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Thread: Perfidious Gaul







Post#1 at 04-04-2004 12:33 PM by Zarathustra [at Where the Northwest meets the Southwest joined Mar 2003 #posts 9,198]
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04-04-2004, 12:33 PM #1
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Perfidious Gaul

Admittedly, this article comes from what seems to be a decidely right-wing publication and that the author of the excerpted book may have an axe to grind, but if there is any truth to this overall story then it has interesting implications, to me at least.

If the Bush Administration thought that the French were going to back us in the UN regarding Iraq and indeed were even considering joining the war effort directly up until as late as mid-January 2003, then I am not so sure I can be as upset about Bush moving forward without "world support". I mean, US forces were already deploying in the region full force and once deployed like that to have them just have them sit there for months on end is not realistic Realpolitik-wise (though Eric Meece would obviously disagree!).

Now this does not change my upset on the Bushies' seemingly disingenuous distillment of the intelligence data to make it look like Hussein's regime was an imminent threat. Though some of the data coming in pointed in that direction, it looks like there was even more pointing in the opposite direction.

However, if you couple the fact that A) all the world's intelligence agencies thought Hussein's regime indeed had WMD at that point in blatant violation of UN resolutions and the agreement ending the Kuwait War and B) that France was (seemingly, if the below article is to be believed) giving us assurances of support up to late January '03, and C) that French support almost surely meant UN support in the end (and it very much looks that way) then I can't find it so easy to make this a black and white issue of Bush totally disregarding world opinion and bolding taking us into international isolation. If we were blindsided by the French, then this whole issue becomes much more gray, at least for me.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37869


**As Always, For Discussion Purposes Only**

BOOK EXCERPT
France lied to U.S.
during Iraq crisis
Author reveals Chirac assured president privately of support

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 3, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers. Subscribe to Insight at WorldNetDaily's online store and save 71 percent off the cover price.
The following article is excerpted from Kenneth R. Timmerman's new book, "The French Betrayal of America," published by Crown Forum.

Timmerman reveals that in the run-up to the Iraq war, French officials went out of their way privately to assure the president, the secretary of state and U.S. diplomats they backed the U.S. in the showdown with Saddam, even if it included the use of force.

But a senior administration official privy to an Oval Office conversation between President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac put in bluntly: "They lied."


By Kenneth R. Timmerman
? 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc.

For Secretary of State Colin Powell, the U.S.-French divorce began on Jan. 20, 2003, when French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin blindsided him during a press conference outside the U.N.

After a special session of the Security Council devoted to the war on terror, held at de Villepin's personal request, Powell had driven over to the French U.N. ambassador's official Park Avenue residence, where de Villepin was to host him to an exclusive lunch.

Instead, de Villepin stayed behind at the U.N. and announced to the world that France would never support a U.S.-led military intervention against Saddam Hussein. As Powell saw the man he thought was his friend appear on the video monitors in the French ambassador's residence his jaws dropped, says his deputy and confidant, Richard Armitage.

"He was very unamused," Armitage recalls. "When he's unamused, he gets pretty cold. He puts the eyes on you and there is no doubt when his jaws are jacked. It's not a pretty sight."

During the session, de Villepin "preened and postured," recalled a deputy to U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.

After a tepid homage to the victims of 9-11, de Villepin urged the United Nations to take over the global fight against terror by sending international bureaucrats to Third World nations that were harboring or sponsoring terrorist groups.

He wanted the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to get involved, and proposed a new international arms-control treaty to track the commercial use and shipment of radioactive materials, surely a move that would prove as useful in preventing nuclear terrorism as the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has been in preventing nations such as Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea from going nuclear.

"Let us look at things with lucidity," the Frenchman said finally, his voice quivering with compassion. "Terrorism feeds on injustice. So an equitable model of development is therefore necessary to definitely eradicate terrorism."

After briefly summarizing these proposals, which no one took seriously, de Villepin told the news cameras that he now wanted to say "a few words" about Iraq. That caught Powell's ear.

Just the evening before, over a private dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, the two men had discussed possible wording the French government could accept in a new U.N. resolution (the 18th, in fact) that would authorize the use of force against Iraq. Powell would say later that he had thought they were close to an agreement. Diplomats at the U.N. were actually laying bets ? at 100-to-1 odds ? that the U.S. would get the votes for the resolution. None of them was prepared for what the Frenchman said next.

"If war is the only means of resolving the problem, then we have reached a dead end," de Villepin said. "A unilateral military intervention will be the victory of might makes right, an attack on the primacy of international law and morality."

The U.N. should wait until the U.N. inspectors made their next report, scheduled for January 27, before deciding on any further action, he said. At that point, "Iraq must understand that it is time for it to cooperate actively."

To Powell and his advisers, it was clear that de Villepin was trying to run out the clock so Saddam could finish hiding his weapons and prepare for war.

Later, in the reconstruction of the day's events he and other top French officials gave to reporters, de Villepin denied he had tried to ambush Powell, or that he had disguised an intention to use the ministerial session of the U.N. Security Council on terrorism as a platform to attack the United States on Iraq.

