France-Bashing

The WWII thing is that they lost so quickly and were occupied and under a puppet regime. Somehow this suggests that if they had just had more will to fight they would have beaten back the Germans (go Green Lantern!) Of course, Poland fared even worse, but I guess they're not relevant enough to enter the discussion- don't forget Poland!

Ahh, but France, nominally the diplomatic leader of Europe, refuses to get involved in Darfur [I believe there's a quote like "we cannot be the world's gendairmes"], and also doesn't have a very good track record in Rwanda either.

Yeah - the WWII thing had to do with the speed of their loss and the subsequent existence of the Vichy government. I don't think a comparison to Poland is valid; Poles weren't (and aren't) claiming to be a great power.

Also, on the larger point, I think the France bashing is less about French reluctance to get involved and more about France's continued failures when it does get involved. E.g., the famous Google page on French military victories, and the related page of defeats.

The French believe they can analyze situations, figure out what is in their interests and what is not, and then act on that information. They're obviously deluded.

Prior to WW2, the Army of France had a tremendous reputation. Partly from the long wars with England, partly from the Napoleonic wars, and partly from the fact that the Army held firm in WW1 despite being led to slaughter after slaughter by grossly incompetent boobs. (Of course, I've skipped the debacle of the Franco-Prussian war.) This reputation for tenacity was why the collapse of France during the Sichelschnitt plan was so shocking -- the army that had held out against the Germans from 1914-1917 in such gruesome conditions had suddenly failed. Of course, the failure was partly Britain's too, but we tend to forget that because of the Battle of Britain which came shortly after.

France, nominally the diplomatic leader of Europe, refuses to get involved in Darfur [I believe there's a quote like "we cannot be the world's gendairmes"], and also doesn't have a very good track record in Rwanda either.

Surely, this is what most clearly differentiates France and the US.

France's foreign policy can be criticized for many things, but an unwillingness to use force ain't among them. You could argue that France is too cynical or too invested in its own glory.

The WWII thing is shite. The French had three wars in three generations with the Germans. Most of a generation was wiped out in the Great War. Americans who talk like this just show that the French have nothing when it comes to being smug assholes.

It's bizarrre that francophobia seems to be part of the nation's 'anglo-saxon heritage' we're most stuck on.

I think it's worth adding a few details to Matt's account of the French position about intervention. As I recall, they stressed the importance of inspections backed up by the threat of force. On more than one occasion, Chirac had highly favorable things to say about the value of Bush's credible threat of force in securing cooperation from Hussein. France's position, roughly speaking, was that we had Hussein on a short leash, which we were in a position to shorten at will to get what we needed. They were right not because France has a uniguely magnificent record of brilliant foreign policy--the history cited above by other commenters shows otherwise--but because it was so easy to be right. It's remarkable, by contrast, how much effort was necessary to get things wrong by falsifying the evidence torturing arguments into shape and bending principles beyond recognition.

France also has a post-WWII history of military and political intervention in its (mostly former) empire, most horribly in Algeria, up to just a few years ago, when it intervened in the Cote d'Ivoire (by destroying its entire Air Force).

The Fench lost more men in World War One than the U.S. has lost in all its wars combined. More French died in WWII than Americans (the U.S. lost more soldiers, the French lost many civilians). The valor of the French nation and its soldiers (historically speaking) should never be questioned. However, bashing the French for their reluctance in Iraqi is easy. Those of the ilk of Peretz need some country to bash and the other important countries that demurred, i.e. China, Russia and Germany, are all more difficult to tar with the "spineless" brush than France. As we know, Russia and Germany have a history of launching aggressive wars they lost. China's abilities are remembered from Korea.

If it wasn't France it'd be someone or something else the Right was demonizing. They're staring at a colossal flop of a war and need to set up as many entities to blame for their failure as possible. It's never their policies that are the problem, it's other people and their failings.

I think France-bashing is a pretty good way to out yourself as a bore, but it's hard to be an active Francophile in the US. Speaking French, or anyway affecting a few French words, for instance, is unstylish because it feels both pretentious and dated (compared to Spanish or Chinese, say) not to mention suspiciously uncommercial. No one talks about military history anymore, either, so Martel-La Fayette-Napoleon hero worship is out, too.

Next time you hear someone disparage the French role in the leadup to Iraq, pump them for details. I guarantee you'll get precious few. I've done it several times and the normal response is hemming and hawing.

France was a convenient bogeyman for the war's cheerleaders, and they were able the sell the meme thanks to the profound ignorance of the American people combined with the lackiness of the press.

