Fairly good article on TIME.com. I think that President Obama was more into his personal relationship with Sarkozy than the National venue. My viewpoint is that the UK, France, Canada and Germany are natural and economic allies of the first order.
Quelle haine, quelle ignorance dans les commentaires qui ont été envahis par les habitués du Drudge Report.
Ça s’apparente à la démence clinique à ce niveau là.
Ça fait froid dans le dos. Il y en a un tas dans le lot qui n’hésiterait pas une seule seconde à tous nous tuer si ils avaient le pouvoir de nous rayer de la carte.
Just a week before Christmas, two French soldiers protecting an American convoy in a-stan were killed in firefight against taliban. More recently, two weekends ago another French soldier was killed and several other wounded by IED.
Are French-Bashers in America celebrating? Yes. American Conservative Republicans find themselves in a true state of conflict, not against terrorism but against themselves. They hate the French so much that when one is killed, they’re not sure whether they should cheer for the Taliban or not. What a dilemna!
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Considering that I continue to hear and see French-bashing in cafes and as comments on Letters to the Editor, I am suprised that we do not have more activity on this site. Maybe we’re all responding, as required, at the appropriate place and site.
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Hello Poilu. Your comments prove just how ridiculous and insane that French bashing has become. It has never made any sense at all and people really need to stop hating French people. France isn’t a bad country.
Personnally I don’t think that French soldiers should be in Afghanistan. This has nothing to do with our national interest. This an American thing and we should withdraw from that ridiculous adventure. Sarkozy is wasting the blood of our soldiers for an absurd war.
Good news: Wizard has ceased publication. Given that, in addtion of being the poster child for everything that went wrong with amercian comics in the 90s, their tendancy to make enormous mistakes and not correcting them, and their adolescent fratboy “humor”, they were also notorious french-bashers, I consider this a good news.
From Miquelon.org – The Fighting French » Monitoring Anti-French Activity » Rep. Walter Jones, North Carolina
on
Freedom Fries™?
[…] it’s Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (NC). The man responsible for the French-baiting “freedom fries” fiasco [has] evolved into a thoughtful conservative critic of foreign warmongering, marking his […]
Thanks Fred – Sorry if I’ve been absent from the comment section lately. Been busy with other projects. I thought I’d write this SOTU just to remind people who these people were and what they said.
I was thinking about the Daily Mail article : the (conservative) Brits and Americans alike seems to be really, really pissed about Obama’s sentence… What I am sure though, is that it would be no good for France to have a similar “special relation” with Washington : look what is left to our once proud and powerful rival !
“The elites in Paris and Bonn”… Bonn? Germany’s capital was moved back to Berlin in the 90s, years before the Iraq invasion. When did he stopped updating his worldview?
The Bush administration did not achieve any of its goals in Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were found. Iraq is now a soft dictatorship and not a democracy. The outcome was just as Jacques Chirac had predicted.
Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal. Over 4,000 American soldiers were killed and many more wounded. Over 100,000 Iraqis were killed, many more were wounded. Over 4,000,000 Iraqis were displaced.
The American budget deficit has grown tremendously because of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. As a result, in the United States police officers, teachers and others are losing their jobs because there is not enough money.
Fear of the other –not “us”; therefore, to the primal mind, threatening and inimical to our interests (Rome versus Carthage) is seen as being “addressed” by our fellow watch-dogs of the crowd (nation, tribe, religious group, party, social group, etc.) in a sustained chorus of bashing directed at the “enemy’. And so this scene in America, most ludicrous, remains laughable —were it not so pathetic. I would admit these fools are not suffered “gladly” and that I, an American, do spit into their eye.
What kind of friend is it that: Acting alone in direct contradiction to formal agreement would conclude a separate peace treaty with the mutual enemy; this, after bankrupting his friend thru loans and direct military assistance ? Try the Jay Treaty.
My reply in answer to the first paragraph re bashing is: What do you expect ?
