Posted on 07/11/2003 6:27:53 AM PDT by schaketo
It's been fun, but isn't it time to stop bashing the French? The gleeful stomping on all things from France has progressed from the moronic to the pathetic.
First, there was the dimwit stuff, like renaming french fries "freedom fries" in congressional cafeterias. Now we have student-exchange programs unable to find American homes willing to take in French students over the summer. That's depressing.
Like a chronic ailment, Francophobia flares now and then, especially when France tries to frustrate the United States on the world stage. The source of today's friction is, of course, the war in Iraq.
A walk down memory lane of low points in Franco-American relations inevitably pauses at 1966, when Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO. Then, as now, American restaurant owners poured perfectly good French wine down the drain, at least while the news cameras were rolling.
Today, Americans and the French have one thing in common: They detest each other's leader. A good French friend of mine is a perfect example. She was an exchange student here years ago, has happy memories of waiting tables in Wyoming and is generally well disposed toward the United States.
But George W. Bush drives her nuts. And it's probably his style more than his politics. A Dick Cheney who pushes an individualistic, every-man-for-himself philosophy in a frank manner may be disagreed with but not hated. The spectacle of Bush alternating between tax cuts for the rich and displays of religious piety, however, sends my friend over the deep end.
Americans, for their part, have no obligation to admire French President Jacques Chirac (also a former exchange student in the United States). The cagey old pol has undoubtedly exploited anti-American feelings in France, also a latent force, to distract attention from his various scandals at home. For example, a now deceased member of his Gaullist Party describes on tape how he handed over $720,000 in cash to a Chirac aide as the boss, then mayor of Paris, looked on. Were it not for a court ruling that a sitting president cannot be dragged before a judge, Chirac might be behind bars today.
For Americans, lingering anger over Iraq obscures how very much France and the United States work together around the globe. Last month, Chirac announced that France would send its own special forces to fight alongside Americans in Afghanistan.
The French already play an active role there, training Afghan soldiers. "We still have french fries here," an American Special Forces officer, who runs a training center in Kabul, recently told the Wall Street Journal.
Bush has openly thanked the French for freely sharing their intelligence on terrorist activity with the United States. Fighting terrorism is, of course, very much in France's interest. Intelligence reports last year suggested that al-Qaeda cells were planning "spectaculars" in several countries at once, with France a prime target.
France keeps close tabs on potential terrorists, who are known to hide out among France's large Muslim population. In December, the French police picked up four suspects linked to a group that had planned to blow up the Strasbourg cathedral.
France has picked up other international burdens, notably Congo's civil war. Today, French troops have the unenviable job of keeping two warring tribes apart. Some of the combatants are 12-year-olds, who express an eagerness to shoot French soldiers.
The French are about to celebrate their Fourth of July, which happens to fall on the 14th of July. The 14th commemorates the destruction in 1789 of the Bastille, the political prison in Paris that symbolized despotism. Its liberation set off a revolution that was far bloodier than ours, but equally world-changing.
A key to the Bastille now hangs in the hall of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. It was a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette, who had served under Washington in the Revolutionary War.
Bastille Day is going to be a working Monday in the United States and definitely a non-holiday for professional Francophobes. But Americans with an open mind should find some commonality in the French waving a blue, white and red flag 10 days after we waved red, white and blue - in both cases honoring revolutions for the rights of man. What a fine occasion to give our animosities a rest.
well so much for those who have ever called me a "pathetic moron"....
(YOU know who you are)
Better ask Governor Hutchinson, and all the other Tory administrators & legislators who got caught in the middle. See here.
Many battles were fought "brother against brother", with members of the same family on both sides. You just don't hear much about the Loyalists because they lost and fled for their lives, leaving all their property behind.
But I think we also have to consider that the American colonies had no entrenched and established feudal system with the hereditary serfs and "brushwood folk" on the bottom of the pile. And our middle class was much, much larger. As a result the revolution was led by the prosperous bourgeoisie who had much to lose if things got out of hand -- unlike the French who were led by the intelligentsia who really had little to lose. Napoleon sneered that England was "a nation of shopkeepers", but if you want to keep things organized and running smoothly, without any guillotines or blood running in the streets, call in the shopkeepers. They're douce, sensible folk with their heads on straight.
My first reaction is a flip "'cause they're French" response but you've asked an honest question and I'll try to respond in kind.
To a large extent the French were the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war. They weren’t just neutral, they mobilized others. Thus they generated a higher level of animosity.
Second of all, there aren't 74,000 American soldiers buried in Russia, Belgium, Germany. So I guess the deeper question is why aren't you against the French?
DITTO !!
The entire nation of France can slip into the sea for all I care. I for one will focus my visits in London and Rome.
Actually if you take the plain meaning of this sentence, it states that the gleeful stomping began on moronic French things, and has now progressed to stomping on pathetic French things.
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