Lawmaker to propose removing soldiers' remains from French soil

The Orlando Sentinel (via San Luis Obispo) ^ | March 12, 2003 | Tamara Lytle

[The_Expatriate]

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - First it was French fries and French toast. Now the bones of U.S. servicemen are being dragged into the conflict between France and the United States over war in Iraq.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., plans to introduce a bill Thursday proposing that the families of the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen buried in France and Belgium be allowed to dig up their remains and have them shipped home.

[scooby321]

Secretary of State Colin Powell

"We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last 100 years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."

[US_MilitaryRules]

#81

[Jolly Rodgers]

Posters from France need to consider how mad AMERICANS are and they have only added fuel to the fire.

What are you mad about?

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

While this should never be done, the fact that it is being talked about should show the French how serious we are about their stupid ways.

Just leave those men buried there. I'm sure my Father in law who spent the worst 3 days of his life in the hedgerows wouldn't want those boys eternal rest disturbed no matter how stupid the French get.

[homeagain balkansvet]

This is dispicable.

This lady needs to read.... THIS.

NATIONAL REVIEW
ROD DREHER March 11, 2003 9:00 a.m.
I Like France
A defense of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

The French are going to go proctological on America in the Security Council this week, leading to a fresh round of pop-cult French-bashing. I've done quite a bit of it myself, and think most of it is justified. The Iraq policy of the French government is arrogant, hypocritical, and cynical, and they deserve almost all the abuse they're getting. Almost. What's being lost in the justified anger at the French is the uncomfortable fact that there is quite a bit to admire about France and its culture. Sorry, but there it is.

You hear people who have never been to France, and don't know the first thing about the great things about France and the French, speaking with such confidence about the utter worthlessness of that country. When I hear my fellow Americans writing all of France and French culture off because of its disagreeable and arguably immoral politics, I think of the Yankees I know who believe there's nothing of any worth whatsoever in the south because of the legacy of its racial history. That is, I hear chauvinistic ignorance passing itself off as moral superiority. France is full of such people who say and believe similar things about America and Americans. People of intelligence and discernment everywhere should resist this sort of thing.

Look, I find it impossible to defend France's politics or its diplomacy, but that's not why I go to France every chance I get, and will go again. France is a deeply wonderful place to visit, and a place where the people know a great deal about how life should be lived. It is a country for grown-ups. And they damn sure know how to eat.

France first existed for me in the stories of Lois and Hilda, two elderly great-aunts who lived in a little cabin at the end of a pecan orchard, and with whom I spent most of my days before I was old enough for kindergarten. They had been Red Cross nurses stationed in Dijon during the Great War, and filled my head with stories of France and the French. On the day the armistice was announced, a jubilant French soldier grabbed Hilda on the Champs-Elysees and kissed her madly. In her rapturous telling, I could feel the force of the kiss, and the world spinning around her, six decades and half a world away.

Years later, in high school, somebody handed me a copy of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his memoir of living in Paris in the 1920s. And I was gone. The idea of living in a funky Parisian garret, and spending my days in cafés writing, talking about ideas, drinking wine, and chasing women struck me as the best possible way to live. I took up French, and became enamored of the language's lithe, lyrical beauty. In college, I tried my best to see every French movie that came to the dowdy art-house theater near campus, not because I thought they were particularly good movies, but because I wanted to see France, and hear the French language spoken.

Why? Easy: The French had style. They were so much sexier and cooler than anything I saw in my life. Of course, I had a romanticized and by then outdated view of France, informed by Lost Generation literature of the 1920s and French New Wave movies of the 1960s. It didn't matter. When you're stuck in Baton Rouge, young and bored and restless and suffering from a fierce case of wanderlust, there are worse things than losing yourself dreaming of Paris.

To see Paris with all those images in mind is to set oneself up for disappointment. It didn't happen. By the time I got there, the Brasserie Lipp was pretty much a trap for American tourists with clichéd Hemingway fantasies, and money to spend indulging them. Didn't matter. Paris was everything I could have hoped for. The handsome boulevards, the bookstalls along the Seine, the winding cobblestoned streets of the Latin Quarter, the churches, the cafés, and the women — my Lord, are there any women more gorgeous than French women? That summer of 1988, my best friend Paul and I would sit at café tables nursing our beers, marveling over how impossibly sophisticated the girls walking by seemed. We felt like big thick oafs. Later, spending a week on the Cote d'Azur, in the best hovel our "Let's Go" guide could find for us, we thought we were in paradise. Oscar Wilde said that when Americans die, they go to Paris, but he wasn't quite right; as far as Paul and I were concerned, when bookish American college boys die, they go lay out with the bronze topless goddesses on the beach in Nice. You sure can't do that in Baton Rouge.