"There was no ambush," he said. "I did not mention the word 'Iraq' once in my speech. It was only at a press conference afterward that I discussed Iraq in reply to a very aggressive question."

I read that account to a U.S. official who knew de Villepin and had watched the tape of that press conference many times.

"That's just a lie," he said.

Indeed, the written record of de Villepin's press conference, provided to me by the French foreign ministry, shows on the contrary that it was de Villepin who shifted directly to Iraq at the very beginning of his press conference, and made a lengthy condemnation of the United States well before the questions began.

"We will not associate ourselves with military intervention that is not supported by the international community," he said finally. "Military intervention would be the worst solution."

Even the Washington Post, which highlighted international opposition to the Bush administration's position on Iraq, called de Villepin's performance "theatrical."

When de Villepin finally showed up for the luncheon, it got worse. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer berated Powell and President Bush for having decided to move forward with military action, and claimed that Iraq "has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely with the U.N. team on the ground," certainly an Alice-in-Wonderland version of the facts even as they were presented by the well-heeled U.N. chief inspector, Hans Blix.

Finally, Powell had heard enough.

"He got an edge to his voice ? something Powell prides himself at not doing ? and said, 'You said the same thing before Panama and we went in and three days later, everyone forgot.'"

The scales fell from Powell's eyes that day, an aide said.

"He suddenly realized this was a game of hardball politics and that he had let himself be used and abused."

From that moment on, the relationship between the two men turned to ice. No more letters from de Villepin addressed, "Cher Colin." No more cozy lunches. Communications became stiff and formal, while the top leaders traded broadsides across the Atlantic.

Standing side by side with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Paris on Jan. 22, [French] President Jacques Chirac hurled another cannonball.

"War is always an admission of defeat," he said, "the worst of solutions. Hence everything must be done to avoid it."

Some French officials suggested to me privately that Chirac had been "set up" by Schroeder, whose harsh criticism of the United States went way beyond the prepared speech he had given Chirac's advisers beforehand.

Indeed, so thorough was the deception being played out by Chirac and de Villepin that many senior members of Chirac's own ruling party believed that Chirac still intended to join the U.S. and British-led war effort at the last minute, after squeezing from the U.S. a maximum of commercial concessions in postwar Iraq.

The next morning, writing in the New York Times, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice chastised the French and other critics who wanted to give Iraq more time to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.

"Has Saddam Hussein finally decided to voluntarily disarm?" she asked. "Unfortunately, the answer is a clear and resounding no. There is no mystery to voluntary disarmament. Countries that decide to disarm lead inspectors to weapons and production sites, answer questions before they are asked, state publicly and often the intention to disarm and urge their citizens to cooperate. The world knows from examples set by South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan what it looks like when a government decides that it will cooperatively give up its weapons of mass destruction."

Iraq's behavior did not fit the bill.

"By both its actions and its inactions," she concluded, "Iraq is proving not that it is a nation bent on disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz gave a more detailed presentation on the same theme to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"It is not the job of inspectors to disarm Iraq; it is Iraq's job to disarm itself," he said. "Think about it for a moment. When an auditor discovers discrepancies in the books, it is not the auditor's obligation to prove where the embezzler has stashed his money. It is up to the person or institution being audited to explain the discrepancy. It is quite unreasonable to expect a few hundred inspectors to search every potential hiding place in a country the size of France, even if nothing were being moved."

For 12 years Iraq had played a game of "rope-a-dope in the desert" with U.N. inspectors. That game was about to end because of renegade Saudi Osama bin Laden.

"As terrible as the attacks of September 11 were, however, we now know that the terrorists are plotting still more and greater catastrophes," Wolfowitz said. "Iraq's weapons of mass terror and the terror networks to which the Iraqi regime are linked are not two separate themes ? not two separate threats. They are part of the same threat."

French officials say they never bought into the U.S. argument of a "convergence" between Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

"The U.S. argument was highly speculative," a senior adviser to de Villepin told me in Paris. "If there was going to be convergence between terrorists and WMD, it would happen with renegade scientists from Biopreparat in Russia, who decide to go to work for al-Qaida. It would happen in Pakistan, but not in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime was not known for spontaneous behavior. He had no objection to using terrorism, but he would never give weapons to groups that were not thoroughly under his control, who could act autonomously in ways that could pose a threat to his regime."

But of course, that was precisely what the U.S. contended when it cited Saddam's use of al-Qaida offshoot Al Ansar al-Islam, which was operating with the support and protection of Saddam's intelligence arm, the dreaded mukhabarat. The U.S. presented evidence that Al Ansar was training with biological and chemical weapons, but the French remained unconvinced.

On Oct. 27, 2003, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith sent a classified memo to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee detailing no fewer than 50 separate credible intelligence reports on contacts between top al-Qaida members and Iraqi intelligence. It's simply inconceivable that the French, for all their close ties to Saddam, had seen none of it.