It is very strange to talk of the “elites” in France and Germany, a typically populist wording. Rumsfeld deliberately ignores that opposition to the war in Iraq was a mass phenomenon, and that his expression “old Europe” was widely disapproved of.
February 18, 2003 12:19 PM
TO: President George W. Bush
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: France
Attached is a memo the CIA prepared that is a snapshot of current French policy differences with the US. As you will note, a great many of them involve NATO.
You will recall Secretary-General Robertson said that somebody is going to have to deal with this problem, and only the US can do it. France is clearly trying to destroy NATO, in favor of the EU.
France is trying to define its role in the world by its opposition to almost everything the US proposes. Very few of these things are of an important, substantive nature. Rather, they reflect a consistent policy of opposing the US, instead of reflecting any set of principles or any philosophy.
As Colin, Condi and I discussed over the weekend, there is no question but that we are going to have to start moving more things into the Defense Planning Committee rather than the North Atlantic Council (NAC), since the NAC includes France and the Defense Planning Committee does not.
Respectfully,
Attach.
13 February 2003 CIA memo to SecDef in response to questions about France, 388209ID 2-03
Another document from the Rumsfeld Papers at rumsfeld.com
October 23, 2002 2:06 PM
SUBJECT: Illustrative List of Recent Examples of French Opposition to the United States
France objected in NATO to force the ISAF issue back to the Military Committee, so that NATO would not be allowed to help Germany and the Dutch in taking the leadership of ISAF until further meetings.
Missile Defense: France refused to allow MD options to even be discussed at a NATO Committee meeting last week.
Galileo: France has been and is still actively working with EU countries to get them to agree to overlay Galileo over US military frequencies, to our detriment.
France is opposing permitting NATO to work on civil emergency planning.
NATO Response Force: The French MoD spoke against the US-proposed Response Force when talking to the press after the Warsaw ministerial, saying it “couldn’t be out of area,” “had to be approved by the UN” and “couldn’t preempt.”
International Criminal Court: France is systematically threatening NATO and EU aspirants that France would oppose them getting in NATO or EU if they cooperated with the US on ICC and signed Article 98 agreements, and is working to get the EU to support their position.
France is aggressively opposing the US-proposed resolution on Iraq in the UN.
France continues to push for an EU force in Macedonia without first achieving a NATO/EU agreement.
France is continuing to block NATO multi-national cooperation on AWACS.
France refuses to cooperate fully with US efforts to capture PFWICs in the Balkans.
France continuously favors Arafat and inhibits US efforts to weaken him.
And still more.
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It’s about time that our government reasserted the fact that France is our greatest ally. If not for France, there probably would’nt be a United States. It’s ironic that this made the English angry. The ruthlesness with which they prosecuted the American Revolution pales even in comparison to the film ” The Patriot”.
@ Fred….yes, I’ve noticed this too. These are people who choose not to believe that France has taken a leadership role in this affair, preferring to fall back upon negative and false stereotypes to assuage their egos. Fact is…if tomorrow French troops would captured OBL alive, there would still be French-bashing in the US. Teaching these anti-French baiters a truth would be like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle.
Réponse à M Bourguilleau : “Chercher les racines du French Bashing dans l’histoire post-coloniale américaine peut sembler logique à un Français, mais c’est une erreur grossière.
En fait, comme nous l’avons souvent remarqué sur www.Miquelon.org – la grande majorité des Américains connaissent assez mal l’histoire de leur propre pays. Si quelques chroniqueurs de droite la connaissent (ceux du NRO par exemple), la majorité des intervenants vivent dans un monde qui puise ses sources dans la culture radio-télévisuelle du pays. Vous avez bien fait de citer les Simpsons, mais ce ne sont de fait qu’un facteur mineur. C’est auprès des Jay Leno (Le Ruquier américain, et c’est méchant pour Ruquier) – les Howard Stern et tout un pan des écrivains de films, de télé-séries qu’il faut se retourner. Ces derniers qui se complaisent à écrire des blagues a tour de bras ne savent puiser que dans le facile, le récent. La guerre d’Irak leur a permis de ressasser la mémoire de la défaite de 1940. Français = pouilleux, capitulard, défaitiste, vichyste en son sein.