For me, the Ur-France experience came at the end of that trip, when I'd left Paul back in Germany, and had two days to spend before my flight back, and was by myself and down to my last francs. I was wandering around near the red-light district, and stopped at a tiny, dumpy boulangerie to buy half a baguette at the end of the day. It was what I could afford. I took the demi-baguette, and sat down on a stoop to eat it. Maybe it was because I was tired and hungry and sick of lugging around a dirty backpack, but that cheap stick of bread, so crisp on the outside, and pillowy soft within, was one of the best things I'd ever eaten. This bread came from a dull little shop in a crappy part of Paris, but I doubt there's a bakery in the entire United States that can make one as good. I could have cried from contentment.

Fast forward 15 years. I am sitting by the fire in a pub on Smith Street in Brooklyn, nursing a whisky and reading Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik's terrific book about living in Paris with his wife and son in the 1990s. I come across this line: "Many people who love Paris love it because the first time they came they ate something better than they had ever eaten before, and kept coming back to eat it again." The author then recounts his first visit to Paris 25 years earlier, with his mom and dad and siblings, and settling in to eat a cheap meal at a diner near their budget hotel. "The prix-fixe menu was fifteen francs, about three dollars then. I ordered a salad Nicoise, trout baked in foil, and a cassis sorbet. It was so much better than anything I had ever eaten that I nearly wept." I read that and thought, Yes, he gets it.

Though I've been back to France many times since then, and had the money and the taste and the good sense to partake of its richer pleasures, that moment on the stoop in the red-light district reminds me what I love most about that vexing country. No matter how low-down you go in France, you can always get something good to eat. Everybody knows that the French are the world's best cooks, and there's a reason for that. In France, they know that good food and good wine are inseparable from the good life. The more time you spend in France, the more you come to appreciate that for all their haughtiness and snobbery, these people still know how to, as we say in Louisiana, pass a good time. (N.B., Where do you go to find the best food and the most distinct and fun-loving culture in the United States? That's right, French Louisiana. God forbid you should take up their public ethics, though.)

I think there's a conservative point to be made here. The French are an old country, and the love they have for their culinary traditions, and its unparalleled excellence, come from a profound respect for tradition and culture, for civilization. When they make fools of themselves beating up the neighborhood McDonald's, I find it hard to condemn them, because we all live in a world that doesn't ask What is beautiful? What is delicious? What is worthy; we live in a world that asks only, What is quick and easy? Many of the French resist this modern, very American impulse. They do it in bad, stupid ways sometimes, but their instinct is right. As someone who grew up in a disposable culture, the effort the French put into aesthetic excellence never fails to move me, and makes me want to learn from them.

Now, this doesn't mean they aren't treacherous creeps. In many ways, they have put their own civilization at risk. They have discarded their Catholic religion. They have let so many Muslim immigrants into their country that they now find it difficult to stand up to Islamic terrorism. In their pride, they are trashing their relationship with the only country capable of fighting effectively for Western civilization and its values against the barbaric Islamic onslaught. If more of our troops die trying to fight Saddam in the sandstorms that have now begun in the desert, it will be partly France's fault for causing these delays. Tarte tatin or a good bottle of Bordeaux can cover a multitude of sins, but not these, not this time.

But I can't hate France, and when this ugly time passes, I'll be back. I've got a little boy of my own now, and rather than just tell him about the wonders of France, as Aunt Lois and Aunt Hilda did for me, I'm planning to take him there one day and show him. I want him to see the cathedral at Chartres, the experience of which first stirred me to seek Christian faith (wondering what kind of religion would inspire men to build something so magnificent to the glory of God). I want him to see the castles of the Loire Valley, the vineyards of Bordeaux, and the graveyard at Normandy, where so many of his countrymen died to make France free. I want him to see Paris, the world's most beautiful city, and the bridge over the Seine where his father kissed his mother one warm spring evening when they were first in love, and to walk over to Berthillon on the Ile St-Louis to taste the best ice cream in the world. France is for him to love too, and not even the perfidious pomposities of Dominique de Villepin can take that from him.

[veronica]

Secretary of State Colin Powell -- "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last 100 years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."

A quote a man could be remembered for. Nevertheless the savages over there have apparently forgotten the lessons of history. ChIRAQ is a disgrace, and I wonder what he is afraid we will find in Iraq...

[only1percent]

San Luis Obispo link! I'm a native, albeit long removed.