Powell and de Villepin continued to duke it out in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum that weekend. De Villepin again warned that France would veto any U.S.-backed resolution at the U.N. to authorize the use of force, and said his European colleagues agreed with him that the U.N. inspections should be extended by "several weeks, or for several months."

Powell reminded the Frenchman of the bonds of blood tying America to France and the sacrifices Americans had made to free Europe from tyranny.

"We've put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives," he said. "We've asked for nothing but enough land to bury them in."

Now, things appeared to have changed.

"One or two of our friends, we have been in marriage counseling with for 225 years nonstop," he said, indicating France. He didn't utter the word "divorce," but it was clear that the marriage counseling had reached an impasse.

The French never fully appreciated the dramatic changes in American thinking that followed 9-11, a top de Villepin adviser admitted. They found it inconceivable that the United States could feel threatened by the possibility of a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. But when I asked how French national security would have been threatened by acquiescing to U.S. war plans ? what was so important to French vital interests to require them actively to oppose the U.S. ? de Villepin's adviser sank into a stunned silence that lasted nearly a minute.

In the end, he uttered a mush about hurting the feelings of the Arabs.

"Nations don't always act from self-interest, but also from conviction," he said finally. "We believed someone had to speak up to express the objections of a large majority of the international community who disagreed with the American policy and who had no spokesman. We were like the Roman tribune."

In fact, there was "very little debate" within the Foreign Ministry or elsewhere about opposing America during the crisis, another top official told me in Paris.

"The policy was driven by de Villepin and by Chirac personally. Only five or six senior advisers dared to raise questions about how de Villepin was handling himself."

The naysayers were in a distinct minority at the Quai d'Orsay, and nonexistent at the presidential palace; indeed, they keep a low profile these days.

"There was never any misunderstanding between us and the Americans," this official said. "Both sides knew each other's positions very well. It was a fundamental difference in viewpoints. We simply didn't share the U.S. perception of the threat and actively tried to block the U.S. from preventive military action it considered to be an act of legitimate self-defense."

A U.S. diplomat involved in the exchanges agreed ? up to a point.

"The French knew exactly what our thinking was. But until Jan. 20, we had thought they were totally with us."

There was good reason for the Bush administration's confidence, as I can reveal here for the first time.

Until Jan. 20, I learned in interviews with a half-dozen administration officials directly involved in the negotiations, the French had gone out of their way privately to assure the president, the secretary of state and U.S. diplomats working the issue that they backed the U.S. in the showdown with Saddam, even if it included the use of force.

When the Iraqis stonewalled United Nations arms inspectors in late October 2002, Chirac picked up the phone and called President Bush in the Oval Office to reiterate French support for a strong United Nations resolution that would include the option of using force.

In early December, he sent a top French military official to CENTCOM [United States Central Command] headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to negotiate the specifics of the French participation in the war.

"Chirac personally told the president he would be with us," one senior U.S. administration official told me. "We didn't know until the ambush that France would not go to war with us. We thought they might complain, or abstain, or not vote ? but not that they would actually veto."

Added another, who was privy to the Oval Office conversation, "Chirac's assurances are what gave the president the confidence to keep sending Colin Powell back to the U.N. They also explain why the administration has been going after the French so aggressively ever since. They lied."

Back in Washington, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said publicly some of the things Powell was too polite to utter even in private.

A former undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Perle now headed the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and was close friends with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage. Far from being an automatic France-basher, Perle was a dedicated Francophile who owned a vacation home in France and for two decades had maintained close personal ties to many top figures in the French defense and security establishment.

The French government, he told Fox News Sunday, was acting not on principle as it claimed, but on behalf of its commercial interests.

"It's ironic that people accuse the United States of being interested in oil," he said. "If you want to see who's interested in oil, look at French policy. It is entirely self-concerned, and it has to do with oil contracts and very little else."

At a conference on Iraq in Washington the day before Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the U.N. on Iraqi WMD, he suggested that France by its behavior was demonstrating that it had parted company with the United States.

"France is no longer the ally it once was. I think it is reasonable to ask whether this country should now or on any other occasion subordinate its most fundamental national-security interests to a show of hands that happens to include governments whose interests are different from our own. Deep in the soul of Jacques Chirac, he believes that Saddam Hussein is preferable to the alternative that is likely to emerge when Iraq is liberated."

Throughout the crisis, the French press painted a picture of the diplomatic tug of war that showed the United States as isolated and France as the voice of reason whose proposals to prolong the U.N. inspection regime "have been particularly well received."

The arms inspectors had just reported that "the verification of Iraq's disarmament is now within reach," Le Figaro gushed, in a modern-day version of the infamous "peace in our time" comment by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain after he and his French counterpart had ceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich in 1938.

Foreign Minister de Villepin was an international celebrity, wrote Le Figaro, "whose speech [at the U.N.] received a standing ovation from the gallery reserved for the public and the press." Others were less flattering, and referred to de Villepin as the "Energizer bunny of diplomacy," or took to calling him "Zorro," and "Nero."

More significant, however, was de Villepin's adoration of two historical figures: Napoleon, whose slogan was "victory or death, but glory whatever happens," and Machiavelli, who perfected the art of the diplomatic lie.

