Yes funny , but next is not funny :
Editorial: The March To Save Saddam
By David Horowitz
February 14, 2003
Millions of people poured into the streets of cities from Melbourne to New York on Saturday February 15 to protect Saddam Hussein from an imminent American attempt to disarm and dethrone him and disable his arsenal of chemical, biological and proto-nuclear weapons. They professed concern about Iraqi children (bearing mock bodies to symbolize their alarm) but marched in solidarity with Palestinians and Arabs who kill their own children by strapping bombs to them and telling them to blow up other children -- Jew children -- so that they will go to heaven and their families will receive a $25,000 reward.
In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter. If the marchers are successful, Saddam will survive to be stronger than ever. All over the Middle East and the Muslim world fanatical haters of Americans, Christians and Jews will take heart from Saddam's successful defiance, will draw the conclusion that the West is weak, and will be inspired to commit new atrocities against its most defenceless citizens.
All the marches were organized by supporters of Communist and other totalitarianisms, and by the fifth column agents of Islamo-fascism. All the demonstrations promoted Iraqi war propaganda -- myths about starving children and about alleged mercernary interests behind American policy; all of them had one purpose -- to disarm the American force already in the Middle East and allow Saddam to fight another day.
It is true that some of the marchers were well-intentioned or at least not so blind yet that they could look past the evil that is the regime in Iraq. What of it? What could be more irrelevant than splitting critical hairs when your country is under attack and your actions serve the aggressors?
During the Cold War there were many intelligent souls on the left who joined the "peace" demonstrations in the West organized by Communists and their supporters, but described themselves as "anti-anti-Communists." They meant by this that they knew that Communism was bad, but were against the cold warriors who were locked in mortal combat with the Soviet empire. The Gorbachev regime in their eyes was bad, but Ronald Reagan was a "warmonger" and therefore worse.
The anti-anti-Communists may have been good at stimulating critical discussion. A democracy can always benefit from dissenters because no faction has a monopoly on truth. But in practice the decent opponents of Cold War encouraged the Communists to hold onto their slave empire and resist the presures of the free world. In the end it was Ronald Reagan and the Cold Warriors he led who stymied the Communists' ambitions, brought down the Soviet empire and liberated more than a billion people. In the scales of that historic struggle, when it came to mobilizing the military resources that backed the enemy down, the anti-anti-Communists ultimately put their weight on the other side of the scale.
During the Vietnam War -- the clearest parallel to the present events -- the anti-war movement was organized by Communists who wanted the other side to win. The non-Communists who joined their marches, whatever their intentions, served the same practical end. America was divided at home and these divisons evnetually forced its armies to retreat from the field of battle. As a result, the Communists won and proceeded to slaughter two-and-a-half million peasants in Indo-China between 1975 and 1978. This is the scenario that the people (mostly the same people) who are leading Saturday's protests hope to accomplish: the defeat of the West and the triumph of Islamo-fascism and its friends.
Today's "peace" movement -- the innocent-intentioned along with the malevolent rest -- is a fifth column army in our midst working for the other side. Already their leaders have warned that if the United States remains determined to oppose this totalitarian evil and stay its intended course, they will act within our borders to "disrupt the flow of normal life" and sabotage the war. This is ultimately the most ominous threat Americans face. Abroad we can conquer any foe. The real danger lies at home.
-David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring.
Editorial: The March To Save Saddam
By David Horowitz
February 14, 2003
Millions of people poured into the streets of cities from Melbourne to New York on Saturday February 15 to protect Saddam Hussein from an imminent American attempt to disarm and dethrone him and disable his arsenal of chemical, biological and proto-nuclear weapons. They professed concern about Iraqi children (bearing mock bodies to symbolize their alarm) but marched in solidarity with Palestinians and Arabs who kill their own children by strapping bombs to them and telling them to blow up other children -- Jew children -- so that they will go to heaven and their families will receive a $25,000 reward.
In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter. If the marchers are successful, Saddam will survive to be stronger than ever. All over the Middle East and the Muslim world fanatical haters of Americans, Christians and Jews will take heart from Saddam's successful defiance, will draw the conclusion that the West is weak, and will be inspired to commit new atrocities against its most defenceless citizens.
