Matt Welch on the French

I forgot to blog about this when I read it (I took the weekend off), but also via Yglesias is this Matt Welch article, which is a must read. However, it contains one paragraph that I object to:

For all its pretensions, obstructionism and internal problems, France remains one of the leading democracies in the world. The notion that such a country should be “punished” over an honest disagreement in foreign policy is paternalistic, petty and likely to encourage the very behaviour it aims to rebuke.

No one is suggesting ‘punishing’ the French merely because they are obnoxious and obstructionist, have better wine (and whine), are pretentious, or even because they look down on Americans. What we are suggesting is that they should be made to deal with the sort of vile behavior regarding the corrupt and evil Hussein regime- information that is coming to light every day (via BOTW):

British journalists combing through documents in Iraq’s foreign ministry are unearthing substantial evidence of Paris’s perfidy. “France gave Saddam Hussein’s regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials,” reports London’s Sunday Times. “The information, said in the files to have come partly from ‘friends of Iraq’ at the French foreign ministry, kept Saddam abreast of every development in American planning and may have helped him to prepare for war.” Maybe there was something to that joke about the French teaching the Iraqis to surrender.

One of the documents includes “an account of a meeting between Hubert Vedrine, the former Socialist foreign minister of France, and [Colin Powell].” Another states: “According to French information, a discussion about Iraq is going on in Washington between Colin Powell and the Zionist Wolfowitz. Powell was against a military attack on Iraq whereas Wolfowitz was in favor of a strong military operation against Iraq.”

There is so much more, but I am too lazy to catalog it. Besides, even put together in one big portfolio, the anti-war left will still not see it as a problem- it is just a reaction to the unilateralist cowboy Bush. In other words, why waste my time- those of you without blinders on know what the French have done and are doing. Remember- for the French, it’s all about the oil.