Mark Steyn: Iraq may be on the edge but France has hit rock bottom abyss

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 08/23/03 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

'The US and British armies have entered the gates of hell," thundered George Galloway last month. "Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body armour."

As usual, George was a little off. The gates of hell are on the périphérique and it's 100 degrees at midnight in the pissoir on the Metro. To date, two US soldiers are believed to have succumbed to the heat in Iraq, whereas over 10,000 people have succumbed to it in France.

That would make George's brutal Iraqi summer about one five-thousandth as lethal as the brutal Gallic summer, which has killed more people than the brutal Afghan winter (now 23 months behind schedule), the brutal Iraqi summer and the searing heat of the Guantanamo torture camps combined and multiplied by a thousand.

Certainly, Iraq has its problems. Jacques Chirac, en vacances just up the road from me in North Hatley, Quebec, took time out of his three-week holiday to issue a statement on events in Baghdad, where 20 people died on Tuesday. But he didn't bother to interrupt his vacation to issue a statement on events in France, where so many people have died, the funeral homes are standing room only and they're having to store bodies in the freezers at the fruit and veg markets.

Now that his old pal and nuclear client has been removed from power, M Chirac is utterly irrelevant to the future of Iraq. But surely France still falls within his jurisdiction, doesn't it?

And where are the Red Cross and Oxfam and Human Rights Watch and all the other noisy humanitarians? If 10,000 Iraqis had died of dysentery on George W Bush's watch, you'd never hear the end of it. A few weeks back, with three fatal cases of cholera, the Humanitarian Lobby was already shrieking that we stood on the edge of a humanitarian catastrophe.

France isn't on the edge, it's in the abyss. When I motored round Iraq a couple of months ago, the hospital wards were well below capacity. Yet in France the entire health system – or that percentage of it not spending August at the beach – is stretched beyond its limits (35 hours a week, 44 weeks a year). Why aren't Médecins Sans Frontières demanding to be allowed in to take over?

There's an old, cynical formula for the weight accorded different disasters on American TV news. It runs something like: one dead American = 10 dead Israelis = 100 dead Russians = 1,000 dead Bangladeshis. But 10,000 French can die, and even the French don't seem to care – or not too much, and not with any great urgency.

Bernard Mazeyrie, managing director of France's largest undertakers, told the New York Times that several of the bereaved were in no hurry to bury their aged loved ones: "Some, he said, informed of the death of relatives, postponed funerals, not to interrupt the August 15 holiday weekend, and left the bodies in the refrigerated hall." Au bord de la mer? Ou au bord de ma mère? Hmm. Tough call.

I don't know what M Chirac heard in the dépanneurs and resto-bars of Quebec this week, but what I heard south of the border was complete amazement at how a nominally First World country could be so insouciant about an entirely avoidable Third World death toll. President Bush and the entire Washington press corps are spending a month in heat equal to the brutal Parisian summer, and he's playing golf in it all day while they stand around watching; in Phoenix tomorrow and Monday, it will be an unremarkable 105. This isn't about the weather.

In Paris this spring, a government official explained to me how Europeans had created a more civilised society than America - socialised healthcare, shorter work weeks, more holidays. We've just seen where that leads: gran'ma turned away from the hospital to die in an airless apartment because junior's sur la plage. M Chirac's somewhat tetchy suggestion that his people should rethink their attitude to the elderly was well taken. But Big Government inevitably diminishes its citizens' capacity to take responsibility, to the point where even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the state should do something about.

Meanwhile, Maggie Pernot wrote the other day to chide me for my continued defence of the Rumsfeld Death Camps at Guantanamo. The prisoners, she complains, are "kept in tiny, chainlink outdoor cages where they were likely to be rained upon". In fact, they have sloping roofs and cool concrete floors, perfect for the climate. If they had solid walls rather than airy wire mesh, they'd be Parisian sweatboxes and everyone would be dead. By contrast, if those thousands of French pensioners had been captured by the Marines and detained by Rummy in Cuba, they'd be alive today.

Mme Pernot writes from St Julien, France. That's right: she's surrounded by an actual humanitarian scandal on all sides but she'd rather obsess about an entirely fictional one. Heat getting to you, Madame? Or just the unusual odour from the flat next door?

[JusPasenThru]

BTTT.

[duckbutt]

Once more, Mark hits the bullseye! Wow! I wish that Fox would have him on as a commentator -- don't know how many Steyn fans there are out there beyond the Freepers -- - this guy is cutting, witty and surgical!

Man oh man, my dear 80 year old democratic mamma is going to get a copy of this....she thinks Clinton walked on water and Bush has done everything wrong since coming to office (illegially, in her mind).

Oh well, if she cuts me out of the inheritance (2 bedroom home in North St. Louis county)then that's that! I'd do whatever I can for my mom, seriously.....but we part on politics......she's a dear, but a die-hard Roosevelt demo.....

[secret garden]

Ping for a good read.

[maica]

Thanks for the data. I have ceased being amazed at how quickly questions on FR get answered. Now It is an expectation!! LOL!

[MightyMouseToSaveThe Day]

Brian, you think the French are lying about that many deaths? They made up those numbers? What about the stories of gymnasiums being used to refrigerate corpses because there werent' enough coffins to go 'round and because vacationing families didn't want to interrupt their vacations to deal with funerals? I'm just asking if you think all that's made up? I'm not challenging you because I wouldn't put it past the French to lie--but that's an enormous lie! They haven't yet blamed it on Bush, but Chirac is getting a fair amount of flak for it, so it would seem that if the lie's intent was to blame the US somehow, it's backfiring, no? Just wondering what you're thinking...

