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September 18, 2003
THOMAS FRIEDMAN COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET...
...as a member of the Neocon Conspiracy to Conquer the World (TM), that is.
How else do you explain a column that begins with the following?
It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.
If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.
France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.
The column is titled, of course, "Our War with France."
Aside from the concluding paragraph, there is nothing in the column that couldn't have come from the Weekly Standard, Opinion Journal or any of the other usual conspirators.
Interestingly, Friedman notes the following:
Yes, the Bush team's arrogance has sharpened French hostility. Had President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld not been so full of themselves right after America's military victory in Iraq — and instead used that moment, when the French were feeling that maybe they should have taken part, to magnanimously reach out to Paris to join in reconstruction — it might have softened French attitudes. But even that I have doubts about.
(Emphasis added.)
I guess he doesn't agree with Fred Kaplan about how US-European disagreements over Iraq are all President Bush's fault.
Posted by Dr. Manhattan at 1:02 PM | Permalink