All the marches were organized by supporters of Communist and other totalitarianisms, and by the fifth column agents of Islamo-fascism. All the demonstrations promoted Iraqi war propaganda -- myths about starving children and about alleged mercernary interests behind American policy; all of them had one purpose -- to disarm the American force already in the Middle East and allow Saddam to fight another day.
It is true that some of the marchers were well-intentioned or at least not so blind yet that they could look past the evil that is the regime in Iraq. What of it? What could be more irrelevant than splitting critical hairs when your country is under attack and your actions serve the aggressors?
During the Cold War there were many intelligent souls on the left who joined the "peace" demonstrations in the West organized by Communists and their supporters, but described themselves as "anti-anti-Communists." They meant by this that they knew that Communism was bad, but were against the cold warriors who were locked in mortal combat with the Soviet empire. The Gorbachev regime in their eyes was bad, but Ronald Reagan was a "warmonger" and therefore worse.
The anti-anti-Communists may have been good at stimulating critical discussion. A democracy can always benefit from dissenters because no faction has a monopoly on truth. But in practice the decent opponents of Cold War encouraged the Communists to hold onto their slave empire and resist the presures of the free world. In the end it was Ronald Reagan and the Cold Warriors he led who stymied the Communists' ambitions, brought down the Soviet empire and liberated more than a billion people. In the scales of that historic struggle, when it came to mobilizing the military resources that backed the enemy down, the anti-anti-Communists ultimately put their weight on the other side of the scale.
During the Vietnam War -- the clearest parallel to the present events -- the anti-war movement was organized by Communists who wanted the other side to win. The non-Communists who joined their marches, whatever their intentions, served the same practical end. America was divided at home and these divisons evnetually forced its armies to retreat from the field of battle. As a result, the Communists won and proceeded to slaughter two-and-a-half million peasants in Indo-China between 1975 and 1978. This is the scenario that the people (mostly the same people) who are leading Saturday's protests hope to accomplish: the defeat of the West and the triumph of Islamo-fascism and its friends.
Today's "peace" movement -- the innocent-intentioned along with the malevolent rest -- is a fifth column army in our midst working for the other side. Already their leaders have warned that if the United States remains determined to oppose this totalitarian evil and stay its intended course, they will act within our borders to "disrupt the flow of normal life" and sabotage the war. This is ultimately the most ominous threat Americans face. Abroad we can conquer any foe. The real danger lies at home.
-David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring.
The French Secret Service has launched an official investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of one of France’s most closely guarded secrets: the 1985 attack and sinking of the Greenpeace vessel “Rainbow Warrior” in New Zealand’s Auckland Harbour by French Secret Service agents was really an attempt to assassinate Osama Bin Laden, notorious leader of the Al Qaida terrorist organization.
“We missed Bin Laden by just a few hours”, stated Bernard Tricot, who in 1985 headed the official French government inquiry into the incident. Interviewed in connection with this story, Tricot further stated: “long before other Western countries had even heard of Al Qaida, we clever French had uncovered its evil intentions and identified its key leaders. More importantly, our clever French Secret Service had also discovered a shocking fact – the Greenpeace organization was, and still is to this very day, nothing more than an Al Qaida front organization; nothing more than a ruse to raise funds for Al Qaida”, stated Tricot.
Sources inside the French intelligence community have revealed other heretofore-undisclosed details of this shocking story. Early in 1985 the French Secret Services, using very clever means, discovered that Bin Laden would be travelling to New Zealand under a Swedish passport identifying him as one “Ollie Holfenfauser” in order to head a meeting of key Al Qaida leaders.
Retired French Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the French Intelligence and Covert Operations Bureau at the time of the sinking stated: “we found ourselves in a position very much like that which the Americans are in right now with Saddam: we knew Bin Laden was the root of much evil, but to reveal our clear and convincing evidence would risk the lives of our brave undercover agents in the Al Qaida terror organization. So we decided to act in a fashion that would be in the best interests of the entire world - as France always does; after all, whatever is good for France is good for the world – and assassinate Bin Laden while he was on the “Rainbow Warrior”. We knew if we were caught in the act the world would readily accept our cover story that our actions were merely another cowardly French action – the sinking of a peaceful ship whose (own cover story) mission in South Pacific waters was to protest French nuclear testing. But we took this risk for the good of the world, meaning France, as I have previously explained to you.”