Ahh, but France, nominally the diplomatic leader of Europe, refuses to get involved in Darfur [I believe there's a quote like "we cannot be the world's gendairmes"], and also doesn't have a very good track record in Rwanda either.

And the U.S. record on this is better?

I think the France face here would be a better choice of graphic.

Its pretty obvious that to a certain number of Americans, its attitudes, not actions, that matter. The real French vice isn't martial weakness - its impudence.

I think this attitude, with this underlying cause, goes all the way back to WW2 itself. FDR strongly disliked De Gaulle because De Gaulle refused to behave as a supplicant.

France bombed GreenPeace. 'Nuff Said.

There is a long history of French bashing in the US. I think it is because the dominant intellectual tradition in the US is British (for obvious reasons), and those prejudices were reinforced by the strong influence of German intellectual traditions (also anti-French), which were ironically imported in large part by Jewish refugees in the 1940s. French philosophical and critical thought has always been an outsider in the US and anti-French intellectual prejudice is well established here. Even in the 1980s it was an act of political dissidence and implicitly anti-American to declare intellectual allegiance to people like Foucault. French bashing certainly has a long tradition - most people here are probably to young to remember the outrage on the Right when France wouldn't let US Planes cross French air space to bomb Libya in the mid-80s. The American Right has always distrusted France.

ga73, No. That's the point. Sheesh.

There is also the sense behind a lot of France-bashing that, because we saved their ass in WW2, they must forever remain our bitch.

Then someone clever brings up the fact that the Frence saved our ass during the Revolution and we are off. Who owes who?

Has anybody worked out a system of historic debt? Is liberation from the Germans worth 200 points while independence from England only worth 130? Or do the points just fade with time.

No, TheCraig. The Revolutionary War debt was repaid in WWI (See Gen. Pershing: "Lafayette, we are here"). Thus, France still owes us for WWII.

Aaron S. Veenstra -- Hah. Well said, sir.
J --- Very good points.

For my part, I'll just say that in 2002 French-bashing became the flipside of the hawks' case for invading Iraq. The hawks said the invasion was necessary and would be easy, and the corollary was that France could oppose the invasion only because its people were so pusillanimous and generally despicable.

Since then events have destroyed every part of the hawks' case except for the French bashing, which can survive because it relies solely on prejudice. So the hawks cling to it as part of their continuing game of make-believe in which they can pretend being proven wrong somehow doesn't keep them from being right.

not claiming it isn't hypocritical, but some of it comes from the sense that, in many situations, the french are being obstructionist merely to bring the US down a peg. put another way, the french still have pretensions to superpowerdom, but it's hard to see on what basis they should currently be afforded such respect. put yet another way, why is france on the security council? (not saying england should be either.)

as to not questioning french courage, etc., the french really didn't have their heart in the fight in WWII, though they may have had good reason to be weary of war. and french deaths in WWII made sense -- the germans invaded/occupied them, people are gonna die. by contrast, there's less reason for the US to sacrifice citizens liberating france from the germans, when the US could just sit back behind its ocean, fairly safe from the german menace (yes, i realize it would have been bad for the US to have a europe dominated by the nazi, etc.). so, reasonable or not, the perception is that we did the french a favor. how long you get to keep playing that card is another issue.

Has somebody brought to our attention again that silly "Complete Military History of France" article. It's cherry-picked nonsense, and many of the examples are simply wrong. Various wars the French clearly won are spun as defeats or flukes or draws (Hundred Years War, Thirty Years War, Dutch War, American Revolution, French Revolutionary Wars, early Napoleonic wars, World War I) while other victories are simply ignored entirely (Crimean War, 1859 Italian War).

Even beyond whether the French win, the idea that the French are big on surrendering is completely bizarre and perverse. It has exactly 1 example going for it - 1940. Looking at most French wars throughout history, what one generally sees is an unwillingness to accept defeat. Going backwards...

1) Algeria - the French fight with horrifying ferocity for 8 years before calling it a day and withdrawing.
2) Indochina - the French fight for 9 years before giving up.

Compare to lengthy British struggles against colonial independence...except that there weren't any, since the British almost always gave up immediately (probably a wise thing to do)

3) World War I - the French fight doggedly for four years in horrible trench warfare, despite the collapse of one main ally and several serious German offensives. Throughout (save one mutiny in 1917), the French hurl ineffectual offensive after ineffectual offensive at the German lines.

