It has been a banner week for the French. First there was this:
The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents.
The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide as much evidence of that collaboration as possible.
Then there was this:
SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.
Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France – having been granted oil contracts – would veto any American plans for war. . . .
Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions – which stopped him acquiring weapons – were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.
To keep America at bay, he focusing on Russia, France and China – three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.
Finally, the Coup de Grace, to borrow a phrase:
French President Jacques Chirac is calling on the European Union to lift a long-standing arms embargo against China.
“France supports lifting the embargo,” Chirac said in an interview with China’s official news agency, Xinhua, adding it no longer reflected present day realities.
Today, European countries are divided over lifting the embargo, with Sweden and the Netherlands opposed to doing so. The United States is also against it.
Chirac noted “stong reservations” on the part of Washington, but said Paris would push for a swift lifting of the embargo. His remarks were posted on the French presidency’s Web site, and came ahead of Chirac’s trip to China on Friday.
Our allies the French. These are the people who John Kerry thinks we should work with. Instructive.
bg
I love this. Kevin Drum writes about the bad week Bush had and you write about the bad week France had.
I wish I had an analysis to make, but so far just a couple of observations. Maybe when I do come up with an analysis it will be about relevance.
Terry
I wouldn’t try to hard to “come up” with that analysis, “bq.” You don’t wnat to overstretch those already limited analytical skills to the point that they might actually snap, and leave you unable to find your way home.
S.W. Anderson
“the extent to which French officials collaborated ”
Would those be Vichy and carefully selected other French officials of the Nazi occupation? Duh.
Indeed there were collaborators, and many of them found life harsh and their countrymen unforgiving after the liberation.
In your rush to condemn the French, you cavalierly write off the many who resisted in ways large and small throughout the Nazi occupation. And you’re apparently ignorant of several thousand who fought gallantly as the Nazis were departing, quite a few of whom lost their lives.
If you have a beef with Chirac and his government, go for it. If your a Francophobe, just say so. But spare us the smarmy revisionist history.
My God, how the level of discourse has degenerated into mindless nonsense.
SDN
France getting paid off by Saddam is a little too recent for history, SW.
Mikey
Of course France wants to end the arms embargo against China. With Saddam gone they need a new market. Why do you thaink the French held naval maneuvers with the Chinese? I mean, besides to piss off the Americans. It was to demonstrate French naval technology to a China that is interested in a blue-water fleet. For example, the Charles DeGaulle may be a cruddy carrier, but it is an aircraft carrier, and the Chinese don’t strike me as being overly concerned about reactor levels if they think they can provide for the naval domination of the Taiwan Strait.
Harlan Pepper
The French are evil, pure and simple. It figures they’d have their greasy tongues all up in Saddam’s canchered colon.
Terry
S.W.A.appears to have worked himself into quite a little snit over John’s rather mild criticisms of the dastardly French. S.W.A. should get a copy of the just published book, “Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France,” by John Miller. The book traces the French perfidy from the American Revolution up to most recent times.
As Churchill once observed about the French habit of lining their boulevards with tall trees: “The French know that the Germans prefer to march in the shade.”
Mikey
S.W.A.:
Please reflect on the history of Admiral Darlan. A man who could have led the French fleet into a British or American harbor and preserved it as a fighting force and as a unifying force for a free France. He didn’t. He collaborated purely for personal ambition.
Geoff Matthews
I agree with Mikey. Saddam was a big customer for the defence industry of France. They are one of the biggest competitors of U.S. defense contractors, and after Gulf War I, lost out in a slew of contracts in the middle east. Given the route that France has taken, as a counter-weight to American dominance, and the fact that France is about a fifth the population of the U.S. (and even smaller in regards to wealth), they need exports to support the R&D necessary for a competative defense industry. As well, more exports means more jobs, means a better economy, means getting re-elected. They are being awfully short-sighted in this regards. The only difference here is that China is not the expantionist force that radical Islam is. Would China go to war to take Taiwan? Possibly. To take Japan? Nepal? Bangladesh? For these last 3, I would say no.
bg
God I love you Terry. Such a jerk. Off.
bg
Oh, sorry – that should be “Terry.”
Terry
As his loving French associates would probably put it: “bq”…un con/une canasse
S.W. Anderson
Let’s not try to put me into the position of saying every French man or woman who ever lived was or is virtuous. That’s not at all what I wrote.
I just don’t like the trend but mindless French bashing so popular in some quarters, especially because it lumps an entire people together as being anti-American and otherwise awful.
S.W. Anderson
Mikey, please reflect on the proliferation on Nazi bunds here in the U.S. prior to our formal entry into WWII. Think that was that the last of that? Well, then reflect on George Lincoln Rockwell and more recently the Aryan Nations lowlifes.
It’s usually, though not absolutely always, a mistake to brand an entire people as being of one mind or attitude. That’s my point.
I hope and pray people the world over don’t take us all to be like Bush and on the same page with him about everything. Likewise, I see no sense in believing Chirac speaks the mind of all the French or even speaks for them all.
SDN
Except, of course, that they elected Chirac, just as we elected Bush. And of course, SW makes the usual “mistake” (deliberate distortion) of labelling the National SOCIALIST party as “right-wing conservative”
Kimmitt
…because we all know that Nazis never engaged in any kind of misleading activities, so their party name must be totally accurate.
wild bird
Just look and what a bunch of woosies the french have become i mean they went and elected a socialist FRANCIS METERAN a few years ago now that have that idiot CHIRAQ leading this country then when BRIDGET BARDOU chrititsizes the gays and molelums she gets finned i mean france has become a socialist country and all those french underground who fought and died against the nazis are spinning in their graves
steel buildings
i’m looking for http://steelbuildings.angelcities.com
mp3
:-)