Other western governments had mixed reactions to this news. The Government of New Zealand was said to have stated that it would “objectively review any evidence put forward by the French”. A spokesperson for the American State Department stated: “yeah, right. We believe THAT b.s.”, but refused to explain further what she meant by that statement. The German government was said to have stated its intention “to take a position opposite that of the United States, whatever that position might be”. Canada apparently said: “who cares what the Frogs did 18 years ago; we want the U.S. to stop putting duties on our lumber exports, eh?” Attempts to interview Greenpeace officials were unsuccessfully. Their offices were found to be deserted, leaving behind evidence of a hasty departure. But a slogan painted on a wall – “Allah is Great but Not Bush Is” – gave some credence to the French claim that Greenpeace is merely an Al Qaida front organization.
By way of apology and in order to avoid any Al Qaida reprisals for this French action, French troops were ordered to report immediately to the nearest mosque and stack arms in from of it. Some French troops were reported to have resisted the order on moral grounds and sought exile within the sovereign state of Euro Disney. Disney officials in Burbank, California stated emphatically that exile would be granted to all three of the French troops.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rainbow Warrior ?!?! Oppss... !
What do you said about Kyoto ?
“We missed Bin Laden by just a few hours”, stated Bernard Tricot, who in 1985 headed the official French government inquiry into the incident. Interviewed in connection with this story, Tricot further stated: “long before other Western countries had even heard of Al Qaida, we clever French had uncovered its evil intentions and identified its key leaders. More importantly, our clever French Secret Service had also discovered a shocking fact – the Greenpeace organization was, and still is to this very day, nothing more than an Al Qaida front organization; nothing more than a ruse to raise funds for Al Qaida”, stated Tricot.
Sources inside the French intelligence community have revealed other heretofore-undisclosed details of this shocking story. Early in 1985 the French Secret Services, using very clever means, discovered that Bin Laden would be travelling to New Zealand under a Swedish passport identifying him as one “Ollie Holfenfauser” in order to head a meeting of key Al Qaida leaders.
Retired French Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the French Intelligence and Covert Operations Bureau at the time of the sinking stated: “we found ourselves in a position very much like that which the Americans are in right now with Saddam: we knew Bin Laden was the root of much evil, but to reveal our clear and convincing evidence would risk the lives of our brave undercover agents in the Al Qaida terror organization. So we decided to act in a fashion that would be in the best interests of the entire world - as France always does; after all, whatever is good for France is good for the world – and assassinate Bin Laden while he was on the “Rainbow Warrior”. We knew if we were caught in the act the world would readily accept our cover story that our actions were merely another cowardly French action – the sinking of a peaceful ship whose (own cover story) mission in South Pacific waters was to protest French nuclear testing. But we took this risk for the good of the world, meaning France, as I have previously explained to you.”
Other western governments had mixed reactions to this news. The Government of New Zealand was said to have stated that it would “objectively review any evidence put forward by the French”. A spokesperson for the American State Department stated: “yeah, right. We believe THAT b.s.”, but refused to explain further what she meant by that statement. The German government was said to have stated its intention “to take a position opposite that of the United States, whatever that position might be”. Canada apparently said: “who cares what the Frogs did 18 years ago; we want the U.S. to stop putting duties on our lumber exports, eh?” Attempts to interview Greenpeace officials were unsuccessfully. Their offices were found to be deserted, leaving behind evidence of a hasty departure. But a slogan painted on a wall – “Allah is Great but Not Bush Is” – gave some credence to the French claim that Greenpeace is merely an Al Qaida front organization.
By way of apology and in order to avoid any Al Qaida reprisals for this French action, French troops were ordered to report immediately to the nearest mosque and stack arms in from of it. Some French troops were reported to have resisted the order on moral grounds and sought exile within the sovereign state of Euro Disney. Disney officials in Burbank, California stated emphatically that exile would be granted to all three of the French troops.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rainbow Warrior ?!?! Oppss... !