"The problem with you Americans," de Villepin hectored a visiting United States senator in Paris last December, "is that you don't read Machiavelli."

His meaning, the senator's aide told me, was crystal clear. De Villepin and Chirac had lied to the United States during the Iraq crisis, and if we didn't like it, we should get over it. That's how the "big boys" played politics.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.







Post#2 at 04-04-2004 05:56 PM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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A helping hand for the Duc d'Anjou

In return for that which was given to the Americans by The Most Christian King and by His Catholic Majesty when the Colonial peoples wished to be free from the House of Hanover.


France has been a work in Progress soon afterward.


The Constitutional Republicans of the United States should seek to replace M. Chirac, et al. with Don Lu?s Alfonso Gonzalo Victor Manuel Marco de Borb?n y Mart?nez-Bordi? and that set of advisers he might choose.


One is shocked, shocked to learn that our liars have been lied to by a foreign government. :shock: :shock: :shock: Oh the Humanity! :shock: :shock: :shock: Oh the Progress! :shock: :shock: :shock:







Post#3 at 04-04-2004 11:19 PM by [at joined #posts ]
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Re: A helping hand for the Duc d'Anjou

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
In return for that which was given to the Americans by The Most Christian King and by His Catholic Majesty when the Colonial peoples wished to be free from the House of Hanover.
In return for what? :?

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
France has been a work in Progress soon afterward.
Americans dig french fries, man.

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
The Constitutional Republicans of the United States should seek to replace M. Chirac, et al. with Don Lu?s Alfonso Gonzalo Victor Manuel Marco de Borb?n y Mart?nez-Bordi? and that set of advisers he might choose.
That's what I wuz thinkin' too.

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
One is shocked, shocked to learn that our liars have been lied to by a foreign government. :shock: :shock: :shock: Oh the Humanity! :shock: :shock: :shock: Oh the Progress! :shock: :shock: :shock:
Oh yeah! :shock: :shock: :shock: baby! :shock: :shock: :shock:







Post#4 at 04-04-2004 11:22 PM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Perfid Albion

France 'sought secret UN deal' in bid to avert row

by Mr. Ewen MacAskill
Monday 5 April 2004 number of The Guardian


The French government offered a surprise compromise to the US president, George Bush, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, according to a detailed investigation published in Vanity Fair this week.


The report undermines the public perception of France standing resolutely against the US and Britain in the United Nations security council as the two countries tried to win a second resolution in support of war.

According to a 25,000-word investigation into the diplomatic wranglings in that pre-war period, the French government was offering to cut a behind-the-scenes deal with the US government.

At a lunch in the White House on January 13 last year, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, an adviser to the president, Jacques Chirac, and Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador in Washington, put the deal to Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser.

In an effort to avoid a bitter US-French row, the French officials suggested that if the US was intent on war, it should not seek the second resolution, according to highly placed US sources cited by Vanity Fair.

Instead, the two said that the first resolution on Iraq, 1441, passed the previous year, provided enough legal cover for war and that France would keep quiet if the US went to war on that basis.

The deal would suit the French by maintaining its "good cop" status in the Arab world and safeguarding Franco-US relations.

But the deal died when Tony Blair led a doomed attempt to secure a second resolution to try to satisfy Labour MPs and government lawyers who questioned the legitimacy of the war. France ultimately vetoed the resolution.
To the King over the Water! Restore the Stuarts!







Post#5 at 04-04-2004 11:50 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: A helping hand for the Duc d'Anjou

Quote Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate
Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
In return for that which was given to the Americans by The Most Christian King and by His Catholic Majesty when the Colonial peoples wished to be free from the House of Hanover.
In return for what? :?
The French monarchy, for their own reasons, assisted the American Rebels in the Revolutionary War, including the useful service of bottling up the Royal Navy at the Batttle of Yorktown.

The 'House of Hanover' is the modern British House of Windsor (i.e. the Royal Family, then represented by the one George III), originally of German extraction. The name was changed, IIRC, in WW I.







Post#6 at 04-05-2004 12:04 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: Perfidious Gaul

Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

If the Bush Administration thought that the French were going to back us in the UN regarding Iraq and indeed were even considering joining the war effort directly up until as late as mid-January 2003, then I am not so sure I can be as upset about Bush moving forward without "world support". I mean, US forces were already deploying in the region full force and once deployed like that to have them just have them sit there for months on end is not realistic Realpolitik-wise (though Eric Meece would obviously disagree!).
There were built-in time limits logistically and strategically, too. As I pointed out once before, the moment the strike forces were in position and ready to go, an invisible clock started ticking. The entire point of the Blix inspections was to stall until that clock ran out. Blix himself recently admitted that he, too, believed Hussein had WMDs, not that you could have discerned that by his words earlier.

Regarding the French, I do think Chirac got 'carried away' with the cheers from the gallery, and the chance to pretend that France was a top tier player again. I'm not sure he was initially lying, if he did promise French support, but I do think he let himself get caught up in the moment.







