France is no Eurowimp

Let's say you're the head of government of a middle-rank power. You have no feelings one way or the other on the morality of things, that being a simplistic Texan cowboy concept. What then should your line on Iraq be?

The first question to ask yourself is: Is Bush serious about war? If your answer is yes, the next question is: Will he win that war?

Answer: Yes, and very quickly. You know that, even if the drooling quagmire predictors of the press don't. So the next question is: How will the Iraqi people feel about it?

Answer: They'll be dancing in the streets. You know that, even if Susan Sarandon and Ed Asner don't. They don't know because, although the "peace" movement claims to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people, no Iraqi person wants to put his shoulder anywhere near them. They know the scale of Saddam's murder and torture. And once the vaults are unpadlocked so will the rest of the world. So the obvious question is: If, for the cost of chipping in a couple of fighter jets, you can pass yourself off as an heroic co-liberator of a monstrous tyranny and position yourself for a big piece of the economic action from the new regime, why not go for it? It would appear to be, in the ghastly vernacular of the cretinous Yanks, a "no-brainer."

Ah, but for those with a big sophisticated Continental brain it's all more complicated than that. There are many idiotic incoherent leaders in the world, several of them francophone (hint), but Jacques Chirac is not among them. Say what you like about M. le President -- call him irresponsible, call him unreliable, throw in shifty, devious, corrupt, and almost absurdly conceited. But he's not stupid. The issue for the French is very straightforward: What's in it for us?

The answer to that may vary, but frame the question as a negative and the reply is always the same: What's not in it for France is that America should emerge with its present pre-eminence even more enhanced. France is in the business of la gloire de la republique, and right now the main obstacle to that is the post-Soviet unipolar geopolitical settlement. They are not temperamentally suited to being anyone's sidekick: If Tony Blair wants to play Athens to America's Rome, or Tonto to Bush's Lone Ranger, or Sandy the dog to Dubya's Little Orphan Annie, fine. The French aren't interested in any awards for Best Supporting Actor.

This isn't quite the same as being a bunch of spineless appeasers. As far as I can see, American pop culture only ever has room for one joke about the French. For three decades, the Single French Joke was that they were the guys who thought Jerry Lewis was a genius. I don't particularly see the harm in that myself, at least when compared to thinking, say, Jean-Paul Sartre is a genius. But, since September 11th, the new Single French Joke has been that they're "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," a phrase introduced on The Simpsons but greatly popularized by Jonah Goldberg of National Review. Jonah, you'll recall, recently flayed us Canadians for being a bunch of northern pussies, but it's a measure of the contempt in which he holds our D-list Dominion that we didn't even merit a pithy four-word sneer-in-a-can.

The trouble is the cheese-eating surrender paradigm is insufficient. If you want to go monkey fishing, there's certainly no shortage of Eurowimps: Since the unpleasantness of 60 years ago, the Germans have become as aggressively and obnoxiously pacifist as they once were militarist; they loathe their own armed forces, never mind anybody else's. But France is one of only five official nuclear powers in the world, a status it takes seriously. When Greenpeace were interfering with French nuclear tests in the Pacific, they blew up the damn boat. Even I, a right-wing detester of the eco-loonies, would balk at killing the buggers.

A few weeks ago, there was a spot of bother in Ivory Coast. Don't ask me what's going on: President Wossname represents the southern Wotchamacallit tribe and they're unpopular with natives in the northern province of Hoogivsadam. Something like that. But next thing you know, French troops have locked down the entire joint and forced both parties into a deeply unpopular peace deal that suits the Quai d'Orsay but nobody else. All of this while the UN is hunkered down in a month-long debate on whether to approve Article IV Sub-section 7.3 (d) of Hans Blix's hotel bill. Ivory Coast is nominally a sovereign state. The French have no more right to treat it as a colony than the British have to treat Iraq as a colony. But they do. And they don't care what you think about it.