Anyway, is there really a law that prohbits next of kin from having World War II family members who were KIA and buried overseas from being reintered in the US? I can't imagine that to be the case. I do suspect that it would be on the family's dime; maybe this law changes that.

Seriously, though, the sentiments behind this legislation are silly. World War II was fought for some pretty serious principals. There is now a deadly serious debate about what those principals were and how they apply. The sacrifice of those who lie in France is a suitable witness to the certainty of America's commitment to support its principals.

The view represented most extremely by the French government is that the overarching principal of World War II was that no one could ever be first to invade. The extent to which the French position is candid, rather than an attempt to frustrate Bush and preserve French power, is up for debate, but we do have to assign importance to the overt French argument, even if we question the motives.

The view represented by President Bush is that the overarching principal of World War II was that world order must be established, and, once established, maintained, and that the consequences of failure to deal with disordering and undemocratic regimes will be severe.

This thing is going to work itself out, and, I think, will actually yield a positive result, pushing France, and everywhere else, to the right end. After all, the "left wing" view, that war is acceptable as a response to invasion of another country, is a view that was a contentious, right wing view in 1990 and 1991 (remember the protests against Persian Gulf War I?), and was even more contentious in Viet Nam (when we were assisting South Viet Nam to defend against an invasian by the north supported by the Chinese).

[davisdoug]

I spent a few holidays in France when my family lived in England. France has nothing to offer for me. I have been confronted by arrogance with no provication. Italy, now there is a wonderful country. I had more fun living in China in 1984 than my visits to France.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

I've been to France and the best thing about that country was the restaurants and every decent one I went to was ITALIAN!

So they can make deserts with 5 times the required amount of sugar. Big fat deal.

What have they done for freedom and peace in the last 100 years? I'll tell you what. Jack and Sh!+, that's what.

[Illbay]

Yeah, this is gettin' to be a bit much.

In fact, I think the presence of those graves is a bigger rebuke to the French.

[davisdoug]

I am just in a generally foul mood with all of this "business". It is time for America to stand up and strike down those who bash us. Hardworking Americans make up a huge majority of humanitarian efforts worldwide. France can put up or shut up.

[Jolly Rodgers]

"...and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."

Which they graciously provided and care for with deep respect. So, where do we get off making demands and threatening them over the dead bodies of WWII veterans? It's a disgrace. A downright despicable little tantrum that people are throwing. France is a sovereign and independent nation. It isn't a puppet on strings like Afghanistan. We've no business dictating their vote in the UN. And, frankly, the childish tantrums being displayed here are a pretty good indicator that people know how wrong they truly are.

[Jolly Rodgers]

I am just in a generally foul mood with all of this "business". It is time for America to stand up and strike down those who bash us.

I don't understand what you mean by "business." It's almost as if people are trying to imply that by refusing to sanction an attack on Iraq is synonymous with disrespecting the dead from the September 11th attacks.

[Husker24]

I wish France would just put its money where its mouth is for once and send up some French fighters in Iraqs defence.

[goodnesswins]

In actuality, they probably will be helping with Iraq's defence....with all the military stuff they sold them (when they were not supposed to be selling them to Iraq). (Or am I mistaken? The last 3 weeks of news is beginning to be a blur.)

[veronica]

Some things are more important than runny cheese and "fine wine." It would be one thing if ChIRAQ were just taking a moral stand having to do with the French point of view, but he's trying to create a legacy from being the "anti-America" guy, and his meddling is hurting the US and potentially, our troops. I'll skip France and check Spain out the next time I travel. I understand they actually bathe in Spain...;)

[davisdoug]

Well mabye it is. In addition, I feel France is involved in dirty dealing for economic reasons. Living in California offers a great look into how silly France is as a country. 2x the population, same socialist economy and a smaller GDP. Just makes me laugh.

[Black Agnes]

Forget what? If the French had had a backbone in the 1930's there wouldn't BE thousands of dead Americans buried in France. That there are dead Americans in France is the fault of....FRANCE!

[davisdoug]

Nope as Patton said, "I'd rather have a divisions of Germans in front of me than the French behind me." or something to that effect.

[baseballmom]

Thanks for your post. Ditto to just about everything that author wrote.

That said, I'm as annoyed as anyone at the behavior of Chirac. But removing our dead from France is a horrible idea.

To answer someone's question about whether they can be disinterred - my husbands uncle (82nd Airborne) died in France and was buried there, but after the war, his mother had the option of bringing him home, and that's what she did - she wanted her boy home. I don't know what the protocol is today.