The War With France

Say what you will about Francois Mitterand, but he was pretty perceptive at times. It's too bad that his died-in-the-wool socialism was passed down to his political heir, Jacques Chirac, but not his power of accurate observation. There is, however, still a glimmer of hope on the horizon for Jacques, if he can mend his ways.

I really don't know if it's funny or tragic that it has taken this long for the French to begin to get a clue about the world. They are starting to figure out the UN is "without relevance." The are starting to understand the need to be "pragmatic." The only concern is that he still views French public opinion as being a key power base in the world. That belief may just keep Jacques from acknowledging reality.

What is that new reality? The reality is that France's worst fears about the war in Iraq came true. France killed off the UN Security Council as a realistic alternative in the world. France supplied arms and support to the dictator. And Saddam still collapsed in three weeks. The people of Iraq still welcomed us into their nation as liberators (much like the French did in WWII). There were some humanitarian issues, but nothing of the genocidal scale that France and the UN were so worried about. In short, France was wrong on virtually every prediction of doom and gloom, save one, WMD, that is still being investigated and will be for months to come. Jacques made France irrelevant in the view of the United States. That is his new reality.

Jacques will continue to speak of "multipolarity" and of a "strong EU." He will continue to rail against US "imperialism" and "hegemony." And he will continue to attempt to bully, weasel or slither his way back into relevance. And as he did in his dire predictions of Iraq, he will be wrong and exposed as a charlatan again and again and again.

Jacques' only success has been in poisoning the Franco-American relationship. He wanted to prove his independence from Washington, but he is now finding out that being an enemy of the US is a mighty lonely place. His cohorts in animosity won't come to his defense in any way other than flowery firebrand rhetoric. His new friends in low places won't come to his aid if the Algerian Army of Islam marches on Paris. He's starting to understand that his prime benefactor and protector was Washington. He's also starting to understand that he may have permanently pissed away friendship with a nation that has liberated his country in the past because liberating France was the right thing to do.

But I don't think we're done seeing the depths of the idiocy that Jacques is capable of. He's starting to regret his flippant dismissal of the US, but his knee-jerk anti-Americanism is too deeply engrained for him to be able to avoid more political screwups.

U.S. officials fully expect the French to obstruct the next round of Iraq diplomacy at the United Nations. “What is their strategy?” asks one sarcastically. “Are they going to refuse to recognize the new Iraqi government? Are they going to recognize the government of Saddam Hussein?”

Let's see. Saddam's inner circle has fled to Syria. de Villepin makes a trip to Syria soon afterward. I can definitely see France refusing to recognize a new Iraqi government instead choosing to recognize Saddam's "government in exile," conveniently based out of Damascus.

Mitterand was right. America and France are at war. Under Mitterand, though, the war was cultural and economic. Jacques has chosen to expand the war and to open a new front - the foreign diplomacy front. But he forgot that part of foreign diplomacy is being able to back up your words with action. France has no capacity for action, only for rhetoric. By opening his new front, Jacques playing into our strengths. And now he is paying the price for his hubris.

It will be years before the French people can recover the damage Jacques has wrought on one of their most important foreign relationships. Jacques has taken Mitterand's war and turned it into another French Vietnam. Only this time, the Americans won't bail him out.