Why the French Act Isn't Funny Anymore

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 05:42 AM

Why the French Act Isn't Funny Anymore
Their resistance to helping in Afghanistan and Iraq is now downright dangerous

Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2004
It is easy to make fun of the French and their pompous pretense to the grandeur they shed a half-century ago when their loss of honor under Vichy, and then their loss of empire, relegated them to the rank of second-class power. But the fun is over. Before Sept. 11, France's Gaullist anti-Americanism as a form of ostentatious self-aggrandizement was an irritant. With a war on — three, in fact: Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism — France's willful obstructionism becomes dangerous and deadly.

That obstructionism was on amazing display at the recent NATO summit in Istanbul. The supremely courageous President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, flies there to beg for our troops to protect his country in the run-up to September elections. Two female election workers had already been murdered and some 16 men had been shot to death by insurgents for registering to vote....

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/k...661053,00.html

Southpaw · July 12th, 2004, 06:24 AM

The 19 Member Nations of NATO

Belgium

Germany

Luxembourg

Spain

Canada

Greece

Netherlands

Turkey

Czech Rep

Hungary

Norway

United Kingdom

Denmark

Iceland

Poland

United States

France

Italy

Portugal

Afghanistan seems to be missing from the list of member nations.

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty :

I don't see any connection between the treaty and what is going on in Afghanistan or Iraq. Kind of like wrong venue. I would interpret this effort to be a means to drag the international community into the US/Afghan affair. France says no thank you.

P.S. Krauthammer swings from the right side of the plate.

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

...I don't see any connection between the treaty and what is going on in Afghanistan or Iraq. Kind of like wrong venue. I would interpret this effort to be a means to drag the international community into the US/Afghan affair. France says no thank you...

Bottom line - Afghanistan is asking for additional help to ensure safe elections. France says no thank you.

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

P.S. Krauthammer swings from the right side of the plate.

What does this mean in regards to this article?

Southpaw · July 12th, 2004, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Djaughe

Bottom line - Afghanistan is asking for additional help to ensure safe elections. France says no thank you.

I disagree with your bottom line. Krauthammer has a huge French agenda as evidenced by his previous published articles on anything French. If Afghanistan wants safe elections, why go to NATO. The only member nation that has any Afghan interest in intervention is the USA. I would bet my bottom dollar that the Afghani delegation went to NATO with the prompting of the White House.

The White House has been begging for UN and NATO support in this affair and it hasn't been going too well. France has been stalwart in their resistance to supporting intervention in the mid east. Krauthammer is free to put his spin on the issue, but I don't have to believe it.

Pariah · July 12th, 2004, 07:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

The only member nation that has any Afghan interest in intervention is the USA.

How so?

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

If Afghanistan wants safe elections, why go to NATO....

Perhaps because NATO is already in afghanistan.....

MaoTosiFanClub · July 12th, 2004, 10:29 AM

You gotta love the French government. Just hypocritical, self-serving, and corrupt and many foreigners make our present Administration out to be. But don't tell that to those who seem to think that just because France was against the war in Iraq that the French government is some kind of peaceful entity.

Moderator Edit: All insults and references to one side of the political fence was removed from this message.

If you continue to not be able to police yourselves, we will do it for you.

PortlandCardFan · July 12th, 2004, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaoTosiFanClub

You gotta love the French government. Just hypocritical, self-serving, and corrupt and many foreigners make our present Administration out to be. But don't tell that to thosewho seem to think that just because France was against the war in Iraq that the French government is some kind of peaceful entity.

The French just realize that war is good for them.... since they can't win!!

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 11:22 AM

Taliban vow more attacks
Mon 12 July, 2004 08:36

By Saeed Ali Achakzai

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ousted Taliban has denied carrying out a weekend bomb attack in the western city of Herat that killed five people, but has vowed to disrupt preparations for landmark elections.

Mullah Dadullah, a senior military commander for the Taliban, said local rivalries between commanders within President Hamid Karzai's government were behind Sunday's blast, in which 34 people were wounded.

The attack took place just hours before forces loyal to powerful western governor Ismail Khan began handing in weapons under a nationwide disarmament drive which Khan has criticised.

