France's President Jacques Chirac vowed yesterday to veto any further U.N. resolution that would lead to the liberation of Iraq. "Our position is no matter what the circumstances, France will vote 'no,' " the Associated Press quotes Chirac as saying. Asked if this would hurt relations between Paris and Washington, the AP adds, "Chirac said 'I am totally convinced of the opposite.' Chirac said President Bush meant it when he declared a few days ago that 'France and Germany are our friends, and will continue to be.' "
Well, President Bush was right to show restraint; the time is not yet ripe to make public any official reconsideration of America's frayed "alliance" with Paris. But Chirac sorely underestimates the rage against his country on the American "street." Talk of weasels and worms doesn't quite capture it; some Americans are thinking very dark thoughts indeed about our erstwhile allies. In National Review Online, Michael Ledeen spins a conspiracy theory:
Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren't thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there's evidence of such a design. . . .
No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.
And here's blogger Steven Den Beste, pondering what might go wrong when the shooting starts in Iraq:
I'm deeply concerned about the French. . . . Since then their resistance has made less and less sense, and what I worry about now is that if they think the stakes are so high, no matter why that might be, that they're clearly willing to sacrifice the UN and NATO and even the process of formation of the EU itself just to oppose the war despite having only negligible chance of actually preventing it, then maybe they might be willing to go to even greater lengths against us, extending beyond the diplomatic. De facto they're allied with Saddam even if there's no publicly-declared treaty or agreement; so will they be willing to intervene militarily? Will they smuggle some sort of weaponry in? Or ship it in openly?
If 20 cargo jets take off from French territory and head towards the middle east, what will we do? If they ignore all attempts to prevent them from reaching Iraq, would we be willing to actually shoot one or more of them down?
Just how far are they willing to take their opposition to us? They've reached the point where it seems as if they're willing to make any sacrifice. Do they see the stakes as being high enough so that they might actually threaten to nuke us?
This is getting a little crazy, and both authors acknowledge that their speculation is, as Ledeen puts it, "fanciful." Besides, what the French are actually doing--abusing NATO and the U.N. in an effort to prop up one of the world's worst dictators--is despicable enough.
That such far-fetched thoughts are even thinkable among reasonable men like Ledeen and Den Beste shows how far Chirac has gone in alienating America. France, of course, is much worse in this regard; last year Chirac's countrymen made a bestseller out of a book called "L'Effroyable Imposture," which claimed that Sept. 11 was a U.S. government conspiracy.
It's not surprising that French paranoia about America would surface before the opposite. America is the most important country in the world, so it's no wonder people in a second-rate power like France are consumed with envy. In contrast, under normal circumstances the only Americans who have occasion to think about France are aficionados of wine and soft cheeses. France now has succeeded in getting America's attention. It may wish it hadn't.
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