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Posted on 10/09/2003 6:22:11 AM PDT by Theodore R.
America is still a great country, and it would be cruel to judge it by its patriots. I mean the sort of “patriots” who think the way to express your love for this country is to insult other countries.
The events of 9/11 have brought the nastiest jingoists out of the woodwork, and their most toxic venom has been directed against France for opposing war on Iraq. Now that the war has failed in its express aims, the French are hated worse than ever. After all, they have committed the extremely annoying faux pas of being proved right by events. And as the French proverb says, it’s only the truth that really hurts.
Nowhere has Francophobia been more relentlessly childish than in the pseudopatriotic New York Post, where the columnist Ralph Peters has just published his latest tantrum. After a few swipes at the Democrats, he rails against “those, from Paris to Palestine, who hate our freedom, our values, and our success.” He names France’s president, Jacques Chirac, first among “morally bankrupt leaders.” He lumps the French among “Eurotrash” who are “the most notorious sexual predators in the developing world.”
According to Peters, France is “one of America’s ugliest enemies” and Chirac is “a moral pygmy whose lack of scruples is, fortunately, balanced by a lack of courage and power.” As for Chirac’s call for a “multilateral” policy on Iraq,
Stick it where the bum hid his money, Jackie-boy. It was you and your frog princes who ruthlessly destroyed the possibility of a multilateral approach to dealing with Saddam Hussein by refusing to cooperate in any serious efforts to call the regime in Baghdad to account. It was you and your political pimps who split the Security Council in two, with France nobly defending the rights of dictators to die of old age on the Riviera. It gets even more rabid. The French are “the parasites in Paris.” They have “never stood for human freedom.” In World War II “they didn’t even fight to free themselves.” Their opposition to the American war on Iraq was “reflexive and irrational. They hate us because we’re us.”
So what should we do now? We should “make an example of France for the benefit of those countries that actively strive to frustrate our efforts to spread human rights and freedom. Far from seeking reconciliation with Paris, we should miss no opportunity anywhere, in any sphere, to rub French faces in the merde.”
Peters isn’t through yet. France should be made to suffer, strategically and financially. The French stabbed us in the back. In response, we should skin them alive. If today’s America is the new Rome, France is a garbage-dump Carthage. And Carthage needs to be broken.... And we should pursue every possible avenue to reduce American purchase of any goods produced by the French. Perfidy must be punished. The French, who would be eating sauerkraut for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if we hadn’t liberated them, need to have their treachery shoved down their throats. “First Baghdad, then Paris,” Peters concludes.
Treachery? Perfidy? Stabbing us in the back? The French were quite open about opposing the war — and about resisting the imperial arrogance shown by the Bush administration, an attitude displayed by Peters himself.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it? No wonder this country is now feared and loathed around the world. And no wonder more and more Americans are looking for an alternative to George W. Bush.
Not only liberals but conservatives are feeling qualms about the reckless militarism that has passed, far too long, for conservatism. An older and truer breed of conservatism had deep reservations about trying to “spread human rights and freedom” by raw force.
Conservatism is where you find it. When Teddy Kennedy, the archliberal, charged that we were taken to war in Iraq by “fraud,” he was expressing the kind of skepticism about the uses of power we should be hearing from more conservatives. Liberals are also doing the work of conservatives when they denounce the staggering price of this ill-conceived war.
Granted, it’s incongruous (and funny) to see liberal Democrats in green eyeshades fretting about budget deficits like yesterday’s Republicans, but that’s two-party politics for you. When one party goes nuts, you’re stuck with the other one. And if Ralph Peters is any indication, the Republicans have gone nuts.
Joseph Sobran
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Compared to what? The cost of supporting Nato (100 billion?) , keeping troops in Germany?, South Korea? (40 billion?), Bosnia, Kosovo, everywhere else?. You telling me being pro-active in Iraq and Afghanistan is not worth 87 billion? And thats not every year, either.
Sobran never opened his big fat mouth when it came to Korea, Taiwan, Europe, Vietnam et al. He just doesent like anything that helps the JEWS, even secondarily. Duh!
I think the liberals are panicking. They're seeing themselves relegated to the irrelevant party that stands for nothing: not security, not economic growth-- only tax and spend.
The standard liberal defense is to accuse your opponent of that which afflicts you-- and he uses it well here.
...in my humble opinion.
Sobran and his ilk refer to themselves as libertarian, but they are really nationalistic isolationists , who really only get animated about the latter when it comes to the mideast. And their nationalism include advocating large doses of State interference (ie closing borders, imposing trade barriers, etc). So go figure.
That seems like a conflict of ideologies to me. Weird.
Although, I must say that I agree with one aspect of isolationism...
I know it'd never work, and probably would end up doing our economy more harm than good, but: Wouldn't it be gratifying if we could step out of the world's business, politics, and social problems for about a year. No charities, no economic help, no diplomatic missions, etc.?
It would be nice having the world suddenly realize that the world is a much different place, and not necessarily a better one, without our involvement.
I'm getting REALLY TIRED of everyone saying, "You suck! You suck! ...and can we have some more grain, please? You suck! You suck!"
Well, that makes at least two of us. It's high time we pull the purse strings in and let them roll in their own misery for a while, and it wouldn't take long. It might help thin the gene pool. The world would be better off when the smoke clears. Blackbird.
Envy goes with the territory. Unfortunately, the real world is a messy place, and there are consequences to actions taken. Sobran and his buddies seem to yearn for a time and place that never really existed the way they seem to remember it , and is long gone anyway (the 1930's ?, 1883 ?, 1851 ?)
I can understand the liberals not wanting to control our boarders so that they can get their drug fix, but these stupid neo-con hubris, and jingoism of hate against France who GAVE us our independence from King George, is simply revisionist historian BS.
More than 80% of the gunpowder used in our war for independence came from France, and the French fleet helped protect us against the English fleet. The neo-con France haters need to become real American patriot first , and read our history to understand that France was, and still is our best Friend. The current politics, and conflict between our two nations visions of world diplomacy & the proper way to combat Islamic terrorism is still debatable; the jury is still out. On the other hand, the French brotherly help with blood and money cannot be denied or diminished.
France and Israel have been on the frontline of Islamic terrorism for years before these losers started to mess with America. Their intelligence about the Islamic militant movements should always be respected. The neo-cons theorists who don’t even know a thing about Islam, yet are happy to bad mouth France as a way to combat the Islamic fanatics, are simply a bunch of armatures. Hey neo-cons, you need to understand first that the Islamic movement is world-wide movement to convert Christians and Jews to Islam. If we do not cooperate with ALL the world leaders to combat those stupid religious fanatic movements, we will only going to be chasing our tails for many years to com. Hating the French is simply a childish behavior.
LOL! Talk anout living in the Past! Two and a half centuries is a long way to go back to justify "friendship" .
France's mode of dealing with the obdurate Islamicists is to engage in a tacit deal whereby they sit on the sidelines while the jihadists kill Americans, and meanwhile they get a cut of the "business" that the host dictatorial regimes give them. As long as theyre exempt from the jihad, knocking the US down a couple notches fits in nicely with their fantasies of being The powerful broker in a basically anarchic world. Its cynical, immoral, and self deludingly despicable. In other words; its French.
An older and truer breed of conservatism had deep reservations about trying to “spread human rights and freedom” by raw force."
Sorry, chappo. This isn't about spreading anything. It's about draining the swamp and getting rid of the alligators.
Many people have no problem blasting France over events that happened 60 years ago, so I do not see why it should be any different for praising France.
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