18 thoughts on “GOODWILL AND SENSE FROM THE FRENCH”

1. Is it just me or do you find it ironic that a Frenchman asked if we wanted another Vietnam. If I remmeber correctly, that mess was largely THEIR fault. Insert comment about stone throwing and glass houses.

2. “Going to war without the French is like going deerhunting without an accordion.”
   Gotta credit Steve with that one – neither of us have any idea where it’s from.

3. The French will remain allies, but more and more marginally over time.
   Their punishment, both just and more acutely shaming and hurtful than any doomsday conservative prescription in the here and now, will be to watch as they are slowly eclipsed in relevance by Japan, India, Turkey, and eventually those badly brought-up Eastern European states.

4. do you really think it would matter to us if France was no longer an ally? I can see Britain, Russia, hell even Spain. But France?
   good point about the french in vietnam. the french were having trouble over there since the mid 1800’s then in the 1950’s they just pulled out leaving no clear leader and the government in the south no other option but to ask the U.S. for help.
   “The last time France wanted more evidence, it rolled right through France with
   a German flag.” –David Letterman

5. I dunno who does your tranlslation but it could use some help. The cretin who replied to you in french meant to say:
   “Go **** yourself, you bunch of meathead/rednecks/etc*. Bush and his entire administration should die drowned in the Iraqi oil”.
   * A “blaireau” is a badger – a pejorative slang term that implies stupidity and lack of sophisticaction, to put it mildly)
   Makes a bit more sense that way, n’est pas?
   Anyway, France does indeed suck in many, many ways but disagreeing with this war, for whatever self-interested sleazy reason Chirac might have, is not one of them. Oh how it pains me to say that…You have no idea.

6. It’s going to be great to see how the “enlightened” french function under sharia law. Due sometime in the ’30s if not earlier.

7. Um, the last sentence is completely mistranslated– the actual sentiment is significantly nastier than simply imagining Bush bathing in oil.
   Here’s my rendition of the French venom in all its charming glory:
   Go fuck yourselves, you gang of fat Blairites! Long live France! May Bush and his entire administration die drowned in his Iraqi oil!
   Also, the fake e-mail address means something much closer to “filthycuntof@merica” than it does to “dirty,stupid@merican”.

8. Hi there, i’m french, i’m 13 years old; and i’d like to tell how the hell all that shit it pisses me off…war, what’s that?? inoscent people who die, and an american pseudo-president who makes money on those death…i’m gonna tell you: bush is a weapons dealer, hussein is a king(pin) on his throne and he don’t want to fuck off, and chirac is a guy at the middle of that shit, and trying stopping the war, he kills franco-u.s relations, and makes some american very angry (but those ones are…huh….stupid) against France. So americans are motherfuckers?? WRONG, they have a government of motherfuckers; Iraquians are motherfuckers?? WRONG TOO, they have Hussein. But the real problem in all that shit, it’s that people (we), can do nothing to stop that. but i’m gonna tell you something, i am against war, and the guys who want it, they can go doing it in Iraq and die for it, i don’t care. and if bush want war, he can take a gun and go to baghdad and enjoy, i won’t stop him, but that he let us quiet!
   (if you want to tell me something or to insult me, write me a mail at lolmaster666@hotmail.com, i won’t come back here, i will visit other americans forums and tell them the same things i’m telling you, NO WAR, FUCK BUSH -yeah sorry but i think he is a really bad guy- and huh DON’T CALL FRENCH FRIES FREEDOM FRIES, THEY ARE BELGIAN!!)

