Why Are The French So Anti????

Thanks to BlueHorseShoe for posting this NYT piece on another thread:

Vote France Off the Island
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


Sometimes I wish that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council could be chosen like the starting five for the N.B.A. All-Star team — with a vote by the fans. If so, I would certainly vote France off the Council and replace it with India. Then the perm-five would be Russia, China, India, Britain and the United States. That's more like it.

Why replace France with India? Because India is the world's biggest democracy, the world's largest Hindu nation and the world's second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

Throughout the cold war, France sought to differentiate itself by playing between the Soviet and American blocs. France could get away with this entertaining little game for two reasons: first, it knew that Uncle Sam, in the end, would always protect it from the Soviet bear. So France could tweak America's beak, do business with Iraq and enjoy America's military protection. And second, the cold war world was, we now realize, a much more stable place. Although it was divided between two nuclear superpowers, both were status quo powers in their own way. They represented different orders, but they both represented order.

That is now gone. Today's world is also divided, but it is increasingly divided between the "World of Order" — anchored by America, the E.U., Russia, India, China and Japan, and joined by scores of smaller nations — and the "World of Disorder." The World of Disorder is dominated by rogue regimes like Iraq's and North Korea's and the various global terrorist networks that feed off the troubled string of states stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia.

How the World of Order deals with the World of Disorder is the key question of the day. There is room for disagreement. There is no room for a lack of seriousness. And the whole French game on Iraq, spearheaded by its diplomacy-lite foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, lacks seriousness. Most of France's energy is devoted to holding America back from acting alone, not holding Saddam Hussein's feet to the fire to comply with the U.N.

The French position is utterly incoherent. The inspections have not worked yet, says Mr. de Villepin, because Saddam has not fully cooperated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know. The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.

Mr. de Villepin also suggested that Saddam's government pass "legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction." (I am not making this up.) That proposal alone is a reminder of why, if America didn't exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian.

I also want to avoid a war — but not by letting Saddam off the hook, which would undermine the U.N., set back the winds of change in the Arab world and strengthen the World of Disorder. The only possible way to coerce Saddam into compliance — without a war — is for the whole world to line up shoulder-to-shoulder against his misbehavior, without any gaps. But France, as they say in kindergarten, does not play well with others. If you line up against Saddam you're just one of the gang. If you hold out against America, you're unique. "France, it seems, would rather be more important in a world of chaos than less important in a world of order," says the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World."

If France were serious about its own position, it would join the U.S. in setting a deadline for Iraq to comply, and backing it up with a second U.N. resolution authorizing force if Iraq does not. And France would send its prime minister to Iraq to tell that directly to Saddam. Oh, France's prime minister was on the road last week. He was out drumming up business for French companies in the world's biggest emerging computer society. He was in India.

 

http://www.idleworm.com/nws/2002/11/iraq2.shtml

Here maybe a game can explain the situation for you.

Friedman has written a good book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" but he is one of the most liberal people I know and his ideas are sometimes completely ridiculous and unrealistic.

In the end I am sure Europe will save the US from another 9/11 and that's it. They're not playing the emotional card (and they are standing their ground, good for 'em)

 

Well, one day I would like to travel to France. I hear you can get some good deals over there. A good friend of mine says.."you can buy the best used guns in France. They've never been fired and been dropped only once."

 

France germany and russia are total lightweights....the next big problem in the world will come from the various fractions of the old soviet empire having wars amongst themselves and of course, trying to secure the weapons form the old soviet....how can a country like France and Russia be considered important when they have a smaller gdp then the state of california? Germany and france are pathetic cowards who have no influence or clout and once the bombs start rolling it';s going to be great watching them try to get in on a the spoils of war!

 

3 Nations Call for Alternative to Iraq War http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/international/europe/10cnd-fran.html

 

That a liberal wrote such a terrific piece gives me hope.

 

France, Germany, Russia, China, all will be losers.

And I still think THEY CAN'T Changer their tune.

Because everyone of them have helped SADDAM build WMD.

They're gona be found out, when we open the bunkers up and see the Made in France, Made in Germany, etc, etc.

 

agin1415: They're gona be found out, when we open the bunkers up and see the Made in France, Made in Germany, etc, etc.

- chocolate made in Switzerland and Anthrax made in USA