Keith Devens .com

More (deserved) French bashing

Via LGF, Thomas Friedman at the New York Times opines that India should replace France as a permanent member of the security council. Fine by me.

Sometimes I wish that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council could be chosen like the starting five for the N.B.A. All-Star team -- with a vote by the fans. If so, I would certainly vote France off the Council and replace it with India. Then the perm-five would be Russia, China, India, Britain and the United States. That's more like it.

Why replace France with India? Because India is the world's biggest democracy, the world's largest Hindu nation and the world's second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

...the whole French game on Iraq, spearheaded by its diplomacy-lite foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, lacks seriousness. Most of France's energy is devoted to holding America back from acting alone, not holding Saddam Hussein's feet to the fire to comply with the U.N.

The French position is utterly incoherent. The inspections have not worked yet, says Mr. de Villepin, because Saddam has not fully cooperated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know. The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.

Mr. de Villepin also suggested that Saddam's government pass "legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction." (I am not making this up.) That proposal alone is a reminder of why, if America didn't exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian.

"France, it seems, would rather be more important in a world of chaos than less important in a world of order," says the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World."

I like how he ends the article.

What I've wanted to say before in response to some comments here about France and Germany is the following: previously, I've put France and Germany together in some of the things I've said. However, upon reflection, I don't think I really understand why Germany is against the war. Sure, German companies have done more business with Saddam than any other country's, and sure there's a lot of anti-Americanism over there, but is that it? It seems like there should be more.

France's motives, on the other hand, seem to be fairly clear to me. In addition to what the author mentioned above, Iraq owes France lots of money which they won't get back once Saddam's toppled (well, they probably wouldn't get it back anyway). But from all the analysis I've been hearing, France just wants to be important. As the author points out, their position is "utterly incoherent", so their motive seems to be the desire for importance from a formerly important, but now weak and irrellevent nation, who happens to have a permanent seat on the council they can use to make their voice heard and muck up the works unless they get their way.

Hey, I figured this belongs here too... funny. Hey, this is worth reading too (I'm glad I added the USS Clueless to my list of feeds in Syndirella):

I have to give the French government credit. Its new proposal regarding Iraq is a credible diplomatic threat. It's not actually a credible plan, in the sense of actually having any chance of disarming Iraq, but I don't think it is intended to be one.

Until now, the French and the others in the UN and around the world who have opposed war have been in the position of not having any alternative to propose which was even faintly plausible. Their previous position was "Let the inspections work" but we gave that a try, and Powell's speech before the UN made clear that it not only failed but in fact cannot reasonably be expected to succeed. So for anyone to continue to oppose war, based on the underlying philosophy that "war is the last resort; we need to explore other alternatives first" (which is what Chirac keeps saying, not that he actually believes it) then they needed another alternative to propose, and this is it.

Permalink | 12 Comments | Tags: Opinions/Politics | id 3431

17:54 (utc-5)
edited: 18:28 (utc-5)

Ok, rather than posting a comment as I go along, I'll try to keep a list of the insane things that come out of these people's mouths:

How can we possibly justify criticising Iraq for developing nuclear weapons when we're doing so little to get rid of our own. Isn't it incredibly hypocritical?

I'd like to add a point to what Blair said here, in regards to comparing Syria to Iraq:

There are issues to do with Syria and we can get on to those.

(Just giving the text so you can find it in the transcript...) Syria's not hiding their weapons. I heard a good comment once that it's a lot scarier when a country has and is developing weapons and hides them, than when a country is out in the open about what it's doing, because it's a lot more likely that the country that is hiding what it's doing is actually going to use those weapons.

But the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it.

The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil.

It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons, which is why the UN Resolutions have gone over 12 years in relation to the weapons and why we've actually allowed Iraq to export oil but we've had to try to keep it in an account used for food and medicine because of our worry that otherwise it would be used to buy arms.

Excellent. Some of the other points: the guy who argues that it's taken 12 years really did seem to be arguing that we should have gone in earlier!

Also Blair kind of skirted this question:

MALE: The three biggest countries against the war at the moment are Russia, China and France and they've all signed agreement with Saddam to explore the western oilfields.

Is that why they're against it because they're frightened that if the US and Britain go in the contracts will be torn up?

During the first part, the questions have all been pretty stupid, but lately (I'm on 36:08) the questions have gotten better.

[Man:] the most frightened thing I should be scared of is Saddam Hussein?

TONY BLAIR: I think the thing you should be most worried about in terms of security, obviously there are economic issues in our country and the rest of the world today.

But the thing to be most worried about, I would say, yes, is the link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Scares the crap out of me... I think he's absolutely right.

Also, the part about South Africa having a nuclear program and disarming, being very cooperative with inspections and all, I had no clue about. Very interesting.

Ok, the thing actually ended about 50 minutes through, surprisingly... the time said 1:25... they actually have 35 minutes of a basically blank screen on the video.

Anyway, after all this I've gained a lot of respect for Tony Blair. I don't know why he put himself through this, but it impresses me that he'd take the time to talk to all these schmoes (where'd they get these people?) on such a small, personal level.

Anyway, as to your comments:

Also an interesting exercise in seeing Tony Blair dance...

I don't see him as having "danced" at all. I think he dealt with everyone very honestly, forthrightly, and passionately on a personal level.

Thought this might be useful in understanding why Europeans in general (along with the rest of the world) have issue with a war with Iraq...

Unfortunately, not really. It was all the same stuff that everyone always brings up, and none of it convinces me that the U.S.'s and Britain's approach to Iraq right now is wrong. What do you think? Did you watch/read the whole thing?

Sunday, February 9, 2003

More (deserved) French bashing

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