France is no Eurowimp

National Post ^ | 30 Jan 2003 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

Pinging the Steyn list.

[Mr. Mojo]

[yendu bwam]

The issue for the French is very straightforward: What's in it for us?

That's it, in a nutshell. I think we all now truly know that the French are not an ally. In the future, other nations will be far more deserving of our limited aid and help in times of trouble.

[Siobhan]

The French should be reimbursing us for all of the money we gave them to rebuild after WWII.

[Constantine XIII]

A french flag with the universal "no" symbol over it? easy tshirt to make...

[Siobhan]

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.

BUMP

[Dog Gone]

They aren't a legitimate threat. They are simply snots, and everything they are doing results from that.

[colorado tanker]

Steyn nails it again.

[Frank_2001]

How about "Bring Back the Monarchy!" That would really p---them off...;)

[maica]

Thanks for this one. It is VERY instructional!

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.

In New York, hundreds of UN delegates are dithering about the Ivory Coast. The French just go in. They do not wait for the big bad Kofi Annan to tell them they can pass GO!

[Britton J Wingfield]

There is somebody selling shirts on cafepress that read "I Hate The French".

[Britton J Wingfield]

The French paid us with a huge shipment of bauxite after the war. It still sits as a huge berm on the Seabee base in Gulfport, Mississipi.

[Stultis]

There are many idiotic incoherent leaders in the world, several of them francophone (hint)

Is he refering to Canada's PM?

[knighthawk]

Ping

[Burkeman1]

I wouuld say Steyn has hit the nail on the head. Except for the last part about French "machinations" screwing up the last Gulf War. It wasn't a plot. The coalition Bush I put together included almost every ME state. And their conditions to being part of the coalition were that Kuwait only was to be liberated and that Sadaam stayed. France had nothing to do with it (though I am sure they wanted that outcome as well.)

But Steyn touches on something here. Why would France and Germany want to help America dominate the Middle East? States act in their own best interest. Steyn slipped up. He said if Iraq messed with France they would be a cinder the next day. Well- it seems France and Germany both seem to think that Iraq is no threat to them at all. But we do? Or do we really? Or is Sadaam a convenient boogeyman that we can topple and occupy a strategic country in the ME for future wars or muscle flexing?

9/11, WMD's, Sadaam is a bad guy- that is why we are going in? The men around Bush were calling for Sadaam's head before 9/11.

The French are acting in their best interest. And we are acting in what we see as our best interest (as an empire.) But it certainly has nothing to do with morality or spreading freedom (that is an afterthought.) I have no doubt that Iraqis will be dancing in the streets once Amrican troops take Bagdhad and Sadaam in dead or living Somalia with General Adid. So too did the Kuwaitis. But once Sadaam is gone so too is the identity of being an "Iraqi" and that is where the problems will start.

[kabar]

What Steyn failed to mention is that the population of France is 10 percent Muslim--and that number is increasing every year with the influx of immigrants from former colonies. Moreover, the immigrants are multiplying faster than the declining indiginous population. The very nature and culture of France are changing rapidly. I can understand the frenzied desire to merge with Germany and have a supranational EU. The French welfare state is crumbling. The rise of Le Pen is the harbinger of things to come in France as the society becomes more and more polarized over immigration and the maintenance of French culture. "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" will be severely tested over the next few years.

[Burkeman1]

PS- France does treat West Africa like a colony only without the benefits of actual law and order. They intervene to protect their corporate interests and back any thug who will keep the "peace". The French prop up the currency of a dozen west african states.

[syriacus]

The French are acting in their best interest

As we all know, most of the French are in a relationship with Iraq "for the oil."

And, Jacques Chirac has been named Sheikh Iraq, because he studied Arabic and was so friendly with Saddam, in the 70's.

[ffusco]

Excellent observation! Very well said.

[syriacus]

It's ironic that it's the people who call Bush a cowboy because they like to think Bush is simple-minded, are "simple-mindedly" calling him a cowboy.