What do you said about Kyoto ?
The Nazi Background of Saddam Hussein
By Chuck Morse
February 14, 2003
Kharaillah Tulfah, Saddam Hussein's uncle and future father-in-law, along with Gen. Rashid Ali and the so-called "golden square" cabal of pro-Nazi officers, participated in a failed coup against the pro-British government of Iraq in 1941. Operating behind the scenes in Baghdad at the time, and arranging for Nazi weapons and assistance was the notorious pro-Nazi Haj Amin al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Mufti had been on the Nazi payroll, according to testimony at the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, since 1937 when he had met with Adolf Eichmann during Eichmann's brief visit to Palestine. Saddam Hussein was born in 1937.
The Mufti, after instigating a pogrom against Jews in Palestine in 1920, the first such pogrom against Jews in the Arab world in hundreds of years, went on to inspire the development of pro-Nazi parties throughout the Arab world including Young Egypt, led by Gamal Abdul Nasser, and the Social Nationalist Party of Syria led by Anton Sa'ada. After the failure of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, the Mufti fled to Berlin where he spent the war years heading a Nazi-Muslim government in exile and using confiscated Jewish funds in a largely successful effort to further pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda in the Arab world. While in Berlin, the Mufti also helped form pro-Nazi Muslim Hanschar brigades in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia.
Kharaillah Tulfah, participant in the 1941 pro-Nazi coup and an advocate of a pan-Islamic Nazi alliance along with the Mufti, raised and educated his nephew Saddam Hussein from age 10. In 1959, the 22-year-old Saddam failed in an attempt to assassinate Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim. He subsequently fled to Egypt where he received refuge from fellow Mufti disciple Nasser. At the time, Nasser, along with the Mufti himself, who resided in Cairo after the war and his conviction by the Nuremberg Tribunal of war crimes, was spearheading what was known as the Odessa Network, which facilitated the settlement of thousands of Nazi criminals in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. In 1962, Saddam married Sajidah Tuffah, the daughter of his uncle and mentor.
Saddam triumphantly returned to Baghdad in 1963 after a successful coup by the Ba'ath Party against Qassim where he assumed control of State Security. The Ba'ath seizure of power in Iraq was followed by firing squads and murder of political opponents reminiscent of Castro's seizure of Cuba. Saddam was chief interrogator and torturer at the infamous Palace of the End set up as a torture chamber under the auspices of State Security.
Saddam became absolute ruler in 1979 after assassinating over 20 leaders of his own party. He immediately proceeded to implement the Nazi vision of his uncle and the Mufti. In Iraq, Saddam annihilated of his opponents and, using his absolute power, developed a personality-cult around himself reminiscent of the Nazi Furherprincip. Like the Nazis, who sought to implement a new social order based on socialist and nationalist principles, Saddam has sought to develop a united Arab order under his personal control. Imitating the example of Hitler, Saddam set up concentration camps and began to carry out a planned program of genocide against the Kurds.
Saddam, in control of weapons of mass destruction, is today's chief disciple of the infamous Grand Mufti, the Nazi war criminal. Like the Mufti, he will stop at nothing in his quest to annihilate the Jews and defeat the western democracies. His regime is the Nazi principle manifested today in all its horror and inherent evil and like the Nazi's before him, he must be utterly crushed if there is to be any peace.
By Chuck Morse
February 14, 2003
Kharaillah Tulfah, Saddam Hussein's uncle and future father-in-law, along with Gen. Rashid Ali and the so-called "golden square" cabal of pro-Nazi officers, participated in a failed coup against the pro-British government of Iraq in 1941. Operating behind the scenes in Baghdad at the time, and arranging for Nazi weapons and assistance was the notorious pro-Nazi Haj Amin al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Mufti had been on the Nazi payroll, according to testimony at the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, since 1937 when he had met with Adolf Eichmann during Eichmann's brief visit to Palestine. Saddam Hussein was born in 1937.
