Archives for 2003

Again, Steyn nails it:

There are many idiotic incoherent leaders in the world, several of them francophone (hint), but Jacques Chirac is not among them. Say what you like about M. le President — call him irresponsible, call him unreliable, throw in shifty, devious, corrupt, and almost absurdly conceited. But he’s not stupid. The issue for the French is very straightforward: What’s in it for us?

The answer to that may vary, but frame the question as a negative and the reply is always the same: What’s not in it for France is that America should emerge with its present pre-eminence even more enhanced. France is in the business of la gloire de la republique, and right now the main obstacle to that is the post-Soviet unipolar geopolitical settlement. They are not temperamentally suited to being anyone’s sidekick: If Tony Blair wants to play Athens to America’s Rome, or Tonto to Bush’s Lone Ranger, or Sandy the dog to Dubya’s Little Orphan Annie, fine. The French aren’t interested in any awards for Best Supporting Actor.

This is not about Saddam. This is not about WMD. This is not about a threat. This is simply about the French exerting what little control they have left. To them, at least.

How do you say spoiled brat in French? Steyn does defend the French, sort of:

The trouble is the cheese-eating surrender paradigm is insufficient. If you want to go monkey fishing, there’s certainly no shortage of Eurowimps: Since the unpleasantness of 60 years ago, the Germans have become as aggressively and obnoxiously pacifist as they once were militarist; they loathe their own armed forces, never mind anybody else’s. But France is one of only five official nuclear powers in the world, a status it takes seriously. When Greenpeace were interfering with French nuclear tests in the Pacific, they blew up the damn boat. Even I, a right-wing detester of the eco-loonies, would balk at killing the buggers.

The French Say: What Do We Get out of This?Post + Comments

Yes, it is a provocative title, and I hope to show you why it is justified. I am really starting to think that the French are not merely stupid or willfully blind, but actual accomplices of Saddam Hussein. Let’s start with several basic premises:

1.) Saddam Hussein is evil, and Iraq must not be allowed to possess or develop WMD.

2.) Iraq lost the Gulf War, and some of the conditions for surrender included weapons inspections.

3.) There are successful models for weapons inspections and appropriate disarmament.

4.) UN Resolution 1441 was the absolute last chance, and it was up to Saddam to prove he is disarming, and not for us to search and find hidden WMD.

If you accept those premises, you are a resident of the Planet Earth. If not, the Democratic Underground can be found here. Today, Colin Powell has outlined, in excrutiating detail, how Iraq is not complying with the current resolution regarding disarmament.

The French response? Here it is, in all its glory:

Given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to operate on Iraq’s part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspection. This is today what France is proposing.”

“Let us double, let us triple the number of inspectors. Let us open more regional offices. Let us go further than this. Could we not, for example, put up, set up, a specialized body to keep under surveillance the sites and areas that have already been inspected? Let us very significantly reinforce the capacity for monitoring and collecting information in Iraq,” he said.

Get that? The problem is not that Hussein is not complying. We just don’t have enough inspectors, and they are not coordinated enough. You guys remember how Hans Blix stated the other day that the main problem was that Iraq was handing over the contraband materials too quickly for the inspectors to verify, right?

The French simply do not get it. If Saddam is complying, why do we need to set up surveillance for sights that have already been inspected? If we can trust him and the current inspections, why keep watching those sights? Why ramp up the inspections?

Simple answer- because he is not complying, he still possesses the weapons, and he is still attempting to develop new ones.

Are the French really this stupid?

*** Update ***

Mark Steyn gets it:

A few days ago, I said this thing was getting like Monica: by the time you’re in Year Two, no smoking gun is ever quite smoking enough. It’s perfectly obvious from Colin Powell’s presentation what’s going on. Ten minutes before the flatfoots show up, the bootleg liquor is whisked away, replaced by teacups and the gaming table gets dropped through the trapdoor and replaced by an ornamental fountain. If you think Saddam Hussein is a lovable rogue

If Colin Powell’s presentation did not convince the French, the Germans, and the Democrats running for President, can we change the name from “Axis of Weasel” to “Axis of Stupid Ignoramuses Who Are Willfully Blind and Deserve to be Ignored and Relegated to the Foreign Affairs Equivalent of Latrine Duty?”