So they're not appeasing Saddam. On the matter of Islamic terrorists killing American office workers and American forces killing Iraqi psychopaths, they are equally insouciant. Let's say Saddam has long-range WMDs. If he nuked Montpelier (Vermont), M. Chirac would insist that Bush needed to get a strong Security Council resolution before responding. If he nuked Montpellier (France), Iraq would be a crater by lunchtime.

It's true that for a couple of centuries the French have not performed impressively on the battlefield per se. But even a surrender monkey can wind up king of the swingers. In the Second World War, half of France was occupied, the rest was run by a collaborationist regime; there were a couple of dozen in the French Resistance listening to the BBC under the bed, and a gazillion on the other side, enthusiastically shipping Jews east. And yet, miracle of miracles, in the post-war order France wound up with one of only five UN Security Council vetoes. Canada did far more heavy lifting and was far more deserving of a seat at the top table. But the point is, despite being deeply compromised and tainted, the French came out a big winner.

Their next ingenious wheeze was to co-opt the new Germany, a country with formidable economic muscle but paralyzed by self-doubt. Overlooked in last week's fuss about Schroeder and Chirac's thumbs-down to Bush was the real meat of their confab: the proposal to create a merged Franco-German citizenship. There's already a "European" citizenship, largely meaningless at the moment but intended (or so it was assumed) to be a legal identity that would eventually supersede national citizenship. Now Schroeder and Chirac have effectively announced that at the heart of the European Union will be a Franco-German superstate of 140 million people around which the Dutch and Austrians and other minor satellites cluster like the princely states around British India.

Even the ostensibly risible constitutional proposal that there should be two Presidents of Europe has a kind of sense: one will be, as a general rule, French or, if necessary, German; the other will be some nonentity from Luxembourg or Denmark. Whatever you think of all this, it's not the behaviour of surrender monkeys. A year ago, David Warren dismissed Canada and other fence-sitters as "spectators in their own fates." That's not the French. The startling suggestion that the French government will fund and run state mosques, in order to obstruct the malign spread of Saudi Wahhabism, may sound kooky to American ears. But to sly French Machiavels, it has the potential of neutering the potential Muslim threat as thoroughly as they permanently neutered the German threat.

Meanwhile, the peacenik predisposition of the other Continentals is a useful cover for French ambition. Last year Paavo Lipponen, the Finnish Prime Minister, declared that "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests." This sounds insane. But, to France, it has a compelling logic. You can't beat the Americans on the battlefield, but you can tie them down limb by limb in the UN and other supranational bodies.

In other words, this is the war, this is the real battlefield, not the sands of Mesopotamia. And, on this terrain, Americans always lose. Either they win but get no credit, as in Afghanistan. Or they win a temporary constrained victory to be subverted by subsequent French machinations, as in the last Gulf War. This time round, who knows? But through it all France is admirably upfront in its unilateralism: It reserves the right to treat French Africa as its colonies, Middle Eastern dictators as its clients, the European Union as a Greater France and the UN as a kind of global condom to prevent the spread of Americanization. All this it does shamelessly and relatively effectively. It's time the rest of the West was so clear-sighted.

Enormous dislocations to the West caused by his blackmail would be the "likely" scenario.

Not in 1990.

Anyone who thinks that Saddam Hussein had any substantive animosity whatsoever towards the US up to the day that the US told him to get outta occupied Kuwait doesn't very well remember that he was "our boy" in the Iran-Iraq War every bit as much as Kuwait.

There was no chance of Saddam "blackmailing" the USA with oil in 1990 until we made him our Enemy. Or at least, there was no more chance of Saddam blackmailing the USA then there was a chance of Kuwait trying the same ploy, just to line their own pockets.

One self-interested tyrannical autocratic Arab despot is as "good" as another, whether it's an Iraqi tin-pot dictator in green fatigues or a fat Kuwaiti slave-master in white robes and a crown (You did know that the Wahhabist Death-Cult form of Islam reponsible for 9/11 was exported to Saudi Arabia from Kuwait, right?).

