France: The Great American Migraine
By Barbara Stock (06/16/04)
America’s problems with France didn’t start with Jacques Chirac. Chirac is just the latest in a line of Frenchmen that has given the United States a long and seemingly unending, migraine headache.
As President Bush sat on the podium with Mr. Chirac--who was looking pompous as only Chirac can--it was obvious by the body language of the president that he would rather have been having a root canal done without novocain than be sitting next to this man, Chirac, who reeks of arrogance and delusions of grandeur and needs to be frisked for the knife he always buries in the back of American presidents. While Bush did what was expected of him, giving the French leader due respect, Chirac seemed to feel no need to return the favor, even publicly.
There was a time, of course, when France was important. That was a long, long time ago and somewhere along the line France got the reputation of being just a tad quick to surrender to enemies. Has France had a great leader since Napoleon?
You might ask: “What about the French Foreign Legion?” Well, it that seems no French are allowed in the French Foreign Legion. Perhaps that’s why it is so feared.
It has been said that we wouldn’t have won the Revolutionary War without help from the French. The war may have lasted a year longer, but would the war have been lost without our “good friends” the French? What were the French after? Did they help us out of the goodness of their hearts or did they just want to poke a stick in the eye of their nemeses, the Brits?
Americans are even insulted by the French in Canada. The French Canadians tried to tear Canada apart and become a separate country, loyal to France and not England. French Canadians want to be independent, but prefer to sing the praises of the great French culture instead acknowledging Canada’s English roots. It must drive French Canadians crazy that the Queen is on Canadian money and still honored after all these years. Canada’s last president from the French providences, Jean Joseph Jacques Chretien, loved France so much that he named his first child, France. Chretien’s loathing of the United States was very apparent every time he spoke. Following Mother France’s socialist course, Chretien also destroyed Canada’s military and ran their economy into the ground paying for social programs. It is unknown if Canada’s military inherited the surrender gene from the French or the strong fighting gene from the English. Perhaps it depends on what part of Canada the soldier hails from.
The world met the great French leader and general, Charles De Gaulle, in the 1940’s. De Gaulle received his promotion to general in the field and when his country collapsed and surrendered to Nazi Germany, De Gaulle fled to England. In France, as in most countries, promotions to that level must be approved by the government, but France’s government had gone the way of the Dodo, so De Gaulle just “forgot” to tell anyone that his high rank was not official. De Gaulle set about becoming the de facto French leader in England by driving Winston Churchill crazy.
Churchill kept De Gaulle busy by giving him control of the 1st Free French division which was made up of whatever flotsam and jetsam the British leader could dig up or have released from prison early. De Gaulle was kept away from any real war plans as the Allied leaders sent him and his band of criminals here and there, usually somewhere in a flank position because anywhere else “General” De Gaulle got in the way of the real soldiers.
De Gaulle drove General Eisenhower to distraction. De Gaulle was never happy that the American general was chosen to be the supreme commander in Europe. De Gaulle, of course, felt that honor should be his. The free world can thank God everyday that De Gaulle was not leading anything. He was consulted out of political respect and the knowledge that he would probably lead France after the war but that was the only reason. De Gaulle felt D-Day would be a disaster and would never be successful. That was just one just one in a long string of De Gaulle’s opinions that were wrong.
After the Allied forces liberated France, De Gaulle was allowed to “liberate” Paris with his nonexistent army. This man, with his supreme ego, probably believed he really did liberate Paris. It was all political, of course, and General Patton was left grinding his teeth over the slight.
General George Patton, a great general known to be a little pompous himself, said he would rather have a battalion of Germans in front of him than a battalion of French behind him. Patton had a big mouth, but at least he had the skills in warfare to back up his ego.
De Gaulle did become the leader of France after World War II and in the 1960’s decided French soil could no longer stand having American soldiers standing on it so he pulled out of the military branch of NATO and ordered all American troops out of France. An angry President Johnson asked De Gaulle if he wanted us to dig up our dead and remove them as well. The story goes that a sputtering De Gaulle told him he didn’t mean THOSE American soldiers.
In the here and now, Chirac proudly carries on the French anti-American tradition. However, Chirac has taken it to new heights. Saddam Hussein was a longtime good friend of Chirac, and Saddam thought right up until the first bomb dropped that his good friend in France would keep him safe from the Americans. Saddam should have known that the French always promise more then they can deliver.
As irritating as France’s active support of Saddam was prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the revelation that France, along with Germany and Russia and the United Nations were lining their pockets off the blood of Iraqi children does not seem to fall into the category of “friend and ally.” The fact that our soldiers have been killed with weapons sold to Saddam by France and other “friends” is more than irritating, it’s infuriating--considering the current attitude of the French Government.
The latest insult was Chirac’s refusal to attend President Ronald Reagan’s funeral. Already in the States for the G-8 conference, Chirac flatly refused to attend the funeral and, at first, was not even going to send a representative. After some protests from the French press, Chirac decided to send an underling. Could it be that Chirac is jealous of Reagan for doing what France could not? Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union--something the mighty French thought was impossible.
Admit it. The average American would just like to smack Chirac every time his face is shown on the television screen. Chirac and the French use the U.N. to hang on to what little power France has left, and the fact the United States can survive quite nicely without any help from France just drives the French crazy. How dare the United States be so darn successful!
As France’s economy tanks, the United States economy grows. As the French military perfects the art of surrender, our military doesn’t know the meaning of the word. As “new Europe” looks to the United States for guidance--and not France--its pride is hurt. Didn’t the world get the memo from God stating that France should be the leader of the world?
The world seems to have missed that memo--or read it, laughed, and threw it away.
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