The Mufti, after instigating a pogrom against Jews in Palestine in 1920, the first such pogrom against Jews in the Arab world in hundreds of years, went on to inspire the development of pro-Nazi parties throughout the Arab world including Young Egypt, led by Gamal Abdul Nasser, and the Social Nationalist Party of Syria led by Anton Sa'ada. After the failure of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, the Mufti fled to Berlin where he spent the war years heading a Nazi-Muslim government in exile and using confiscated Jewish funds in a largely successful effort to further pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda in the Arab world. While in Berlin, the Mufti also helped form pro-Nazi Muslim Hanschar brigades in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia.
Kharaillah Tulfah, participant in the 1941 pro-Nazi coup and an advocate of a pan-Islamic Nazi alliance along with the Mufti, raised and educated his nephew Saddam Hussein from age 10. In 1959, the 22-year-old Saddam failed in an attempt to assassinate Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim. He subsequently fled to Egypt where he received refuge from fellow Mufti disciple Nasser. At the time, Nasser, along with the Mufti himself, who resided in Cairo after the war and his conviction by the Nuremberg Tribunal of war crimes, was spearheading what was known as the Odessa Network, which facilitated the settlement of thousands of Nazi criminals in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. In 1962, Saddam married Sajidah Tuffah, the daughter of his uncle and mentor.
Saddam triumphantly returned to Baghdad in 1963 after a successful coup by the Ba'ath Party against Qassim where he assumed control of State Security. The Ba'ath seizure of power in Iraq was followed by firing squads and murder of political opponents reminiscent of Castro's seizure of Cuba. Saddam was chief interrogator and torturer at the infamous Palace of the End set up as a torture chamber under the auspices of State Security.
Saddam became absolute ruler in 1979 after assassinating over 20 leaders of his own party. He immediately proceeded to implement the Nazi vision of his uncle and the Mufti. In Iraq, Saddam annihilated of his opponents and, using his absolute power, developed a personality-cult around himself reminiscent of the Nazi Furherprincip. Like the Nazis, who sought to implement a new social order based on socialist and nationalist principles, Saddam has sought to develop a united Arab order under his personal control. Imitating the example of Hitler, Saddam set up concentration camps and began to carry out a planned program of genocide against the Kurds.
Saddam, in control of weapons of mass destruction, is today's chief disciple of the infamous Grand Mufti, the Nazi war criminal. Like the Mufti, he will stop at nothing in his quest to annihilate the Jews and defeat the western democracies. His regime is the Nazi principle manifested today in all its horror and inherent evil and like the Nazi's before him, he must be utterly crushed if there is to be any peace.
till said:
Well, wow, such hatred. Such blind, reckless, uninformed/misinformed hatred. I guess this country should simply pack our bags and come home then. I guess we can tell Saddam he is free to do what he wants. He can go on and annex Kuwait, then go after Saudia Arabia, then with his nuclear weapons, take over Iran, wipe out Israel, threaten Egypt, Turkey, etc., and tell your country that if it doesn't accede to his demands, he will turn your all's flow of oil off. Oh, I fogot, you think you will be able to stop all that by chanting some slogans back home.
Really, I like a good friendly debate, but your views are way out in outer space. Hauling me and Bush to a war crimes court? You gotta be kidding. I guess I will take the position of Saddam, as you think he is a better guy than Bush - go try to pass some UN resolutions, then when we don't hand ourselves over to you, you can protest and chant for a peaceful solution. I mean, if you lack the balls to come fight us to get us, then you are irrelevant.
But, really! Saddam has sent more than a million people to die in a plan to take over another country, gassed his own people, killed those in his own government who oppose him, and you want this guy to be left alone and Bush tried for war crimes?!?!?!?
djdan said:
I don't even understand what is supposed to be funny about
that NATO cartoon. It seems to be based on some grave
historical misunderstanding. NATO has never been at war with
the Soviet Union and NATO had nothing to do with the fall of
the Soviet Union. I do not think the current situation has any
parallell in the history of NATO.
Re: Re: PEACEFUL MOTIVE TO GO TO WAR...
