Cowardice. France's best ally:
'We are at the start of a hundred-year war'
The French believe the U.S. doesn't know what is at stake in Iraq
By ALAN FREEMAN
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Paris — Jacques Myard struts around his tiny office at France's National Assembly predicting catastrophe if U.S. President George W. Bush and his "Texan" allies go ahead with their plans to launch a military attack on Iraq.
"They are going to get screwed," said Mr. Myard, a small, rotund member of President Jacques Chirac's government and an outspoken opponent of U.S. policy in Iraq.
"They are opening a Pandora's box," he said, predicting that even a short war will inflame passions in the Muslim world and lead to vast regional instability. "We are at the start of a hundred-year war."
Mr. Myard, a onetime diplomat and assembly member since 1993, has become a poster boy for French opposition to the war, expressing the traditional nationalist, right-wing views of General Charles de Gaulle, which Mr. Chirac is successfully espousing.
On Wednesday, he faced off on British television against Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, who accused the French of "breathtaking hypocrisy" for their stand against war. Mr. Myard shot back that Washington was the real expert at hypocrisy, pointing to its support of Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran and the fact that the United States remains the largest consumer of Iraq's oil.
Opposition to a U.S.-led war in Iraq is evident throughout Europe, but in France it has been most clearly and vociferously expressed. The response has been an outpouring of anger across the Atlantic. Understanding the depth of feeling on both sides reveals a lot about both peoples.
Mr. Myard is convinced that Mr. Bush and his advisers are motivated by a "messianic" view of the United State's role in the world as the defender of good and foe of evil. "When you asked George Bush who his preferred philosopher is, he answers 'Jesus Christ.' ... They feel they are part of a real crusade of convictions. For us, this is incomprehensible."
He acknowledged that the French too once believed they had a messianic role of their own, to spread French culture and their ideas of universal human rights to the world. But through long experience, they realized there were limits to the pursuit of power.
"You have to be colonialists to do this," Mr. Myard said. "They don't have the experience, and they'll never get it."
The vitriolic attacks against France by members of the U.S. administration have upset even veteran U.S.-watchers such as François Heisbourg, head of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris think tank.
"I now understand what a Jew feels like when he's called a dirty Yid," said Mr. Heisbourg. "I am called a monkey; I am called a weasel, and I am called a rat. What the hell is going on here?"
Mr. Heisbourg acknowledges that anti-Americanism is never far from the surface in France, but in this case, he insists the French are no different from their fellow Europeans in opposing war. Even in countries such as Britain and Spain, whose governments back Washington, public opinion is overwhelmingly against unilateral military action in Iraq.
"In France, this is practically unanimous among the right, the left and centre," Mr. Heisbourg said. "Deep down and not so deep down, there is no trust and no confidence about what these guys are up to."
Gilles Corman, a political pollster at Sofres, believes the clash is based on the fact that "France and the United States are the only nations in the world who believe that they have a message to deliver to the world." But he adds quickly that the French are no longer under the illusion they have the power to deliver that message.
Mr. Corman denies that the French are anti-American, noting that they love Hollywood movies and fast food as much as anyone. But the Bush administration is viewed as "cowboys who don't know the rest of the world, think all Arabs are the same and that Iraq is the same as Afghanistan."
In a survey Mr. Corman's firm conducted in September, 62 per cent of respondents in France believed the primary goal of Washington's foreign policy was "to impose the will of the United States on the rest of the world." Only 23 per cent thought it was to "maintain peace in the world."
Linda Bernier, an American public-relations consultant who has lived in France for 25 years, believes French views on the Middle East and fears of inflaming passions in France's three-million-strong Muslim community are an essential part of the antiwar feelings.
"Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and antiglobalization, they mix it all up here," said Ms. Bernier, a former journalist.
But all analysts agree on one thing: One source of misunderstanding is the fact that the French, like all Europeans, have underestimated the impact of the Sept. 11, 2002, attack on the American psyche.
"The Europeans have understood the 11th of September as a hypercontinuation of what has happened to Europe for the past 15 years," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the American Centre at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales. "For America, it's an earth-shattering event. Americans felt as if their nation had been raped." |