9. oh god i just find something really good on the american yahoo:
   THE CASE FOR THE FRENCH
   Thu Feb 27, 7:08 PM – Ted Rall to My Yahoo!
   By Ted Rall
   America As Its Own Worst Enemy
   LOS ANGELES–Who are we to be bashing the French?
   The trouble began when President Jacques Chirac openly expressed the private beliefs of virtually every other world leader–that George W. Bush’s desire to start an unprovoked war with Iraq (news – web sites) is both crazy and immoral. It has quickly disintegrated into a ferocious display of American nativism that would be hilarious if its gleeful idiocy wasn’t so frightening.
   “Axis of Weasel,” howls the New York Post in reaction to France and Germany’s U.N. stance. A North Carolina restaurateur replaces French fries with “freedom fries.” In West Palm Beach, a bar owner dumps his stock of French wine in the street, vowing to replace it with vintages from nations that support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Well, there’s always Bulgaria.) Also in Palm Beach, a county official is working to boycott French businesses from government contracts: “France’s attitude toward the United States is deplorable,” says commissioner Burt Aaronson. “It’s quite possible that if we didn’t send our troops there, the French people would all be speaking German.”
   Allied troops liberated the French in 1944. The least France could do, the French bashers argue, is show a little gratitude. They think that France should stand by–or better yet help out–when U.S. troops go to invade/liberate/whatever other countries. Sovereignty and self-determination are fine as mere words. But it just ain’t right for a country we rescued from Nazi occupation to disagree with our policy 50 years later and threaten us with a U.N. veto.
   To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn’t even exist–it would still be a British colony.
   Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis’ forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife’s heads.
   No two countries were closer during the 19th century. Americans named streets after the Marquis de la Fayette, Louis’ liaison with the founding fathers. During the Civil War, France bankrolled the Union to neutralize British financing for the Confederacy. How many Americans remember that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from French schoolchildren?
   Despite that long friendship, the French–along with Asians and overweight folks–remain one of the few groups Americans still feel free to openly insult. A recent Gallup poll shows that 20 percent fewer Americans view France favorably because of its unwillingness to go along with Bush’s war on Iraq. Support for Germany, perpetrators of Nazism and the Holocaust (and which also opposes war), holds steady at 71 percent.
   Some of the contempt dates to France’s quick defeat in the blitzkrieg of May-June 1940. “Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?” joked Roy Blunt, a Republican who evidently represents the unfortunate voters of Missouri. “It’s not known; it’s never been tried.”
   Perhaps Congressman Blunt should visit the graves of the Frenchmen who lost their lives for their country during World War I (the first two-thirds of which, by the way, the U.S. sat out). One of them, my great-grandfather Jean-Marie Le Corre, died in the muddy trenches of eastern France in 1915. His death plunged his family, never comfortable to begin with, into abject poverty. His name is engraved on a memorial near a small church in Brittany. They say that he was a handsome guy, popular with the ladies and always good for a joke. Because of him and 1.4 million other young men who sacrificed their lives for their country, Paris didn’t fall.
   France lost a staggering four percent of its population during the Great War. (Imagine a war that killed 11 million Americans today.) Twenty years later, in 1939, the French army still suffered from a massive manpower shortage. Demographics, lousy planning and equipment shortages–the Great Depression had also hit France–cost 100,000 French soldiers their lives during six awful weeks in 1940.
   They failed to save Paris, but they died defending it.
   The Bush Doctrine advocates invading weak states, imposing “regime change” and building an American empire composed of colonies whose dark-skinned races can be exploited for cheap labor. Napoleon Bonaparte, who terrorized Europe, had similar ideas. He easily outclasses our AWOL-from-the-Texas-Air-National-Guard Resident in the pure bellicosity department, but would we really choose Bonaparte over Chirac?
   French-bashing is a nasty symptom of an underlying American predilection for anti-intellectualism: a society whose most popular TV show features smoky chatter between poets and novelists naturally threatens the land of football and Pabst.
   The fact is, France is a good friend and ally trying to make us see reason, and it doesn’t deserve to be treated this shabbily. The United States, as led by Bush and his goons, is like a belligerent, out-of-control drunk trying to pick a fight and demanding the car keys at the same time. The French want to drive us home before we cause any more trouble, so we lash out at them, calling them rude names and impugning their loyalty. Sure, we’ll be ashamed of our behavior in the morning, after the madness wears off. But will we have any friends left?

10. Saddam and the French go hand in hand.FUCKIN’WANKERS,THE LOT OF THEM!!!!!!

11. Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis’ forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife’s heads.

12. dont forget –
    Louis did not support america because he was sympathetic to our cause. He did it to plague the English. It did not cost him his head – the french revolution did. There might be a connection there, but to imply that Louis gave his life for american freedom is absurd, and not borne out by recorded history.
    While the French did help us out in the Revolution, as i recall, we left tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dead bodies in their country when we liberated it in two world wars, in this century. Or does that not count?
    No one needs the French – they are the parasites of Europe. Let them go their own way if they want – just don’t expect America to pay their way.
    tim

13. inkgirl – the quote is an adaptation of a comment made by the inimitable Jeff Cooper about some rifle related topic. It fits, though.
    -tim-

14. Really! And despite the previous efforts of Frenchmen in service to their own country, THAT has not been the real problem. Nor was Chirac’s disagreement the problem. It was more the continued obstructionist efforts by Chirac and Gang to impede, stop, slow-down, or end the war BEFORE it started, and these efforts were orchestrated by Chirac! That aligned him (and his nation) with Saddam, in the eyes of many Americans.
    Then, when we DID go in, we not only found French weapons being used against us by Iraqi military, and French ELF-petrol sweetheart deals, and French WMD techno-assistance, BUT we also discovered the horrific documentation of just HOW VILE and CRUEL the Saddamites (and by extension, Chirac and his apologists) actually were!
    200 children buried alive, screaming and clutching their dolls, call from the grave: “J’accuse!”

15. And if those accusations weren’t enough, Americans have the daily revelations from living Iraqis who survived the other horrors inflicted by the Saddamites, and their French toadies.
    In April, France enjoyed a 203 MILLION EUro surplus in trading with America. By the end of May, they showed a 96 MILLION Euro DEFICIT! May they suck wind, for a few years. May they eat hunger, fed themselves by their own hands, red with the gore of slain men, women and children thrown into Saddam’s industrial shredder!
    Americans, NOT AT ANY GOVERNMENTAL pressure, have chosen to vote with their wallets, and their vote says, “France… does not deserve MY dollar at this time.”

16. Interesting. My previous post is missing.

17. I like big buttss in ze middle of ze desert on a cold winter night.

18. 300,000 Dead iraqian soldiers this jackass writes? How many killed by saddam are they finding in mass graves. And these are TRUE innocents, not the religious nuts that fight for Saddam. these people, Saddam Killed & dumped in the desert without blinking an eye. You are so wrong and uninformed. How can there be people out there that think like this. How many more would he kill in the years to come if the US didn’t stop him when they did? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? A million? Gassing entire Kurdish cities? That was what we stopped the WMD IS / WAS Saddam!

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