THE CASE FOR THE FRENCH
By Ted Rall
Op/Ed
Thu Feb 27, 2003 7:08 PM ET
story.news.yahoo.com
America As Its Own Worst Enemy
LOS ANGELES--Who are we to be bashing the French?
The trouble began when President Jacques Chirac openly expressed the private beliefs of virtually every other world leader--that George W. Bush's desire to start an unprovoked war with Iraq is both crazy and immoral. It has quickly disintegrated into a ferocious display of American nativism that would be hilarious if its gleeful idiocy wasn't so frightening.
"Axis of Weasel," howls the New York Post in reaction to France and Germany's U.N. stance. A North Carolina restaurateur replaces French fries with "freedom fries." In West Palm Beach, a bar owner dumps his stock of French wine in the street, vowing to replace it with vintages from nations that support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Well, there's always Bulgaria.) Also in Palm Beach, a county official is working to boycott French businesses from government contracts: "France's attitude toward the United States is deplorable," says commissioner Burt Aaronson. "It's quite possible that if we didn't send our troops there, the French people would all be speaking German."
Allied troops liberated the French in 1944. The least France could do, the French bashers argue, is show a little gratitude. They think that France should stand by--or better yet help out--when U.S. troops go to invade/liberate/whatever other countries. Sovereignty and self-determination are fine as mere words. But it just ain't right for a country we rescued from Nazi occupation to disagree with our policy 50 years later and threaten us with a U.N. veto.
To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn't even exist--it would still be a British colony.
Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis' forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads.
No two countries were closer during the 19th century. Americans named streets after the Marquis de la Fayette, Louis' liaison with the founding fathers. During the Civil War, France bankrolled the Union to neutralize British financing for the Confederacy. How many Americans remember that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from French schoolchildren?
Despite that long friendship, the French--along with Asians and overweight folks--remain one of the few groups Americans still feel free to openly insult. A recent Gallup poll shows that 20 percent fewer Americans view France favorably because of its unwillingness to go along with Bush's war on Iraq. Support for Germany, perpetrators of Nazism and the Holocaust (and which also opposes war), holds steady at 71 percent.
Some of the contempt dates to France's quick defeat in the blitzkrieg of May-June 1940. "Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?" joked Roy Blunt, a Republican who evidently represents the unfortunate voters of Missouri. "It's not known; it's never been tried."
Perhaps Congressman Blunt should visit the graves of the Frenchmen who lost their lives for their country during World War I (the first two-thirds of which, by the way, the U.S. sat out). One of them, my great-grandfather Jean-Marie Le Corre, died in the muddy trenches of eastern France in 1915. His death plunged his family, never comfortable to begin with, into abject poverty. His name is engraved on a memorial near a small church in Brittany. They say that he was a handsome guy, popular with the ladies and always good for a joke. Because of him and 1.4 million other young men who sacrificed their lives for their country, Paris didn't fall.
France lost a staggering four percent of its population during the Great War. (Imagine a war that killed 11 million Americans today.) Twenty years later, in 1939, the French army still suffered from a massive manpower shortage. Demographics, lousy planning and equipment shortages--the Great Depression had also hit France--cost 100,000 French soldiers their lives during six awful weeks in 1940.
They failed to save Paris, but they died defending it.
The Bush Doctrine advocates invading weak states, imposing "regime change" and building an American empire composed of colonies whose dark-skinned races can be exploited for cheap labor. Napoleon Bonaparte, who terrorized Europe, had similar ideas. He easily outclasses our AWOL-from-the-Texas-Air-National-Guard Resident in the pure bellicosity department, but would we really choose Bonaparte over Chirac?
French-bashing is a nasty symptom of an underlying American predilection for anti-intellectualism: a society whose most popular TV show features smoky chatter between poets and novelists naturally threatens the land of football and Pabst.
The fact is, France is a good friend and ally trying to make us see reason, and it doesn't deserve to be treated this shabbily. The United States, as led by Bush and his goons, is like a belligerent, out-of-control drunk trying to pick a fight and demanding the car keys at the same time. The French want to drive us home before we cause any more trouble, so we lash out at them, calling them rude names and impugning their loyalty. Sure, we'll be ashamed of our behavior in the morning, after the madness wears off. But will we have any friends left?
(Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan (news - web sites)," an analysis of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and the motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.) |