Post#7 at 04-05-2004 02:58 AM by Zarathustra [at Where the Northwest meets the Southwest joined Mar 2003 #posts 9,198]
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Re: Perfidious Gaul

Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

If the Bush Administration thought that the French were going to back us in the UN regarding Iraq and indeed were even considering joining the war effort directly up until as late as mid-January 2003, then I am not so sure I can be as upset about Bush moving forward without "world support". I mean, US forces were already deploying in the region full force and once deployed like that to have them just have them sit there for months on end is not realistic Realpolitik-wise (though Eric Meece would obviously disagree!).
There were built-in time limits logistically and strategically, too. As I pointed out once before, the moment the strike forces were in position and ready to go, an invisible clock started ticking. The entire point of the Blix inspections was to stall until that clock ran out. Blix himself recently admitted that he, too, believed Hussein had WMDs, not that you could have discerned that by his words earlier.

Regarding the French, I do think Chirac got 'carried away' with the cheers from the gallery, and the chance to pretend that France was a top tier player again. I'm not sure he was initially lying, if he did promise French support, but I do think he let himself get caught up in the moment.
It's just frightening and depressing to me that it has all come to this. Inside of me I still harbor an Atlanticist.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.







Post#8 at 04-05-2004 08:47 AM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Re: Perfidious Gaul

Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

It's just frightening and depressing to me that it has all come to this. Inside of me I still harbor an Atlanticist.
It's time to drown that particular kitten, Mr. Love. You could be a Caribbeanist or even better a Great Laker.







Post#9 at 04-05-2004 09:11 AM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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You might want to be an American

if you could bear to rub shoulders with the lower orders, Mr. Love.

The Patriotic Public

While elements of America's business and intellectual elites are identifying more with the world as a whole and defining themselves as "global citizens", Americans as a whole are becoming more committed to their nation. Huge majorities of Americans claim to be patriotic and express great pride in their country. Asked in 1991, "How proud are you to be an American?", 96 percent of Americans said "very proud" or "quite proud." The terrorist attacks of 9/11 could not and did not have much effect on these high levels of patriotic assertion; in September 2002, 91 percent of Americans were "extremely" or "very" proud to be American.10

These affirmations of patriotism and pride in country might be less meaningful if people in other countries responded similarly. By and large, they do not. Americans have consistently and overwhelmingly been foremost among peoples in their patriotism and their identification with their country. This country ranked first in national pride among the 41 to 65 countries covered in each of the World Values Surveys of 1981?82, 1990?91, and 1995?96, with 96 to 98 percent of Americans saying they were "very proud" or "quite proud" of their country.


...The first, or cosmopolitan, alternative involves a renewal of the trends dominating pre-September 11 America. America welcomes the world, its ideas, its goods and, most importantly, its people. The ideal would be an open society with open borders, encouraging subnational ethnic, racial and cultural identities, dual citizenship, diasporas, and would be led by elites who increasingly identified with global institutions, norms and rules rather than national ones. America should be multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural. Diversity is a prime value, if not the prime value. The more people who bring to America different languages, religions and customs, the more American America becomes. Middle-class Americans would identify increasingly with the global corporations for which they work rather than with the local communities in which they live. The activities of Americans would more and more be governed not by the federal and state governments, but by rules set by international authorities, such as the UN, the WTO, customary international law, and global treaties. National identity loses salience compared to other identities. In this cosmopolitan alternative, the world reshapes America.

In the imperial alternative, America reshapes the world. The end of the Cold War eliminated communism as the overriding factor shaping America's role in the world. It thus enabled liberals to pursue their foreign policy goals without having to confront the charge that those goals compromised national security and hence to promote "nation building", "humanitarian intervention" and "foreign policy as social work." The emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower had a parallel impact on American conservatives. During the Cold War America's enemies denounced it as an imperial power. At the start of the new millennium conservatives accepted and endorsed the idea of an American empire--whether they embraced the term or not--and the use of American power to reshape the world according to American values.

The imperial impulse was thus fueled by beliefs in the supremacy of American power and the universality of American values. Because America's power far exceeds that of other nations, America has the responsibility to create order and confront evil throughout the world. According to the universalist belief, the people of other societies have basically the same values as Americans, or if they do not have them, they want to have them, or if they do not want to have them, they misjudge what is good for their society, and Americans have the responsibility to persuade them or to induce them to embrace the universal values that America espouses. In such a world America loses its identity as a nation and becomes the dominant component of a supranational empire....



Cosmopolitanism and imperialism attempt to reduce or to eliminate the social, political and cultural differences between America and other societies. A national approach would recognize and accept what distinguishes America from those societies. America cannot become the world and still be America. Other peoples cannot become American and still be themselves. America is different, and that difference is defined in large part by its religious commitment and Anglo-Protestant culture. The alternative to cosmopolitanism and imperialism is nationalism devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America from its inception.

Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite







Post#10 at 04-05-2004 09:51 AM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Re: You might want to be an American

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
if you could bear to rub shoulders with the lower orders, Mr. Love.