Playing "favorites" among vipers like these is just asking for trouble, especially when either would have been equally happy to sell us oil (or blackmail us) before we stuck our nose in.

As Burkeman1 says, we would be fools now to ignore the Saddamite threat, but only because we created this monster ourselves. If we were faced with Serb Orthodox terrorists, would you not take notice of the potential connection therein to the interventionist insanity of the Clinton-Albright regime against the Serbian state, a state which had done nothing to harm the USA whatsoever (and was our ally in two world wars) until we started bombing?

It is foolish to ignore the lessons of History in the name of a Government-worshipping faux "patriotism" which is nothing of the sort. (And I'm not accusing you of doing so, just making an observation about the tendency of some to do so...)

what would prompt Sadaam to sit on his oil if we had let him take over Saudi and Kuwait?

I can think of a few things, hypothetically: demanding the West cut ties to Israel, demand the US remove its presence from the Mideast altogether, demands that the US stop development into alternative energy souces, demand that non-Opec nations join the cartel, demands that US citizens travel to Baghdad first befor going to other countries in the Mideast and so on.

Theres no end to this guys meglaomania. If you think he's like the House of Saud, you're wrong. His mendacity and risk taking is probably greater than even Hitler's was, IMO. He cant be allowed in the driver's seat.

There was no chance of Saddam "blackmailing" the USA with oil in 1990 until we made him our Enemy

And if he followed Burkeman's scenario and had control of the Saudi Penninsula and 25 to 30 million barrels of oil? Virtually 80 % of Opec? You don't think he'd be dangerous then?

Even Pat Buchanan would (or should) be afraid of that. Like I said earlier, he doesent give a fig if half the people in his rule were starving in the street. The reason tyrants invade other countries to take them over is to get more leverage and fulfill their meglomaniac dreams.. (Duh !!)

And if he followed Burkeman's scenario and had control of the Saudi Penninsula and 25 to 30 million barrels of oil? Virtually 80 % of Opec? You don't think he'd be dangerous then?

What's the question... would Saddam be "dangerous", or would he be more dangerous than the Wahhabist Murder-Cult of the Kuwaiti and Saudi Slave-Masters whom have been subsidizing Terrorists with their Oil Money for decades?

If memory serves, Saddam had never embargoed US oil purchases before; what makes you believe that he would start embargoing oil in 1990 absent US intervention against him?

What compelling reason was there for us to go to war against Saddam Hussein in 1990 for the "privilege" of buying Oil from terrorist-subsidizing Wahhabist slave-masters in Saudi and Kuwait who are every bit as likely to embargo us as Iraq (considering that they have embargoed us before, in 1973)??

Don't give me bluster and contrived doom-mongering to stack up against the 3,000 dead bodies the Kuwaiti-Saudi murder-cultists gave us on 9/11. Shoulda let Hussein crush the whole lot of 'em back when he was still "our guy".

Buchanan was against the 1990-91 Gulf War, and Buchanan was right. Having conquered their "19th Province" (or re-conquered, in their view of the Colonial disputes) Kuwait, Iraq had no armies massing anywhere near the Saudi border.

But even if they had, the Saudis have always been terrorist-supporting Wahhabi Death-Cultists; whereas back in the 80s, Saddam was an SOB -- but he was our SOB, and both sides were tolerably content with the arrangement.

He's a threat now, to be sure. But the fact that he is a threat (and not an unsavory ally against the Wahhabist Evil) is due to US foreign policy blunders of the past.

Einstein's is an older version.

Unified Theory of the Classical Fields of Gravitation and Electromagnetism:

After the publication of the general theory of relativity in 1916, Albert Einstein tried to establish a unified theory of the classical fields of gravitation and electromagnetism. Although he published many attempts on the subject until 1955, it is sadly wise to say that he did not succeed.

