VIVE LA FRANCE!
The spirit of Lafayette lives on in the refusal of France to go along with
the War Party
Two-hundred and twenty-five years ago, the French were instrumental in
aiding the American revolutionaries in their fight against the British
Empire. Today, they are once again playing a key role in aiding American
fighters against another sort of Empire � this time, one based in
Washington, D.C.
As Dominique de Villepin, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, put it:
"The idea of regime change [in Iraq] introduces into international
relations an instability whose consequences we have to assess. Whose job
would it be to decide that a regime is good or that a regime is bad? What
would be the first factor denoting an unacceptable regime? What would stop
a regime being acceptable?"
As America crosses the Rubicon, and abandons the legacy of the Founders for
a new age of Caesarism, the French, threatening to use their UN veto, stand
in the way � and the fury of the War Party has been unleashed, to often
comical effect. Do you want to see hate? Take a gander at the cover of the
[UK] Sun, a newspaper, nasty even by Murdochian standards, of the sort that
gives tabloids a bad name. Chirac is depicted as a worm, and the editorial
screeches at him:
"You were only too happy to welcome the Americans when France was crushed
under Hitler's boot. But today you look down on the American people and
their president, and you forget how many American and British soldiers,
sailors and pilots gave their lives... for the freedom of this country."
But if the French are obligated to kowtow to the Americans � and Tony Blair
� on account of a debt that can never be repaid, then what about the debt
Americans owe to the French, whose aid during the Revolution secured our
victory over King George III? The Brits don't want to bring that up, of
course, but without the French we'd all be singing "God save the Queen" and
suffering the ill effects of London's latest socialist scheme.
You have to hand it to the War Party, however: their hate campaign is not
so much coordinated as it is choreographed, with radio "shock jocks" and
the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal dancing to the same tune of
"Hate the Frogs." In Texas, a radio screamer stages a public bulldozing of
French products, and, in Congress, the cry is heard to impose tariff
penalties on our recalcitrant allies. Why, those effete French
know-it-alls, they yelp, how dare they mock our rootin' tootin' cow-Boy
Emperor.
John Fund, writing in the War Street Journal, approvingly notes that some
dive in North Carolina has stopped selling french fries: "We now serve
freedom fries," announces owner Neal Rowland, who also confides that
"The switch from french fries to freedom fries came to mind after a
conversation about World War I days when anti-German sentiment prompted
Americans to rename familiar German foods like sauerkraut and frankfurter
to liberty cabbage and hot dog."
One wonders if that conversation touched on some of the other charming
effects of World War I on the country: the lynchings of German-Americans,
the closing down of German language and socialist newspapers, and the
jailing of antiwar activists for "sedition." The teaching of German in the
schools was banned, and the works of Goethe were burnt in the public
square, while Wagner was banished from the opera houses. Yes, it was a
great time for "freedom" in America � and if you don't believe that, then
you'd best shut up and eat your greasy "freedom fries."
Speaking of shutting up, that's exactly what the heroic Jacques Chirac told
the so-called "Vilnius Group" of "ex"-Communist East European nations, when
they issued their pro-war communique. "They missed a good opportunity to
keep quiet," he quipped, and openly questioned whether the Easterners are
ready to join the community of Europe. To Fund this is "blackmail" � but
why should the French and the Germans absorb economic refugees and debt
from the East while the formerly Communist ministers of what used to be the
Warsaw Pact cozy up to the new hegemon on the block?
The "Vilnius Group," largely made up of "reformed" Communist governments �
notably Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria (where the Bulgarian
Socialist Party rules) � ought to be renamed the Vassalage Group. Old
habits are hard to break. Including the habit of not representing the
wishes of their own people, who reject the idea of making war on Iraq even
more emphatically than the West European "street."
What's really a laugh, however, is Fund's description of the French
position as "bullying unilateralism." Welcome to the Orwellian world of the
War Party, where threatening to not subsidize the Vassalage Group is the
act of a bully, but claiming the right to preemptively attack any nation on
earth is not. By the same inverted logic, a genuine aggression � one that
will claim many thousands of lives in the most horrible way � is an act of
"liberation." As long as it's committed by the U.S., and not, say, Saddam
Hussein.
Fund cites the outraged cries of the various Vassals, including Wlodzimierz
Cimoszewicz, the Polish Foreign Minister: "In the European family, there
are no mummies, no daddies and no kids. It is a family of equals. In
particular, there are no kids who are not mature enough to be partners with
other members of the family."
While it is only natural for an "ex"-Commie apparatchik to mouth the
rhetoric of egalitarianism, in this case it seems the minister is a case in
point as to why Polish "democracy" still has a lot of growing up to do. It
was Cimoszewicz, after all, who barely survived a no confidence vote in the
Polish parliament for unilaterally surrendering Polish sovereignty at the
EU bargaining table � completely contrary to the instructions of the Poles'
elected representatives.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Charles Paul Freund of Reason magazine
both cite a Romanian newspaper's angry retort to the French: "Communism
wrung our neck while the honorable democracies issued communiqu�s." Yes,
and the same Commies are still wringing their necks � and ours, too. If
these former fans of the Red Army are so eager to see Iraq "liberated,"
then let them send their own armies in to do the job, perhaps in
conjunction with the Israelis. Let's put the cheerleaders on the field and
see how they score!
Jonah Goldberg calls the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," � a
trope borrowed from "The Simpsons" � and informs us he considers this "a
funny ethnic slur." For someone who considers the term "neocon" or
neoconservative to be a libel right out of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, his "bandying about" � as he puts it � of ethnic slurs is awfully
bold. But Goldberg, when he gets over the obligatory joking, has a serious
point to make. He claims that the European model of slow, peaceful
transition to the international rule of law is only a confession of weakness:
"Their own military capacities are woefully deficient, and so they champion
peace at any cost in part because they're loath to admit they couldn't
fight if they wanted to."
That France does not have either the capacity or the will to invade,
conquer, and occupy Iraq means � what? That they would if they could but
they can't? This is about the level of analysis one might expect of someone
who gets his foreign policy views from a cartoon show. Cartoonish is the
best way to describe the neocon view of history, as expressed by Goldberg:
"It's a classic free-ride [sic] problem. The Europeans have benefited from
the global stability provided by the United States. But the Europeans � or
at least the French and Germans � now take that stability for granted and
berate the United States for doing what it sees as necessary to ensure
continued peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, the idea that violence never
solves anything is a fraud. Violence ended the Holocaust; in the U.S., it
freed the slaves. And, in 1998, American-led violence ended slaughter in
the Balkans while European paper shufflers stood by paralyzed."
The "stability" provided by the U.S. for half a century was the stability
of perpetual terror � the terror of Mutual Assured Destruction, and several
bloody wars fought on the Asian landmass (Vietnam, Korea, and the battle
for China), none of which we won. Some "stability"! In the post-cold war,
post-9/11 world, it is the U.S., and not the French or the Germans, who
want to plunge the entire Middle East into chaos and spark World War IV.
The idea that "violence ended the Holocaust" seems oddly disingenuous:
after all, with large scale moral catastrophes of this sort, the point to
note is that World War II did not and could not prevent the Holocaust.
MORE ON...
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j022103.html