The Patriotic Public

While elements of America's business and intellectual elites are identifying more with the world as a whole and defining themselves as "global citizens", Americans as a whole are becoming more committed to their nation. Huge majorities of Americans claim to be patriotic and express great pride in their country. Asked in 1991, "How proud are you to be an American?", 96 percent of Americans said "very proud" or "quite proud." The terrorist attacks of 9/11 could not and did not have much effect on these high levels of patriotic assertion; in September 2002, 91 percent of Americans were "extremely" or "very" proud to be American.

These affirmations of patriotism and pride in country might be less meaningful if people in other countries responded similarly. By and large, they do not. Americans have consistently and overwhelmingly been foremost among peoples in their patriotism and their identification with their country. This country ranked first in national pride among the 41 to 65 countries covered in each of the World Values Surveys of 1981?82, 1990?91, and 1995?96, with 96 to 98 percent of Americans saying they were "very proud" or "quite proud" of their country.


...The first, or cosmopolitan, alternative involves a renewal of the trends dominating pre-September 11 America. America welcomes the world, its ideas, its goods and, most importantly, its people. The ideal would be an open society with open borders, encouraging subnational ethnic, racial and cultural identities, dual citizenship, diasporas, and would be led by elites who increasingly identified with global institutions, norms and rules rather than national ones. America should be multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural. Diversity is a prime value, if not the prime value. The more people who bring to America different languages, religions and customs, the more American America becomes. Middle-class Americans would identify increasingly with the global corporations for which they work rather than with the local communities in which they live. The activities of Americans would more and more be governed not by the federal and state governments, but by rules set by international authorities, such as the UN, the WTO, customary international law, and global treaties. National identity loses salience compared to other identities. In this cosmopolitan alternative, the world reshapes America.

In the imperial alternative, America reshapes the world. The end of the Cold War eliminated communism as the overriding factor shaping America's role in the world. It thus enabled liberals to pursue their foreign policy goals without having to confront the charge that those goals compromised national security and hence to promote "nation building", "humanitarian intervention" and "foreign policy as social work." The emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower had a parallel impact on American conservatives. During the Cold War America's enemies denounced it as an imperial power. At the start of the new millennium conservatives accepted and endorsed the idea of an American empire--whether they embraced the term or not--and the use of American power to reshape the world according to American values.

The imperial impulse was thus fueled by beliefs in the supremacy of American power and the universality of American values. Because America's power far exceeds that of other nations, America has the responsibility to create order and confront evil throughout the world. According to the universalist belief, the people of other societies have basically the same values as Americans, or if they do not have them, they want to have them, or if they do not want to have them, they misjudge what is good for their society, and Americans have the responsibility to persuade them or to induce them to embrace the universal values that America espouses. In such a world America loses its identity as a nation and becomes the dominant component of a supranational empire....



Cosmopolitanism and imperialism attempt to reduce or to eliminate the social, political and cultural differences between America and other societies. A national approach would recognize and accept what distinguishes America from those societies. America cannot become the world and still be America. Other peoples cannot become American and still be themselves. America is different, and that difference is defined in large part by its religious commitment and Anglo-Protestant culture. The alternative to cosmopolitanism and imperialism is nationalism devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America from its inception.

Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite
I, for one, would have no problem counting myself with 'the lower orders' on this matter.







Post#11 at 04-05-2004 10:51 AM by Mike Eagen [at Phoenix, AZ joined Oct 2001 #posts 941]
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As Mr. Garth Brooks was wont to say, "I Have Friends In Low Places!" :wink:







Post#12 at 04-05-2004 12:04 PM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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The Principle of Return

I would be curious as to when France changed its mind and why. WJB's original article that opens the thread suggests economic reasons (oil) lie beneath France's motivations. If one believes US anti-neo-cons, a good deal of the Bush administration's motivation was also economic.

Many major powers believed the Iraq sanctions were working and indeed had worked. The sanctions were going to come down in the not too distant future. Thus, powers such as Russia and France anticipated large contracts restoring the Iraqi oil industry and purchasing oil. As the US and Great Britain had been bombing Iraq, it was anticipated that Saddam would lock them out of a post sanction economy.

As usual, while the posturing on the public stage was about security and human rights issues, underneath, economics and greed had their part. The US was essentially preempting by military force some very profitable French business opportunities. Whether it took the French a while to figure this out, or whether the French decided early on to muck up Bush's life as much as practically possible, I won't guess.

But I wouldn't suppose it is purely about french politicians egos and a stupid pride in France's position in the world. Quite possibly, it was a very basic 'If you screw us, we screw you' thing.

If the neo-cons intend to use America's sole superpower status to benefit corporate interests, they ought to expect this sort of response as part of the price of global hegemony. This is not to say I advocate the politics of 'If you screw me, I screw you.' This is just to say if we go around screwing people, one might expect others to return the favor whenever possible.