Grand Unified Theory:

One of the biggest goals in physics today is to unify the strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces into one unified force, or what physicists call the "Grand Unified Theory". It has already been discovered that at high enough energies, electromagnetism and the weak force are the same force, known as the electroweak force. It is theorized that if energies are increased even further, all the known forces will boil down into the same force. If the standard model can be simplified in this way, it may lead into areas of further study in order to get a better grasp of the world around us.

I certainly can't argue with your logic, and your point is well taken. The point that I was trying to make, I guess, is that among people who would read Steyn, the Simpsons are not a big influence on their thinking. I am sure that there are also a lot of your students who watch Fear Factor and Survivor also. They probably know the names of all of the people on there but not the name of the US Secretary of Defense. Steyn's readers and Jonah Goldberg's readers would usually be just the opposite in their knowledge, IMHO.

Well- the argument is now moot. We created this mess and have to deal with it. We can't walk away now. But in "dealing" with it I am less than convinced that invading and occupying Iraq is the answer.

I am sure the war will be over rather quickly and that Iraq will fall easily. And I am sure many if not most Iraqis (at least the urban population) will welcome us initially as did the Kuwaitis. But as merely a few small bases in Saudi Arabia inspired the rage of OBL and his fanatical AQ followers and that lead to 9/11- I shudder to think what the occupation and imposition of a Western government in Iraq will lead to 10 years down the road. Not to mention the costs involved either.

I am astounded at the lack of any discussion of an exit strategy. To bring it up seems to infuriate many who support this war and that tells me the answer is basically never. But if reading certain periodicals which call for war is any indication- Iraq is but the staging ground for future wars.

It seems we just keep sinking deeper and deeper into this mess.

Well- the argument is now moot. We created this mess and have to deal with it. We can't walk away now.

I agree that the time to "walk away" (or rather, ignore intra-party disputes among squabbling Arabs entirely, other than to air-drop ammunition to both sides if one is cynical enough) was 1990; I believe that GHW Bush made the wrong choice by getting involved (heck, I could even point out, as a pro-Zionist, that Iraq was not lobbing Scuds at Israel until after Bush decided to get involved).

But what's done is done. It is plainly not 1990 anymore. Saddam had no grudge against us then, but he does now. Now, on the one hand I don't (in principle) deny the Right of a Sovereign State to develop weapons with or without UN approval (which is what we mean by the term "Sovereign") and I am hardly convinced of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attack -- it was largely a Taliban and rogue-Saudi operation. On the other hand, the evidence for Iraqi complicity in the 1993 WTC center attack and possible complicity in the OKC bombing is, I think, more damning than the hyper-pacifists want to admit -- I would argue that it's supremely unlikely that the pre-Gulf War, US-supported Saddam Hussein would have ever initiated such attacks, but what's-been-done-is-done as far as the Gulf War and IMHO these attacks on US soil can reasonably be considered as a Casus Belli justifying some sort of US response (Clinton was just too busy invading Somalia and bombing aspirin factories to trouble himself therewith, I guess).

I shudder to think what the occupation and imposition of a Western government in Iraq will lead to 10 years down the road. Not to mention the costs involved either. I am astounded at the lack of any discussion of an exit strategy.

Likewise.

As for the OKC and the first WTC bombing I believe there was strong evidence to tie in Iraq. I also believe that Clinton actively covered up these ties for a myriad of purely selfish reasons (the nasty right wing rhetoric inspired Tim McVeigh). Bush can hardly come forward now and expose this as it would not only cause a political sea change at home (entire agencies would be ripped asunder and hundreds of powerful men's careers destroyed) at a time when he is trying to wage a war on terror but would also damage the image of America abroad.

In short we can't slap Iraq now for what they did half a decade ago without hurting our current war effort. Not to mention that to attack Clinton with the release of the truth would ignite a partisan battle so fierce as to make the impeachment drama look like a baby shower.

So for all intent and purpose our government must keep up the cover stories on both OKC and the first WTC bombings. Iraq was and will remain "officially" never involved.

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