In an interview published on Monday, Karzai told the New York Times that he viewed Afghanistan's private militias, like Khan's, as the greatest threat to stability in the country, not Islamic militants from the Taliban.

More than 800 people have been killed over the past year in a wave of violence mostly blamed on remnants of the Taliban, who are opposed to Karzai's U.S.-backed government and plans to hold elections in October and April.

Karzai said more forceful action was needed to deal with militias, which have often defied Kabul's orders and added to instability in the north and west.

"We tried to do it by persuasion," Karzai told the Times, referring to his style of governing through consensus more than force. "The stick has to be used, definitely," he added.

TALIBAN THREAT

Only about 10,000 of an estimated 50,000 militia fighters have been demobilised, one reason why parliamentary elections were postponed until next April.

The presidential election, which analysts say is less prone to interference from powerful factional leaders, is due to be held on October 9, after initially being planned for June. Karzai is widely expected to sweep to victory.

Dadullah, responsible for the Taliban's military operations in its former stronghold in southern Afghanistan, reiterated a warning for Afghans to stay away from polling stations.

"The people of Afghanistan should not go close to registration centres, because we have decided to step up attacks on them," he told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

More than 6.3 million out of an estimated electorate of nearly 10 million have registered to vote so far, despite militant attacks and threats.

The Taliban have been blamed for a series of attacks on Afghans working to register voters as well as the electorate itself. In the worst single atrocity, 16 bus passengers with voter registration cards were shot dead in the southern province of Zabul in June.

Karzai has urged NATO to contribute more troops to help stabilise the country ahead of what has been billed as the country's first ever direct vote, but member states have been slow to contribute forces.

Some 6,500 NATO-led peacekeepers patrol the streets of Kabul, while the U.S. military leads about 20,000 soldiers hunting Islamic militants including senior al Qaeda figures.

Southpaw · July 12th, 2004, 11:31 AM

If one ever gets a chance to travel to France, make sure you get to the small towns and villages. The people are pleasant, friendly and mostly attractive. Once in this town, find the biggest church in the center of that town. Nearby you will find a very large and old cemetary. Every town has one. This is where they bury their war dead.

Now take a stroll through that cemetary and note the dates of burial and age of the male residents. Now I warn you. This might not be pleasant. You will probably be able to decipher their rank and which war they died for. You will probably also be able to determine that many died right there in their region on a battlefield. It is quite convenient to bring your war dead home under these circumstances when most of the bloodiest land battles in the last 150 years were fought on French soil. Somewhere along the way, when most of the best and brightest of the young men of a country die in senseless wars, the society in general tires of war and gives diplomacy a chance.

I have done this and it is quite sobering. Must be the reason people, like me, develop an affinity for the French mentality that hesitates to go outside their borders or Outre Mer to join the fray. Algeria and French Cambodia were the last forays of this sort. Their government, unlike ours, stopped the funding and brought the Legion home.

