Editor's notes: Keep in mind that Obama's first requisite action as president, was to order the return of the Churchill Bust. No one asked him "why." And, when confronted with the fact, he denied it, pretending to have only moved the Bust outside the Oval Office. This was a lie, and the Brits cleared up the matter, informing our media that the Bust had been returned against their best wishes. It is more than curious to me, that Obama would take this action, without any explanation, and then like a coward, pretended not have done so. Jerk.
Churchill and Roosevelt Wanted de Gaulle Out, Britain ...
www.nytimes.com/.../churchill-and-roosevelt-want...
The New York Times
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And here is the full text of an article found in Slate in 2003:
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Americans rushed to
bookstores and libraries in search of the answer to the question that
had been thrust upon them: Why do they hate us? But who knew that we
should have been boning up on the history of France, not Islam?
A funny thing happened on the way to the war: Our old allies
the French, rather than our new Muslim foes, have become the
caricatured foreigners of the war on terrorism. The French are tarred in
the New York Post, among others,as the leaders of the "Axis of Weasel." National Review's Jonah Goldberg has made "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"—a Groundskeeper Willie line from an episode of The Simpsons—the
rallying cry of Francophobes everywhere. After France's ambush of Colin
Powell at last week's U.N. Security Council meeting, where the French
foreign minister declared that military intervention in Iraq "would be
the worst possible solution," it can't be long before someone declares
the need for regime change in Paris.
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The debate over French anti-Americanism centers on the same question
as the debate over Islamic radicalism: Do they hate us because of who we
are, or what we do? As with the Middle East, the right takes the former
tack, arguing that the French can be cowed into submission only by
shows of strength. (The president also makes a point of claiming not to
care why anyone hates us—least of all the French.) The left, on the
other hand, tends to argue that we need to be more solicitous of
France's needs. Their argument, in a nutshell: "It's our foreign policy,
stupid."
Most recently, Eric Alterman laid out the liberal case in this week's cover story for The Nation.Alterman's
explanation: The Bush administration's unilateral policies, both before
and after 9/11, explain the French distaste for the United States. In
fact, the French don't even dislike the United States, Alterman argues.
Rather, they dislike its leader. President Bush's religiosity,
self-righteousness, and indifference to allies justify France's low
opinion. Alterman is essentially saying to Americans what Bush told
Iraqis in the State of the Union address: "Your enemy is not surrounding
your country—your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his
regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation." If
President Clinton—or even Ronald Reagan—were in charge instead of
Busharoo Banzai, the French would embrace America with open arms.
It sounds convincing—after all, lots of Europeans have been
complaining about Bush of late. But it's not true. The French never
really liked the Clinton administration, either. In June 2000, during
President Clinton's last year in office, France was the only one (talk
about unilateralism) of 107 countries to refuse to sign a U.S.
initiative aimed at encouraging democracy around the world. A year
earlier, State Department spokesman James Rubin complained, "We do find
it puzzling and passing strange that France would spend so much energy
and focus so much attention on the danger to them of a strong United
States rather than the dangers that we and France together face from
countries like Iraq." The French oppose the United States, quite simply,
for what it is—the most powerful country on earth.
If Britain's "special relationship" with the United States is to pal
around with it and work to influence its policies from within, France
thinks it has an equally special relationship with the U.S.: Its sacred
duty is to check American power by publicly and ostentatiously objecting
to it from without. The French are so concerned by the dominance of
American power—militarily, economically, culturally, and
technologically—that a former French foreign minister felt the need to
coin a new word to describe it: hyperpuissance, or
"hyperpower." Think of it this way: France thinks the United States has
so much power that the French language didn't have a word for it.
Much of the French opposition to American power arose after the fall
of the Soviet Union made the United States the only power in a unipolar
world: According to one poll, the percentage of the French who viewed
the United States "with sympathy" dropped from 54 to 35 percent between
1988 and 1996. But French grumbling over U.S. power predates the end of
the Cold War, too. As Philip H. Gordon outlined in the National Interest
in 2000 (during the Clinton administration), "resentment and
frustration" have marked French-American relations since the end of
World War II. When Charles de Gaulle became president of the Fifth
Republic, he was still resentful that FDR had refused to recognize his
Free French resistance over the Vichy regime during the war. De Gaulle
decided never to depend on the Americans again, and though he was an
ally of the United States, he was an exceptionally cranky one, pursuing
détente with the Soviet Union, withdrawing militarily from NATO, and
establishing an independent French nuclear force.
Perhaps the most astonishing description of the rocky French-American
relationship comes from the French diplomat who, in 1983, told the Atlantic
that a particular change in U.S. policy "makes us wonder whether we can
count on American administrations—just as we've been wondering since
Congress refused to endorse the Treaty of Versailles."
Americans don't have this sort of historical consciousness—at least,
not for anything that happened abroad before World War II. It's as if an
American diplomat said, "Well, we had to beat the frogs in the French
and Indian War to lay the groundwork for national unity and manifest
destiny, and well, we've been beating them ever since." Or, "You know,
we've known ever since the XYZ Affair that you couldn't trust the
French. That's why we've been sparring with them since the Quasi-War."
But history is at the core of the tensions between France and
America. Donald Rumsfeld's comment last week about "old Europe" was
telling: Americans see France as akin to Portugal, a once-great power
now in decline. But as part of its own "special relationship" with the
United States, France refuses to cede the world stage to the Americans.
French identity is similar to American identity—France sees itself as a
great nation worthy of power, the birthplace of democracy, and a culture
and system of government that the world would be wise to emulate.
Which is why, in the end, France will go along with the Bush
administration on Iraq. If France vetoes a Security Council resolution,
and the Bush administration goes to war anyway, France will have been
proved powerless. But if it accedes to the war after demanding more
evidence, it will be able to claim that it influenced American
policy—whether it's true or not. Germany will likely stand on principle
and oppose the war. But France would never do such a thing. As a U.N.
diplomat said last week, "It matters to matter for France."
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