He Never Seems To Learn

It looks like our good friend Jacques Chirac is up to his old tricks again. This time he has set out to try to embarrass Bush at the G8 meeting coming up in June. I'm really beginning to think the Wile E. Coyote was a quicker study than Jacques.

He's planning on taking advantage of his role as host to promote an Internationalist agenda. He wants to build a stronger world democracy. He wants to try to embarrass the US into accepted the Kyoto protocols. He plans to lecture us on "the principles of the responsible market economy" (???). He wants us to "build solidarity" with the poor nations of the world.

It is his goal to try to pretend on a grand scale that France is still a world power.

But we have, what, at least seven bombings worldwide in the last week? Moroccans were planning a 9/11-style attack on the Saudis. Palestinians are still plotting the death of as many Israelis as possible. al-Qaida appears to be attempting to regroup and to reassert itself as a "player."

Terrorism, in all its wondrous guises, is still the biggest threat to world security - and in turn to the world economy. Addressing economic issues is the purview of the G8, not social engineering on a worldwide scale.

But Jacques, being the host of this illustrious summit, really doesn't want to discuss terrorism. He fears that doing so would remind the rest of the G8 that rather than discuss, dither and debate, Bush took action. Bush made a difference in the fight against terrorism. How can Jacques counter that? Will he remind everyone that he stood steadfastly for the status quo - no matter how bad it was?

Jacques knows that any discussion of security will doom him to irrelevance - even with the summit being in his own nation. He knows that he has no credibility whatsoever for discussing terroristic threats.

So instead he, the leader of one of the largest socialist experiments outside of the Soviet Union, will lecture the rest of us on the market economy. Maybe Germany will learn something, but Jacques would do well to listen to the rest of us if he wants to know something about the free market.

French diplomats remain baffled and exasperated at how the Americans have frozen them out since the Iraq war.

Jacques is already starting to learn about the free market. Lesson #1 to be discussed at Evian - national choices can have great consequences in the free market of the world economy.

Jacques is finding out that a free market means that there isn't always a quota or protection from self-stupidity (and tweaking the nose of the US for spite or show is pretty stupid).

In a way though I hope that Jacques pulls this publicity stunt off. Because the only way it will work is no one dies from a terrorist bombing during the summit. If Bush wins the summit, it will only be because we all lost.