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 11:33 AM

France vetoes Afghan mission

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
France yesterday blocked a U.S.-backed plan to use a special NATO force to safeguard elections in Afghanistan this fall, despite a plea from Afghan leaders that the troops are badly needed.
French President Jacques Chirac's veto of the plan on the second and final day of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's summit in Istanbul was the latest in a string of direct rebukes to President Bush in recent days and a sign that French-U.S. relations have not overcome the bitter divisions stemming from the Iraq war last year.
The Afghanistan mission was vetoed despite a direct plea from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who said continuing violence by Islamic fundamentalist forces in the country was a threat to the fledgling democratic government.
"I would like you to please hurry, as NATO, to Afghanistan. Come sooner than September," said Mr. Karzai, who traveled to Istanbul to make his appeal.
While President Bush in recent days has talked up trans-Atlantic unity and praised the early transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, Mr. Chirac has pointedly criticized U.S. positions on Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Even the leading French daily Le Monde said Mr. Chirac's remarks had earned him a reputation in Istanbul as a "killjoy."
"We are friends [of the United States], we are allies," Mr. Chirac said in the Turkish city, "but we are not servants."
The sharpest exchange — and the most politically sensitive for France — came over Mr. Bush's wholehearted endorsement earlier this week of Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The president was largely restating long-standing U.S. policy regarding Turkey, a major strategic ally, but Mr. Chirac took unusually strong exception.
Mr. Bush "has nothing to say on this subject," Mr. Chirac said. "It is as if I were to tell the United States how to manage its relations with Mexico."
The prospect of Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, joining the European Union is a deeply divisive issue in France, which faces severe social strains from its large and growing Muslim minority population. Many in Western Europe fear the immigration and labor-market effects of Turkey's membership on the bloc.
Mr. Chirac has said that he thinks eventual EU membership for Turkey is "desirable." But his own party, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, campaigned in the recent European Parliament elections against Turkey's bid.
Polls show that two-thirds of the French population opposes Turkish membership.
Mr. Bush and senior U.S. officials have attempted to brush off some of Mr. Chirac's more provocative statements, focusing instead on improving U.S.-European ties since the end of the Iraq war.
State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said U.S. and French leaders had "excellent meetings" at the Group of Eight summit in the U.S. state of Georgia, the U.S.-EU summit in Ireland, and the NATO gathering in Istanbul, all held this month.
But U.S. officials in Istanbul, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, were seething privately over the French veto of an expanded NATO mission in Afghanistan and are contemplating referring the question to a separate NATO military council of which France is not a member.
Mr. Karzai has implored the 26-nation alliance for more troops to provide security for critical national elections set for September. A NATO deployment now provides security for the capital, Kabul, and for a few outlying provinces.
Elements of the ousted fundamentalist Taliban regime have vowed to undermine the vote. Two female workers engaged in voter registration were killed by a bomb in the provincial capital of Nangarhar on Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks on voters and election officials.
"Tragically, we should expect that the terrorists and extremists will launch more such attacks to derail Afghanistan's historic elections," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a news conference in Kabul yesterday.
The Pentagon had supported a plan to use troops from the new NATO Response Force to provide extra security during the Afghan campaign season.
But Mr. Chirac objected, saying the force, which has a strong French contingent, was formed to meet major security crises affecting the alliance.
"It shouldn't be used in any old matter," he said in Istanbul.
The French also took the lead in opposing U.S. and British efforts to establish a clear role for NATO inside Iraq now that sovereignty has been officially transferred to an Iraqi interim government.
NATO leaders agreed to help train Iraqi security forces after France, Germany and other countries blocked more ambitious troop deployment ideas pushed by Washington and London.
But, even then, Mr. Chirac insisted that the training proposal meant that only individual NATO countries, not the alliance as a whole, could provide such help.
Sending troops into Iraq under NATO command would be "dangerous, counterproductive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people," he said.
In Istanbul, he also repeated his criticism of the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying American efforts to freeze Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of the peace process were misguided.

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

I have done this and it is quite sobering. Must be the reason people, like me, develop an affinity for the French mentality that hesitates to go outside their borders or Outre Mer to join the fray. Algeria and French Cambodia were the last forays of this sort. Their government, unlike ours, stopped the funding and brought the Legion home.

Perhaps france should just complete that mental vision you painted and step away from NATO.

DjaugheOld · July 12th, 2004, 11:41 AM

Building a better nation

Keeping the NATO myth alive

By Jackson Diehl

The Washington Post

A couple of years ago, when the Bush administration's unilateralists were still riding high, a senior official at the Pentagon told me that the mocking slogan for the trans-Atlantic alliance then circulating around his building went as follows: "NATO -- keep the myth alive!"

No doubt he never imagined that in the run-up to the 2004 election, his boss would be trying to do just that -- only without the sarcasm.

"I don't know when in the history of the alliance we've seen so many successes," a newly enthusiastic Donald Rumsfeld told the press traveling with him recently to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Istanbul.

He and other administration officials extolled NATO's decision to help train Iraqi security forces and its commitment of more troops to Afghanistan. They echoed President Bush's claim that the feuding about Iraq that nearly destroyed the alliance last year was over. "We got everything we wanted," one White House official said.

Such rhetoric is a logical response to John Kerry's tactic of making Bush's mismanagement of NATO, and its consequences in Iraq, a central part of his argument to voters. It is even partly true -- at least in the sense that the Bush administration is now eager to work with the allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, in contrast to the stiff-arm that Rumsfeld delivered to the Europeans hoping to join the first offensive against the Taliban in the fall of 2001.

