Posted on 01/31/2003 8:03:41 AM PST by Rummyfan
France is no Eurowimp
Mark Steyn National Post
Thursday, January 30, 2003 ADVERTISEMENT
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.
I'm not sure, but I think the Saudis may have nationalized our wells as well.
Clean your own home before visiting ours and telling us to tidy up.
There are many such places in the world...too many.
No. Feel free to double-check the dates on the following events, but...
...Iraq nationalized its oil industry in 1972 (following the earlier examples of Iran '51, Egypt '56, and Libya '70, etc). Saddam Hussein seized power until 1979 so he can hardly be blamed for a Oil Nationalization which occurred 7 years before his time.
By contrast, the Royal families of Kuwait and Saudi nationalized their Oil Industries in 1974 and 1975, respectively (so sorry about that 60-year contract which was supposed to last through 1993, eh Chevron?).
So, considering that the Royal Families of Kuwait and Saudi have embargoed US oil shipments, nationalized US Oil assets, and shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars to their home-grown Wahhabist Islam Murder-Cult for decades...
...Exactly why were we defending these fat terrorists from Saddam's "threat" in 1990?
We're now caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place -- having made an Enemy of an (unsavory) former 1980's ally, we now have a choice between destroying the only Islamic Government in the world which is at least internally sufficiently tolerant of Religious minorities to accept a Christian (Chaldean Catholic) as it's second-most-powerful Politician -- that being Iraq; OR... leave that Government in power, despite the fact that the Feds certainly must know that Iraq was up to their necks in at least two post-Gulf-War bombing attacks on the US -- WTC 1993 and OKC 1995 (though probably not 9/11, at least not directly). Saddam has a murderous grudge against the US now, sure -- and we'd be fools to ignore that fact.
We'd also be fools not to learn from history.
It's best not to get involved in intra-Arab squabbles in the first place, seeing as there is no right choice between a tin-pot military dictator in Iraq and a bunch of slave-running, terrorist-funding Shari'ah Sheikhs in Kuwait and Saudi.
The only "right" choice in 1990 was either to not get embroiled in the mess at all; or, if you're cynical enough -- air-drop ammunition to both sides.
Thanks!
I think we all agree that after you chain a dog and kick him every day for 12 years, the only way you let him off the chain is with a bullet in his head.
I think that is a darn good summation of both Burkeman1's and my views of past Bush/Clinton foreign policy errors regarding Iraq ("500,000 dead Iraqi children are 'worth it'" -- Clinton sec'y of state "Mad-Bomber Albright")...
...and the position which GW Bush unfortunately finds himself in.
As far as the discussion on whether Saddam would/wouldn't have embargoed us in the intervening years: Feeding a megalomaniac more power doesn't stabilize them.
True. Hussein always wanted to rule (well, dominate, anyway) the Middle East, and I would not have put it past him to attempt a 9/11 towards that goal. As it happens, the Taliban and Wahhabist Saudis beat him to the punch.
Sadly, it's true of the entire Middle East, excepting Turkey, Israel, Jordan and (sometimes) Egypt. Our "friend" King Fahd and his cronies, our so-called "stable allies" in Saudi Arabia, have been bankrolling Wahhabist terrorists and Taliban Mujaheddin with Oil Money for decades... cash that earned its profit in blood on 9/11.
Meanwhile, when King Fahd -- our "dependable" Saudi client -- passes on to meet Allah (be that in Heaven or Hell, I leave the gentle reader to decide)... his USA-hating successor Prince Abdullah has been measuring our rib cage for a crescent-shaped stiletto for a long time.
The entire region is a snake-pit.
Choosing sides is a tricky game where there are no good guys.
To which I can only say... Drill Alaska. Saudi Oil is not worth one drop of US blood... not because US national interests aren't worth our Defense, but because the Saudis aren't.
A pox on all their houses.
If not for that whole "mass genocide is terribly impolite" thing, I admit that I would otherwise find your idea a good bit more appealing than trying to pick sides and fight each one in turn (Iran then Lebanon then Libya then Iraq then Afghanistan then Iraq again then... Pakistan? Saudi, even?), sometimes succeeding and sometimes not...
After all, oil rigs can still drill through parking lots.
Just say, "Carolus Magnus".
That'll loosen your tongue, although it may leave a sour taste in the current geopolitical climate.
Not if Chirac and Schroeder are the bastardized result thereof.
Carolus Magnus they ain't; they're just trying to position themselves to remain "Players" in the 21st century.
By Comparison to US-Britain, China, and Russia... Germany and France don't seem to think that they can manage this Status on their own. They're probably right. But in combination... Germany supplies the Population and the Industry, and France supplies the (carefully-cultivated) diplomatic network and the unique UN Veto.
Merging their Citizenships is a way for them to stay in the "Great Game", IMHO.
LOL! No, they certainly wouldn't qualify! My (bad) joke alluded to the alleged newborn cloned babies she said are hidden somewhere.
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