashing Dick Morris, too!

William Hughes is the author of “Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order” (Authors Choice Press) and “Baltimore Iconoclast” (Writer’s Showcase). He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.

Ann Coulter is right. Treason, page 286:

But when confronted with terrorists who despised both America and the Jews, there was no doubt which side the left would take. . . Liberals, it turned out, were perfectly copacetic with the most virulent anti-Semitism imaginable--provided it served the cause of anti-Americanism. It isn't anti-Semitism or philo-Semitism or racism that drives them. It's hatred of civilization."

"The truth is the French were right. There were no WMD in Iraq, it was never a threat to U.S. security, it had no ties to terrorists, and the UN Inspectors should have been permitted to do their jobs."

Hell, this guy should be president if he knows all that. Where's he get his intel?

Under King Louis XVI, French aid had begun to flow into America as early as 1778....

And the French citizens subsequently showed their approval of this by beheading him and the fetching Marie Antoinette.

"I wish it was in my power to express to Congress how much I feel indebted to the Count de Grasse and his fleet..."

I also feel indebted to the Count de Grasse. Unfortunately, he's very dead, and leftists have taken over the goverment of our former ally. As a culinary professional, I won't use any French products until they kick the leftists out. Besides, I'm finding that French wines are over-rated, compared to some much less expensive wines from other places in the world.

/john

A poll-obsessed consultant for then-President Bill Clinton, Morris, in 1996, was forced out of his cushy White House role by a sleazy sex scandal involving a $200 an hour prostitute.

I think that it was Bubba who was, and still is, obsessed with polls. Also, I thought that sex was in a person's private life, not to be brought up when discussing a person's character. I forgot, that only applied to Bill Clinton and the Kennedys.

The author is a Naderite dipstick.

Get this quote from another of his screeds, Gettysburg’s Lessons for Today’s America :

I believe this year’s 140th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg is a golden opportunity for the American people to take stock of themselves. They should begin by asking themselves these kinds of questions: Is this the kind of Republic you really want? Is the national interest being served by our present domestic and foreign policy? Can you have a government of, by, and for the people, when the “Military-Industrial Complex,” “Big Oil,” and the crafty CIA spooks, are manipulating institutions to their own corporate and selfish ends?

So Sixties.

Thanks for the background information on the author. The good news is he is writing for the " Palestine Chronicle."

What a career advancer that must be.

Publisher:Have you been published before?

William Hughes: "I'm a regular contributor to the Palestine Chroncile."

The supposed French love for America this article paints is grossly inaccurate.

The French helped us against the British because they were enemies of the British. Nothing else. They armed a weak opponent of their enemy. France, Britain and America have all done this many times.

And I would hardly regard the French-Indian wars as a sign of French friendship toward America.

The supposed generosity of France in selling us the Louisiana Purchase was a practical matter. We got cheap what we would have taken by force in the matter of a few decades. Napoleon liquidated the asset because it was too expensive to defend.

And we can hardly forget the French's role in encouraging the South to rise against the Union in the Civil War. Without their promises of arms and aid, Lincoln was convinced that the South would never have seceded.

France's friendship for America is a French myth.

I take it that the author of this drivel never read David McCullough's John Adams. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a better account of just how friendly the French were toward us during our nation's early years.

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