4) Franco-Prussian War - the French fight on for months after their main army is utterly destroyed at Sedan, including a lengthy and hopeless siege of Paris.

5) Napoleonic Wars - Napoleon won't accept reasonable peace terms after Leipzig in 1813, and instead fights on until allied troops put artillery on the heights of Montmartre. Even so, he's able to come back from exile, rally the country behind him, and fight yet another campaign before the whole thing comes to an end.

6) French Revolutionary Wars - Despite widespread internal revolt and foreign invasion, the revolutionary authorities fight on and eventually succeed in defeating both.

7) War of the Spanish Succession - the French reject humiliating peace terms in 1709, and fight on for four more years, securing themselves considerably better peace terms in the process.

8) The Hundred Years War - the Dauphin fights on from an apparently hopeless position in 1420, eventually going on to entirely crush the previously triumphant English.

With the exception of 1940, the clear trend of French military history, whether it ends in defeat or victory, appears to be a dogged determination to go on, and not to admit defeat. When France is defeated, it's usually due to over-enthusiasm for the offensive - this is the paradigm of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, and it repeats itself at, for instance, Sedan and in the unsuccessful offensives of World War I.

Somehow, the biggest anomaly in French military history (1940) has somehow come to be seen as the model, and thus we get ridiculous burlesques of history like the one Al links. Genuine archetypes of French military performance are a) overconfidence; and b) unwillingness to admit defeat. France has certainly been defeated in numerous wars, but the idea of the French as craven cowards who are constantly surrendering is ridiculous. The fact that the English are generally the originators of this stereotype is particularly lame. It's easy to be "brave" and resist the Nazis when you're on an island.

The French performance in 1940 is nothing to be proud of, but it's also not much of a general model of French history.

As we know, Russia and Germany have a history of launching aggressive wars they lost.

So does France...

Actually, I'd say France has a much more familiar history of launching aggressive wars than Russia does. Russia invaded Afghanistan, I guess, but otherwise I can't point to any obvious examples - some Russo-Turkish wars, perhaps, but these are hardly familiar to anybody. What Russia has is a history of winning defensive wars. It's hard to say that the Russians are craven cowards when you look at their performance in World War II. It's much easier to do with the French.

let's not forget that the French had important commercial interests in the Saddam Iraq that were at risk with our hostile takeover. They knew we were blackmailing them (join us or kiss your biz goodbye), and they chose to try to block us diplomatically. Perfiduous frogs!

John is exactly right. In the old days before PC when people really knew their ethnic stereotypes the French were correctly mocked for their arrogance and superciliousness, not for their cowardice. It was the Italians who were the "surrender monkeys." In fact most of Marty's stupid jokes were probably told about Italians 20 years ago.

"The WWII thing is shite. The French had three wars in three generations with the Germans. Most of a generation was wiped out in the Great War." True. Five percent of the French population died in WWI (one million out of a population of 20 million). That would equate to about 15 million deaths in the U.S. today. Tens of thousands more were grievously wounded - some so grievously that they had to be hidden from sight in camps for the so-called grands mutilés. Of men who were of prime fighting age in 1914-1918 (i.e., those born from about 1890 to 1900), well over half were killed or wounded. It is said that by 1939 France was a nation of old people and cripples.

I must say that "superciliousness and arrogance" are far more accurate stereotypes than cowardice. What bugs Americans about France is the fact that France stands up to it. What bugs the French about America is that its existence makes it hard for France to pretend it is the centre of the world.

"Russia invaded Afghanistan, I guess, but otherwise I can't point to any obvious examples - some Russo-Turkish wars, perhaps, but these are hardly familiar to anybody. "

In addition to Afghanistan, the Soviet Union invaded its client states, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, though I don't know if you call those wars. In 1939, they invaded Poland and Finland, intending conquest. In 1929 they invaded Manchuria to get commercial concessions. In 1920, they invaded Persia. In 1911, the Russian Empire invaded Persia. For centuries prior to this, Russia was in an almost constant state of aggressive warfare against the Muslim nations of central asia, and against the Ottoman Empire.
Russia did not get to be that big by the Czars marrying well and getting good inheritances.

Njorl,

I'd add 1944-1948. I mean, sure, you could say it all started defensive, but then they stuck around.

I remember George Will's despicable piece a couple of years ago on the 'France surrenders' bullshit. It came at the same time as an exhibition of photographs from the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

But ignorance gets you further in American political discourse than knowledge, doesn't it? (I'm looking at you, Al, and your nice little sinecure as paid troll.)