Post#13 at 04-05-2004 02:52 PM by The Wonkette [at Arlington, VA 1956 joined Jul 2002 #posts 9,209]
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Re: A helping hand for the Duc d'Anjou

Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
The 'House of Hanover' is the modern British House of Windsor (i.e. the Royal Family, then represented by the one George III), originally of German extraction. The name was changed, IIRC, in WW I.
The House of Hanover became the House of Saxe-Coburg upon the royal marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. Her grandson, King George V, changed the family name to "Windsor" during WW I.

FWIW.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008







Post#14 at 04-05-2004 09:11 PM by Tristan [at Melbourne, Australia joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,249]
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To the US the French are a nuisance rather than an enemy, if the French were as militarily powerful as the USA, they would be an enemy. However French military power is very puny in comparsion to the USA.

The USA does not need to listen to the French or the UN for that matter. The USA is the lynchpin of any power of the UN has and if the USA withdraws from the UN, The UN is nothing more than a toothless tiger.







Post#15 at 04-06-2004 01:06 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by Tristan
To the US the French are a nuisance rather than an enemy, if the French were as militarily powerful as the USA, they would be an enemy.
That might well be true, but I'm not sure it's necessarily true. I think a superpower France and America could, with a little care, confine themselves to rivalry rather than enmity, the moreso since a French superpower might well be less 'touchy' than the real-world version, since their pride would not be perpetually rubbed raw by the contrast between their self-image and their status in the geopolitical and cultural balance.







Post#16 at 04-06-2004 01:07 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: A helping hand for the Duc d'Anjou

Quote Originally Posted by The Wonk
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
The 'House of Hanover' is the modern British House of Windsor (i.e. the Royal Family, then represented by the one George III), originally of German extraction. The name was changed, IIRC, in WW I.
The House of Hanover became the House of Saxe-Coburg upon the royal marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. Her grandson, King George V, changed the family name to "Windsor" during WW I.

FWIW.
Thanks, that was a bit of information I hadn't known.







Post#17 at 04-06-2004 01:26 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: You might want to be an American

Quote Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
if you could bear to rub shoulders with the lower orders, Mr. Love.

"One thing globalization has done", a consultant to Archer Daniels Midland said, "is to transfer the power of governments to the global consumer."2 As the global market replaces the national community, the national citizen gives way to the global consumer.

This is the fundamental, basic weakness of the entire globalization movement, and also why the 'Davos People' are likely (IMO) to fare ill in the coming 4T.

But it's an extreme distillation of a basic impulse of modernist culture, the desire to reduce history and culture and nationality and the entirely panorama of history to a system of economic interaction, pretending the other factors don't matter.







Post#18 at 04-06-2004 01:33 AM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: Perfidious Gaul

Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan
Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Regarding the French, I do think Chirac got 'carried away' with the cheers from the gallery, and the chance to pretend that France was a top tier player again. I'm not sure he was initially lying, if he did promise French support, but I do think he let himself get caught up in the moment.
It's just frightening and depressing to me that it has all come to this. Inside of me I still harbor an Atlanticist.
Don't despair, if you're willing to be patient. The current uproar is probably temporary on the longer scale, since Europe and America are still part of the same Western Civilization. In a sense, over the timespan of decades, each one has little choice but to find a way to work with the other.

(If Europe manages to let themselves be thorougly Islamized, of course, that would change, but I don't think they'll end up making that mistake.)

But in the short term, I'm afraid the Atlantic Alliance is in the process of Unravelling, as the Third Turning proceeds to its approaching finish.







Post#19 at 04-06-2004 06:01 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Rambling Thoughts

Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
Quote Originally Posted by Tristan
To the US the French are a nuisance rather than an enemy, if the French were as militarily powerful as the USA, they would be an enemy.
That might well be true, but I'm not sure it's necessarily true. I think a superpower France and America could, with a little care, confine themselves to rivalry rather than enmity, the moreso since a French superpower might well be less 'touchy' than the real-world version, since their pride would not be perpetually rubbed raw by the contrast between their self-image and their status in the geopolitical and cultural balance.
I'm not worried about a superpower France. A superpower Europe, on the other hand, seems plausible. In the short term, it isn't happening. Among other things, the shock of reabsorbing East Germany is throwing Germany for a loop. Once upon a time, when France sneezed, all Europe caught cold. Since Bismark, Germany has been the source of such infections.

There is a difference in between US and Europe's level of militancy. After World War II, the United States decided that being a superpower was neat, and jumped into the role with considerable enthusiasm. Europe was far more traumatized by WW II. Our lesson learned was a need to contain tyrants. Their lesson learned was that war of aggression against powers with similar military power is a bad idea.

Thus, they might persistently play dove to our hawk, good cop to our bad cop, dignified elder to our brash young cowboy. True, we are both "The West." There are common values and interests. We could work together if there is a real need to do so, or if the American neocons fade from power. It might be Bush and company that France in specific and Europe in general distrust. If so, I can't exactly fault them for lack of discernment.