L’autre moteur du French Bashing est bien évidemment le parti Républicain qui déteste le modèle social et politique français avec une véhémence sans égal. Si l’hyper-majorité des anti-Français politiques se trouvent dans leurs rangs, ce n’est pas une erreur ni un hasard. La droite, les Républicains, détestent l’idée d’un système de sécurité sociale à la Française. Donc, pour désarmer leurs rivaux politiques, les Démocrates progressistes, les Républicains ont détruit leur idole: la France. “
On a side note, Arnaud sent us an email during the height of the horrors in Japan. An American blogger, based in Japan wrote a piece suggesting French cowardice was at play when the Quai d’Orsay issued an advisory note asking French citizens to leave the Tokyo region as soon as possible.
It has not always been that way. Even after World War II, there were positive portrayals of Frenchmen in american pop culture, like Emile de Becque in South Pacific, Lebeau in Hogan’s Heroes, or Inspector Henri Barthélémy in French Connection II. It seems to have changed in the seventies, probably because Americans needed a scapegoat after their defeat in VietNam in 1975. Of course, it’s only a theory, but something tells me that if they did a remake of Hogan’s Heroes, Lebeau would become a Vichy spy trying to pin something wrong on Hogan.
Bonne réponse miquelon.
Tu as entièrement raison. Mais quand je vois que la plupart des commentaires sur ce site donnent raisons aux French-bashers, c’est désespérant.
Ignorance is bliss…
A quick scan through most news sites and various blogs and forum regarding the Libyian crisis will show a sharp increase in French-bashing. It’s quite remarkable, given leading role France has taken in this affair. What we have always suspected is really now true, anti-French sentiment in large segments of the American population has not only taken hold, but have become popular and part of the national conscience. Historical revisionism plays a large part in this. The anti-French hatred has no bounds.
If tomorrow, an Al-Qaida terrorist destroys Paris with a nuclear device, I predict the Conservatives/GOP members would immediately become card-carrying members of the official OBL glee/fan club.
La France sous les projecteurs – French Morning : Entre son leadership dans l’intervention libyenne et la déconfiture des élections cantonales, les journalistes américains ne ratent pas une occasion de décortiquer les hauts et les bas de la popularité de Nicolas Sarkozy. La sortie américaine de “Potiche” et le portrait de Claude Angeli du Canard Enchaîné dans le NY Times placent aussi la France sous les feux de la rampe.
France is the armpit of europe, hence why you have not been invaded in years. Noone wants to. A tourist bus from Luxembourg once tried to enter and a guy had a pair of toenail clippers and half your army surrendered.
Funny how you surrendered, and have not replied unless with a fake account. Must be in your genes, to give up. Why not post my comments you were responding to, typical french coward! for the whole conversation not just Pepe’ LeStinks comment follow me @ ElvisKnievil
I am so glad you allowed our banter to be posted. Why live in America if you are hated? Cause we are still better than France. Not true, then move back. You are the only people who could turn a great thing like Disneyland, a place everyone in the world wants to go, into an atrocity noone wants to visit. Do you salt snails to watch them die or taste better?
By the way I have been to your country a few times while in your former occupiers country. I would have let the allies take it back to. hy is your fighter named the mirage, cause during wars it isnt there. The only french to invade are the salemen. Chirac the hero in legal trouble? Sell nukes and weapons to Iraq, and we’re the bad guys. Your most famous general was Corsican? He built the Arc de Triumph, how’d that campaign end again?
Miquelon incorrectly talked about Texas gaining independence from Mexico by surrenduring to the US. The difference between the battle of the Alamo, a small inrrelevant church and the entire country of France, is that the Texasn were outnumbered 20 to 1 and chose to fight on, not like the entire French population of which 1.5 million soldiers who went into captivity rather than fight. Americans fight, while the French talk. We do both better.
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