France still owes us for WWII.

Oh, fuck right off. Which beach did you land at, you craven stack of shit?

The idea that the French are cowardly pacifists is nonsense--and they have their military bootprints all over Africa to prove it. A much more legitimate critique, however, is that the cynical, amoral self-interest that governs French foreign policy makes the paranoid fantasies of the most fanatical Bush-Cheney-Halliburton conspiracy theorist look tame by comparison.

Rwanda has been mentioned (France was a close ally of the Hutu-chauvinist government that perpetrated the genocide of Tutsis in 1994), as has the "Rainbow Warrior" incident and the French commercial involvement with Saddam Hussein. The extent of the latter hasn't been elaborated on, though--and it was pretty ugly. The nuclear reactor that the Israelis destroyed in 1981, for example, was largely built by the French. French companies and government figures were also neck-deep in the "oil for food" scandal--that is, they were helping Saddam Hussein divert oil revenues from food purchases to military procurement, in return for a hefty profit.

In light of this history, the claim that French diplomatic obstruction of the American invasion was motivated by principled belief in the IAEA's inspection regime is a little hard to swallow.

Dan,

Old world cynicism is a lot less dangerous than the idea that everyone in the world wants to live just like Americans, and will welcome being militarily humiliated and occupied.

I really miss Nixon.

I failed to restrict myself to 20th Century wars. France had more than a few during the 19th Century to be sure, but such are seldom used to France's advantage, if you want to call it that. The beasts of the 20th Century were Germany, Russia and China. The countries we wanted to beat the shit out of at various times.

Regarding World War II and the French debt. Just find me a quote in 1941 that implies we went to war with Germany to specifically save France's ass. It can be argued, and often is, that eventually the Soviets would have won the war even without the U.S. So, let's say France provided a reason for us to enter the war and not allow the Soviets to take all of Europe. We owe them, of course.

I see the France-US Feud as just a college football rivalry on a bigger scale. We're never actually going to go to war with them, we're functionally allies, but we just like to rhetorically beat up on them. They do the same to us.

And though I like to make jokes about cheese eating surrender monkeys as much as the next guy, to be fair if the germans had the courtesy to attack the Maginot Line where all the soldiers where they probably would have put up a good fight. Of course, only a fucking dunce would attack a huge line of artillery when they can just go around it and roll straight into paris.
So the pathetic performance of the French in world war II can be more properly attributed to poor strategy than to cowardice.

France bashing was a staple of British culture for a long time, before the colonization of the U.S. It's just a cultural artifact.

Two things:

1. Too lazy to Google, but I seem to recall France repelling an invasion of Chad by the Libyans in the 1980s, and creating a "safe zone" in Rwanda in the 1990s, with no assistance from us. As far as I know, they didn't ask, either. The French Foreign Legion is still around, and deadly. If you ever get sick of your life, you can volunteer for the FFL (no matter where you come from), and after 7 years of service, you will be provided with a new identity, some money, and access to French social welfare services.

2. French-bashing is a result of both the fact that French people feel their society is every bit the equal (or better) than any other in the world, and more subtle heuristic cues. Americans cannot get their minds around the idea that men who cross their legs and smoke daintily are as perfectly capable of courageous action as a swaggering chaw-spitter.

France's "rep" for weakness and appeasement comes, of course, from World War II.

Personally, I think the mutiny of the French Army in 1917 marked the end of France as a credible military power. The largest army in Western Europe certainly did not display much martial ardor in May 1940.

I also question this:

But in 1938, France was the non-axis country most eager to fight Germany. Going to war without the support of England, the USSR, or the United States would have been a horrible policy.

Well, let's not confuse "most eager" with "eager". Here is a blurb on Paul Reynaud, France's own Winston Churchil:

Paul Reynaud was born at Barcelonnette, France on October 15th, 1878 and died September 21st, 1966. Reynaud's father made a fortune in the textile business which enabled Paul to attend universtiy and become a lawyer. Like most he served in World War I.
After the war he entered politics first representing his home district from 1919 to 1924 and from 1928 he represented the district of the Bourse in Paris in the Chamber of Deputies He served as minister of finance, of colonies and of justice between 1930 and 1932. Out of office until 1938, he was almost alone in calling on France to resist Nazi Germany and to prepare for combined arms warfare, as recommended by Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Appointed minister of justice in April 1938, he protested the appeasement of Germany by Great Britain and France and resigned from his parliamentary bloc when its leader congratulated Adolf Hitler after the Munich Conference (which allowed Germany to occupy large sections of Czechoslovakia). During his time in the wilderness he, like Winston Churchill in Great Britain, called for resistance to Germany and the building of strong forces to oppose aggression. From November 1938 to March 1940 Reynaud was minister of finance, in which post he sponsored austerity measures to put the French economy on a war footing.
Reynaud became premier on March 21st, 1940 by only one vote with most of his own party abstaining. Tragically for France he was forced to accept Edouard Daladier the former premier, as minister of defense, a man Reynaud held partially responsible for the condition of the French Army. He made de Gaulle undersecretary of state for war and, as France was collapsing under the German onslaught that May, he urged French resistance and maintenance of the alliance with Britain. But Marshal Philippe Pétain, a World War I hero whom Reynaud had made vice-premier to strengthen his cabinet, and other ministers preferred armistice with Germany. Unwilling to be party to an armistice, Reynaud resigned on June 16; arrested shortly thereafter, he was kept in captivity for the duration of the war.

I have a joke.

Q: What did the neocon say after he was proven entirely wrong and thousands of people had died as a result?

A: Look at that Frenchman!

France in 1940 had poor military and political leadership and an understandable aversion to repeating the slaughter of WWI. U.S. support for France and Britain against Germany, Italy and Russia in 1940 was grudging, lukewarm and utterly inadequate. We were not adequately prepared to fight either Germany or Japan before Pearl Harbor. U.S. political and military leadership during WWII was far superior to that of France, but geography was our savior in 1941 and 1942. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,(and Hitler's invasion of Russia), not superior courage, wisdom or morality, gave us time to recover from our mistakes and turn disaster into victory.

The "French as cowards" meme has only really gotten traction since the 80s when they refused to let the US use their airspace to hit Libya. The discussions of WWII are simply a post hoc and fallacious attempt to project a pattern backwards through history.

(That being said, French collaboration with the Germans was pretty despicable.)

Maybe the funniest part of this is that today the U.S. is like a housewife standing on a chair and screaming about a mouse in the kitchen. Somewhere "out there", across several oceans, the Caliphate is being forged that will, that must be victorious, if we fail to act now.

Maybe a little truth in that. Heaven knows the French would never have put up with George Bush for so long. And certainly our working classes have done a pi*s-poor job of getting decent vacations, job security, or health care.

A lot of people don't understand the Maginot Line. One purpose of the Maginot Line was to force the Germans to go through Belgium to attack France, because an invasion of Belgium would be sure to draw in the English.

As for collapsing, MacArthur got driven into Corregidor by a Japanese force one-third the size of his own. This, of course, after he ignored the Navy warning to disperse his planes, and had all of them destroyed on the ground. So we have a few military "geniuses" of our own.

Best car I ever owned- a Citroen DS 19. Introduced in 1952, it looked a lot like late model cars look today, but was technologically very superior. Probably too late now for America to ever make a car that good.

I just had my attorney draw up a living will: "If I ever descend to the level of posting mass e-mail jokes on my blog, pull the motherfucking plug!"

Sadly, this is too late for Marty Peretz.

Re: there's less reason for the US to sacrifice citizens liberating france from the germans, when the US could just sit back behind its ocean, fairly safe from the german menace

Um, let's remember here that Nazi Germany declared war on the US and promptly began attacking US assets (mostly shipping) wherever it was possible to do so. We did not go to war in 1941 for altrustic reasons and sitting "safe" behind our oceans was not an option

Re: Somewhere "out there", across several oceans, the Caliphate is being forged that will, that must be victorious, if we fail to act now.

Nice to hear from an alternate reality! In our world however there is no Caliphate and hasn't been since 1922. There are some few would-be looney tunes who imagine themselves as potential caliphs, but they're on the same level as those who try to promote themselves to Pope or Dalai Lama. At best they may gain a few ragtag followers. Meanwhile, no serious Muslim government (not Saudi Arabia, not Syria, not Egypt, certainly not Shi'ite Iran which doesn't even believe in a Caliphate) has any desire or project for reviving the Caliphate.

"the claim that French diplomatic obstruction of the American invasion was motivated by principled belief in the IAEA's inspection regime is a little hard to swallow."

Hindsight has proven the French objections to the Iraq War to have been 100% correct. Why, therefore, look for hidden motives? Occam's Razor, dude!

Chad Okere: "France-bashing was a staple of British culture for a long time, before the colonization of the U.S. It's just a cultural artifact."