Post#20 at 04-06-2004 09:14 AM by Prisoner 81591518 [at joined Mar 2003 #posts 2,460]
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Re: Perfidious Gaul

Quote Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68
If Europe manages to let themselves be thoroughly Islamicized, of course, that would change, but I don't think they'll end up making that mistake.
Depending on how the (future population) figures add up, Europe may not have that much of a choice in the matter. If one adds up the projected population figures for both Europe and the Islamic Heartland for 2050 CE (using the U.S. Census Bureau's figures), the Islamic Heartland can be expected to have at least twice as many people as Europe.

(For my Islamic Heartland figures, I took the current Islamic World, and subtracted Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Albania, Bosnia, and the Islamic portions of sub-Saharan Africa from my reckoning. For my European figures, I included all of Russia, plus Armenia, Cyprus, and Georgia as parts of Europe.)







Post#21 at 04-06-2004 01:42 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Re: Rambling Thoughts

Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54
Thus, they might persistently play dove to our hawk, good cop to our bad cop, dignified elder to our brash young cowboy. True, we are both "The West." There are common values and interests. We could work together if there is a real need to do so, or if the American neocons fade from power. It might be Bush and company that France in specific and Europe in general distrust. If so, I can't exactly fault them for lack of discernment.
The trouble with that scenario, from the POV of unified Europe (or its individual nation-states), is that it still leaves the final decision-making power in the hands of America. The 'elder statesman' can't stop the brash young cowboy, if his mind is made up, unless the elder statesman also carries a gun.

If Europe wants to have actual power in the world, not just the ability to suggest and recommend and protest, they have to remilitarize.







Post#22 at 04-06-2004 02:34 PM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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The 'elder statesman' can't stop the brash young cowboy, if his mind is made up, unless the elder statesman also carries a gun.
Interesting statement. Obviously, H.C., what you mean by "if his mind is made up" is "if he is so bloody determined to do it that nothing short of a credible threat of war will make him reconsider, not trade sanctions, not diplomatic noncooperation, not loss of influence over the world's richest and most advanced economies."

After all, free will cannot be removed except by death. Even a threat of war is just a means of persuasion. So are other consequences that are not military in nature.

There are, or should be, many courses of action that we are not that stubborn about pursuing. Or, in your terminology, many courses of action on which our minds are not "made up."







Post#23 at 04-09-2004 11:51 AM by Zarathustra [at Where the Northwest meets the Southwest joined Mar 2003 #posts 9,198]
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Hey folks!

I just got back from a business trip in Chicago (since Monday) where I was too busy to even log on here.

I will read the Dead Soul article later today. For now, thanks to all for your responses. I sympathize strongly with Michael Lind (of LibNat fame) that nationalism is not some unnatural force. Nor is it is it a phenomenon whose good effects are yet spent and now by definition necessarily of negative impact.

I believe that Americans are a national community, but one that needs to "work and play well with others" and especially with those with whom it shares values and an advanced nature. This is not to say that we must cowtow to whatever the Europeans think and do: They have their own set of neuroses and pathologies.

I do however believe that nationalism is getting to a point where the form and level of community it represents, that it embodies, is less and less adequate to the tasks before us as this century unfolds and that some new structure will be required. And I am not sure "internationalism", per se, is the way there. I believe what will be necessary, and what the pains of evolution will likely provide (assuming we don't blow ourselves up first), will be as different from the ethnos/civilizational structure as that was from the okios/family band structure it replaced over the past six or so thousand years. The result, I strongly suspect, will be metacivilizational and metanational, not intercivilizational and international.

What does that mean more specifically? Damn good question. I am not sure. I have been dwelling hard on that but sometimes wonder if it is even possible to know with any useful detail.

Back to France . . . I really think America and Europe have a lot in common and have a lot to learn from each other, and yes, internationally. This internecine rivalry and bickering disturbs me. Even if one side or another has good cause to be annoyed or offended, we have far greater enemies and problems in common and are wasting time and energy in a disagreement that could escalate into something tragicaly worse if people don't start thinking clearly.

I'd like to get Bush and Chirac in a room and knock their heads together, tell them to wake up and start acting like adults.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.







Post#24 at 04-09-2004 12:43 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

I'd like to get Bush and Chirac in a room and knock their heads together, tell them to wake up and start acting like adults.
It's not a question of pride or immaturity, but simply a matter of conflicting perceptions of national (and sometimes personal) self-interest. Governments base their actions on that, and the bonds between them are contingent on those perceptions.







Post#25 at 04-09-2004 12:50 PM by HopefulCynic68 [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 9,412]
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Quote Originally Posted by William Jennings Bryan

Back to France . . . I really think America and Europe have a lot in common and have a lot to learn from each other, and yes, internationally.
It's not a coincidence that France is the center of the opposition to America's actions. France and America have certain cultural traits in common, including a deep-down, instinctive tendency to view themselves as the natural standard of measurement against which the rest of the world should be judged, politically, linguistically, and above all else culturally.

Thus, they are in a way natural rivals. America and France work best together when they perceive a common enemy, but even then the association tends to be prickly.

This internecine rivalry and bickering disturbs me.
It has a long and distinguished history. In his day, President de Gaulle had a visceral distrust of the United Nations Organization, which he perceived as being a tool of America that limited France's freedom of action. Sound familiar?
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