The sad part is that, behind all the spin, the old Pentagon gibe is looking more and more apt. Having expanded to include most of Central Europe, and resolved to address the threats of the 21st century, America's most important international partnership is on the brink of a crippling failure -- one that would leave a President Kerry as well as a second-term Bush with little to work with.

The threat lies not in Iraq -- where continued trans-Atlantic discord in fact makes a full-blown NATO operation impossible -- but in Afghanistan, which NATO long ago adopted as a major ongoing mission. Last year, the allies resolved to expand a modest peacekeeping force in Kabul to provincial centers around the country, an operation crucial to bolstering the authority of the weak pro-Western government and making possible the national elections planned for this year.

Yet after months and months of haggling, European governments were only barely able to commit at Istanbul to staffing three new provincial centers, each with a couple of hundred troops. The cup-rattling forced on Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was humiliating: With 26 nations and 5 million soldiers to draw on, Scheffer struggled to obtain just three helicopters for the Afghan operation.

A desperate appeal for more help by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to the Istanbul summit essentially went unanswered. A promise was made to supply a couple of thousand more troops at the time of the elections, but no one knows where they will come from.

At best, NATO will have 8,400 troops under its command in Afghanistan by the fall, or about a fifth of the number it dispatched to tiny Kosovo in 1999. The United States has some 14,000 troops in the country, but none are under NATO's command.

"Afghanistan is the litmus test for NATO's new mission," says a European ambassador in Washington. "If we fail in Afghanistan, we might as well fold up and go home, because no one will take us seriously after that."

The mess points to the realities behind the happy talk from Istanbul. Though it now extols NATO rhetorically, the Pentagon's practical approach to it hasn't changed: No American troops have been pledged to the NATO Afghan mission, and proposals to bring the U.S. forces already there under NATO's umbrella have gone nowhere.

European governments doubt that Bush's conversion to multilateralism is real -- and consequently have little appetite for an operation that appears thankless as well as dangerous and expensive.

"The allies need more reassurance," the European ambassador told me. "We want to be assured that what we're now seeing is not multilateralism growing out of desperation -- because desperate multilateralism is not effective multilateralism."

Yet even if the Europeans were more enthusiastic, they might have little to contribute. Germany, the largest country in the European Union, has 270,000 soldiers in its army -- yet its commanders maintain that no more than about 10,000 can be deployed at any one time. No matter the politics, the German parliament is unlikely to authorize an increase in the current ceiling of 2,300 troops for Afghanistan.

And Germany is the largest contributor to the NATO operation. France, which has never liked the idea of NATO operations outside of Europe, has only 800 soldiers there.

For now, Bush's interest lies in glossing over this trouble. Kerry's pitch is that he can make it go away with a new, alliance-centered foreign policy. Both are, in effect, counting on the myth's staying alive -- at least until November.

MaoTosiFanClub · July 12th, 2004, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

If one ever gets a chance to travel to France, make sure you get to the small towns and villages. The people are pleasant, friendly and mostly attractive. Once in this town, find the biggest church in the center of that town. Nearby you will find a very large and old cemetary. Every town has one. This is where they bury their war dead.

Now take a stroll through that cemetary and note the dates of burial and age of the male residents. Now I warn you. This might not be pleasant. You will probably be able to decipher their rank and which war they died for. You will probably also be able to determine that many died right there in their region on a battlefield. It is quite convenient to bring your war dead home under these circumstances when most of the bloodiest land battles in the last 150 years were fought on French soil. Somewhere along the way, when most of the best and brightest of the young men of a country die in senseless wars, the society in general tires of war and gives diplomacy a chance.

I have done this and it is quite sobering. Must be the reason people, like me, develop an affinity for the French mentality that hesitates to go outside their borders or Outre Mer to join the fray. Algeria and French Cambodia were the last forays of this sort. Their government, unlike ours, stopped the funding and brought the Legion home.

Funny how you don't mention France's interests and dealings with the genocidal governments in Sudan, the former Iraqi dictatorship, and Rwanda. How diplomatic of the French government to jump in bed with oil companies who fund mass murderers. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Wally sounds like one of those libs I mentioned who only sees France as the government who was against the war in Iraq, not the one who still finances lless-publicized wars across the globe.