True but misleading. Yes, we've almost never got along with the French - but we didn't think they were cowards. Aggressive, cruel, tyrannical, rapacious, unwashed, overbearing, and smelling strongly of garlic, yes, but not cowards. England - and later Britain - was at war, hot or cold, with France for much of the last thousand years, starting at a little place on the south coast called Senlac Field and going on through Crecy, Harfleur, Agincourt, La Rochelle, the Hougue, Blenheim, Quebec, the Nile, Trafalgar, Badajoz and Waterloo.

You don't have that sort of history with another country without building up a fairly good impression of their courage. They were never cowards - they just happened to be on the wrong (i.e. not our) side.

There's always some nationality to stick it, too.

In Eric Ambler novel, Background to Danger, from the eve of WW2, the hero is on the run for a murder he didn't commit and is trying to escape the country (Austria) by going through an Alpine frontier. In one incident, he's recognized by a British commercial traveler who doesn't believe the hero's innocence and won't shake hands with him as they part. He unloads a paragraph or two of invective on ALL the non-English Europeans that he's seen in his travels, about all their cruelty and rapacity and shoddy thieving business practices. Letting the murderer go was the salesman's way of getting a bit back at them all. It reminds me of the whole clash of civilization spiel, except it drew the circle of enlightenment smaller: England.

Jeffery Davis: a rather less pleasant way of putting the same thing was the old English saying "Wogs begin at Calais". Wog is a pejorative term for anyone living in the Middle East or North Africa.

I think the 1990s Algeria experience (in which France and the US had to support a military coup after an election resulted in a landslide Islamist victory) was the main reason for France refusing to support the invasion of Iraq.

USA 1973: "Better Pinochet than Commies!"
France 2003: "Better Saddam than Shari'ah!"

I think that another important reason for the recent strong trend of French-bashing (not talking of the usual Anglo-inherited francophobia) in English-speaking America comes from the fact that the French do not form a significant community in the USA. There are African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Sino-Americans, etc. but no such identified nor politically active community called "French-Americans". As a matter of fact, except for a few specific parts of their former colonial empire (namely Eastern Canada, Northern Algeria and New Caledonia - think of the almost empty-of-French Louisiana territory when it was purchased!), the French have seldom been willing to settle overseas - when paralelled to the migration of British populations to their colonies of America, Australia or New Zealand, the comparison is striking.

What I mean is: no French-Americans - no political correctness needed. Take any other ethnic group that has a significant and politically active population in the US and replace the word "French" by the name of the said ethnic group in the usual anti-French jabber, and hear how "cool" (and eventually hazardous) it sounds in our perfect PC world...

Indeed, I understand that this reason doesn't tell it all, but I think that this partly explains why French-bashing can flourish with impunity among even educated Americans who would otherwise be justly shocked and righteously offended to hear the same stuff said of any other ethnic group.

I may be wrong, of course.

[["There are some few would-be looney tunes who imagine themselves as potential caliphs ... At best they may gain a few ragtag followers. Meanwhile, no serious Muslim government ... has any desire or project for reviving the Caliphate." ]]

In a nutshell, this is the seminal error of the current liberal worldview, and it sounds remarkably like those who snickered at Hitler's popularity. It is not a belief usually found among those who have lived in the Third World and understand how fragile the American (or European) infrastructure really is, and how little it will take to make a significant portion of the house of cards collapse. The real reason -- unspoken -- that the Europeans, Russians or Chinese do nothing to help the situation is that the smart ones understand that a massive structural collapse here, which could come from a very low-tech attack, both benefits and strengthens them at our expense.

If we're lucky, it's recoverable in a few months with perhaps only a few hundred thousand dead from starvation & lack of fuel/electricity/medicine. If we're not, and it's an EMP, the infrastructure is crippled for years and millions are dead.

Either way -- and this is where the left has not learned from history -- the unavoidable result is martial law, wartime powers at a level unheard of since the Civil War, and a very good chance of nuclear retaliation against whomever seems the likeliest of suspects (today, Iran).

If we're really lucky, the Israelis will buy us time with a pre-emptive strike, but the terrorism against the West will never stop until the retaliation is so massive that even a backward, 8th-century culture is shocked into reality.

But let's not pretend that France, or any other country, is sitting on the sidelines out of any sense of morality. They're just hoping to feast on the bones of the biggest beast without risking anything in the short term. Like most governments, they seem to ignore the obvious fact that they may also pay in the long run by sitting this dance out, but of course no one votes for long-term solutions, only short ones.

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