Re: Pierre Laval is perhaps a good model for Chirac to remember, if things do not end well for the west in the current war against terrorism.
Pardon me but you're way off the beam with your Laval/WWII analogy... The Algerian War is the right historical precedent to conjure up in order to better grasp our present predicament. When France was confronted with pied-noir terrorism from 1960 onwards, General De Gaulle (then-head of state) and French media didn't fool French public opinion by concealing the true identity of the terrorists: everybody knew that France was threatened by Algerian/FLN terrorism in Algeria and by French/OAS terrorism in metropolitan France. French authorities didn't cook up a "bin-laden whopper".... French even demonstrated against OAS terrorist outrages (like the assassination of the mayor of Evian). Moreover, the clandestine leadership of OAS was no secret: General Raoul Salan (aka Soleil [Sun]), former military chief of Algeria, Pierre Lagaillarde, Jean-Jacques Susini, Roger Degueldre, General Edmond Jouhaud, Dr Perez, Jo Ortiz, etc.
At one point, France was on the brink of civil war as half the country earnestly wanted Algeria to remain French --hence the coup attempt and several assassination plots against De Gaulle... Make no mistake: America is currently going through a similar crisis --Israel is to America what Algeria was to France in 1961. For that matter, former US President George H. Bush --Bush père-- intimated it. Bush Sr publicly claimed that his son, G.W. Bush, faced the same challenge as President Abraham Lincoln... Now, that's intriguing, isn't it? Of all former US presidents, Bush Sr picked Lincoln --why didn't he compare his son with FDR? It would have made more sense, after all, since Saddam is routinely compared with Hitler... But, although both FDR and GW. Bush had to wage a world war, FDR never faced the specter of Civil War --George W. Bush does.(*) That's why his father likened him to Lincoln: both Bush and Lincoln were confronted to the ominous prospect of an American civil war --like the French over Algeria in the 1960s.
Gus
(*) Elder Bush praises son during D.M. stop
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Register Staff Writer
10/21/2002
Former President George Bush said Sunday in Des Moines that his son faces the toughest times in the White House since the Civil War.
"The fact is he is wrestling with problems probably as tough as any president has wrestled with since Lincoln," Bush said in headlining a fund-raising dinner for U.S. Rep. Greg Ganske's bid for the U.S. Senate.
"Roosevelt, of course, faced World War II, but there we knew who the enemy was," the senior Bush told 800 Republicans at the Polk County Convention Complex. "The enemies we face in this country today are very, very different. They are shadowy - cowardly, you might say. They can strike anywhere."
Bush said nothing in his 15-minute address about his son's effort to oust President Saddam Hussein in Iraq - a nation whose army U.S. and allied forces drove from Kuwait in 1991, when the elder Bush was president.
Bush also said nothing about the nation's wobbly economy, the very issue blamed for his re-election defeat in 1992.
He said he is proud of his son but doesn't judge him on how he handles issues.
"People ask what it's like to have your son be president of the United States of America, and it's very hard for me to describe that," he said. "I think more about the love of a father for his son than I do about the earned-income tax credit or all the things we used to wrestle with when I was president of the United States."
Bush said he believes his son has what it takes to handle the crises that the current administration has been dealt.
"I think our president has the inner strength, the courage, the faith to carry him through this ordeal we are now facing as a nation," the former president said.
[...]
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