[Brian Allen]

Do you think its hot in England this summer?

Belgium?

Luxemburg?

Germany?

Holland?

Switzerland?

Or just in France?

Did chiraq interupt his canadian holiday the other day to piss and moan about the loss of un lives in Baghdad -- or cancel it to go home to take care of his electorate [Which is suffering more casualties than it took before it surrendered in WW-II] -- and figger out how to draft a surrender to the sun?

While you're figgering all of that, I'll stick with my previous remark.

<]:^)~< ......... B A

[MightyMouseToSaveThe Day]

Brian, what are you talking about? in my original post, i SAID that it's been hot all over and that I didn't believe that only France has suffered so many thousands of deaths when it doesn't happen elsewhere.

My question to you was simply do you think France is LYING about 13,000 deaths just to make Bush look bad? did they make up that number and get lots of other industries (undertakers, nursing homes, apartment complexes, schools, etc) to go along with those manufactured numbers? That's what i was asking--you think it's a giant conspiracy, and that there really haven't been any deaths in France? That, to me, is an even more mind-boggling concept than 13,000 deaths!

[Republican Red]

I am having a hard time believing that 10,000 people have died from the heat. Some one explain that to me, please.

I first heard that thousands died from dehydration. I couldn't figure how in a modern city these people couldn't find a cup of water. I later heard that August is vacation time in France. The whole country shuts down and goes on holiday. However, these slime balls left their elderly and sick to fend for themselves. Many of the deaths are those that needed help from family, neighbors or government.

[Brian Allen]

<< Brian, what are you talking about? >>

Sorry I introduced a little common sense into the tread.

Try to not be too overwraught by your inability to process and/or to handle it.

[xsmommy]

thanks, steyn is so good!

[Michael_S]

... ergo people are dropping dead left and right all over France.

Don't you mean left and more to the left.

[mardler]

I knew my actuarial education would come in handy some day! Let me try to explain. France has about 45m people, give or take a few. Life expectancy is about 75 years. So, on average 1/75th of the population dies every year (for the purists among you, I knnow this isn't exact, but bear with me).

1/75th of 45m is about 600,000 people, or about 50,000 per month.

In the course of a month, to have an additional 10,000 people die isn't that exceptional. Actuaries know that mortality fluctuates with the weather. People have to die sometime - the exceptional hot weather, or cold weather, just pushes people off the edge of the mortality table. Many don't die directly from the hot weather, but from other conditions exacerbated by it.

Let's not forget too that it's all about what you're used to. I lived in Hong Kong for a while, and was astonished that seven people died directly from hypothermia one wintry week when the temperature reached a chilly 45!

[Paul Ross]

BTTT- What more can one say?

[Sarah]

The French in general take more personal care of their elderly than in the States. I'm not here to explain or defend the effects of the heat on the elderly, it was really incapacitating, even frightening, we literally had bottles of water constantly in the freezer and drank over 4 liters a day, and we're young and healthy. We were completely drained and lethargic. I'm sure that if anyone on vacation could imagine the real effects of the heat they would have returned.
I'm just amazed at how many of the French have their elderly mothers (usually mothers...) living at home with them. There is a special stipend for elder care, but there isn't any options like medicaid-funded elder care, let alone affordable private homes, not at all. The vast majority are taking care of their own remarkably well.
Now to gripe about other problems of the French, especially their worthless leaders, I'm right with you there...

[Verginius Rufus]

The Celsius temperature scale makes people complacent. 28 degrees Celsius equals 82 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't bad, but get up to 38 degrees C and the real temperature is 100...a piddling little number like 38 doesn't sound like much but your life could be in danger. If the good Lord had wanted us to use Celsius he wouldn't have given us the Fahrenheit scale.

[diotima]

Ping a ling!

[Miss Marple]

How interesting. What exactly was the temperature in France? Are you telling me that the heat was worse than central Indiana (my home), Texas, or Florida?

Your comment on the elderly seems to me to indicate they have no mechanism for elder care other than the children, whether they like it or not. That does not indicate a national respect and care for the elderly to me, but rather a government policy that depends on the families, regardless of whether or not they are willing or suitable care-givers.

Why didn't the government set up cooling areas and announce their locations to the public? Why didn't their government announce to radio stations located in popular vacation areas that there was a danger and that people should check on their relatives? Why did people on vacation not return home to care for their parents?

[Angel]

Thank you so much mardler. That is the best explanation I've heard. I must admit this whole 10,000 people dying has really been bothering

[Sarah]

I can't tell you the temperature, I know it was in all the papers. I can't even explain how it was so unbearable. I lived many places, years in the middle east... maybe it was the complete lack of respite, NO ONE has air conditioners, as the heat is usually bearable and electricity is more expensive than in the States.
I'll agree with you that there is a general expectation that each will take care of their own, (which generally would make that praise-worthy on FR...) and I've seen so often the extents to which families go to include their elderly in all aspects of their lives, accompanying them shopping, helping them to live on their own as long as possible... and the fact that the French are not as wealthy as Americans means that most of that work is done by family members, not 'help' (legal or not...)
Besides that, I agree. You are right that the government did nothing to take charge after they must have been alerted to the increase rate of deaths.
We also were astonished to hear that the discomfort we were experiencing had actually led to deaths.