Hi,
I really hate to be the one who dirties a perfectly good discussion with anything as low as the truth but ... to say that the US is super benevolent is very very false. Relative to a per capita basis and as a percentage of GDP you'll find that the US's international aid is far, far lower than those paid by most developed countries. I think you might even find that it is quite paltry considering how rich that country is.
pf
7V said:
Hi,
I really hate to be the one who dirties a perfectly good discussion with anything as low as the truth but ... to say that the US is super benevolent is very very false. Relative to a per capita basis and as a percentage of GDP you'll find that the US's international aid is far, far lower than those paid by most developed countries. I think you might even find that it is quite paltry considering how rich that country is.
pf
djdan said:
Hi djdan,
You seem a rather intelligent person. Tell me now, do you really, in your heart, believe that the above is a realistic rendering of the facts? I mean really, no horsemanure.
Jan Didden
Why France disdains America
John Vinocur International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
2 new books scrutinize a traditional Gallic obsession
PARIS Two new books by French authors, one at the top of the best-seller list, the other described as a work of exceptional scholarship, are confronting the French with the proposition that their anti-Americanism is a self-inflicted national illness.
For one of the authors, the anti-Americanism of the French is a willful delusion, an attempt by a dominant political and intellectual caste to mask its own failures and insignificance.
For the other, French anti-Americanism is a centuries-old tradition - a layered accumulation of condescension and fear, vastly more significant than the French gift of a Statue of Liberty to the United States or the assistance of a Marquis de Lafayette - and a rare terrain in French national life where conflicting political and intellectual forces can find common ground.
The books' novelty is two-fold. One is in their premises and the other in their success.
The academic work essentially subordinates the official idea of a history of good relations between the two societies to focus on the evolving genealogy of French revulsion from and opposition to the United States.
Both books distinguish French anti-Americanism from normal criticism of the United States as pushing criticism beyond the rational to a level of virulence where it essentially defines French problems and inadequacies while undermining France's capacity to make its way in the world.
For a study that insists on what the author calls a profoundly French malaise inherent in French anti-Americanism - an essentially contrarian concept here - Philippe Roger's book, "L'Ennemi americain," has been received with exceptional praise. Le Monde described it as "a chef d'oeuvre of semantic history" and Le Nouvel Observateur said it was a "masterly" analysis of a French tradition that reflects a combination of stupidity, ignorance, and paranoia.
Jean-Francois Revel's "L'Obsession anti-americaine" has been rewarded with the number 1 place on the nonfiction best-seller list. The writer, the single right-of-center pillar of French intellectual life known outside the country, argues that anti-Americanism in Europe and particularly in France is so reflexive, even when the United States is right, that it has resulted in the Americans' no longer paying any attention to criticism even when it is reasonable.
In a commentary last week, Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations, an establishment think tank, acknowledged that resentment about France's historical decline was reflected in French anti-Americanism. But while calling "L'Ennemi americain" a work of "great erudition," he refused to accept either of the books' most obvious common message.
"No serious study allows crossing the line to conclude the existence of deep, chronic and active anti-Americanism in France or any other European country for that matter," de Montbrial wrote.
Criticism of President George W. Bush's foreign policy, said de Montbrial, was hardly anti-Americanism. But neither Revel or Roger would disagree.
In contrast, Revel describes anti-Americanism as a constant alibi - "a consolation," he says - for European failure. France, he argues, is the "advanced laboratory where the most extreme and pointed ideas on the United States come together to be spread in a form that's milder and less polemical in Europe and elsewhere."
Revel is clearly singling out a kind of argumentation that developed in France about the real causes of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The explanation centered, he suggests, on resentment against America, its emergence as the sole superpower and its role as guardian of Israel. This viewpoint, he says, was elevated "in certain European capitals" - read, Paris - "to the rank of obsession and virtual lone principal in foreign policy."
Roger's book is the more remarkable of the two for its factual density, unique scholarship and bold vision. The title, "The American Enemy," is not a mere verbal challenge. Parallel to the official history of friendship and compatibility, Roger finds accusations of American coarseness, ingratitude, degeneration, violence and anti-democratic instincts constant themes across centuries of French commentary on America.
Roger points to the period of 1750 to 1770, that of the gestation of the United States, as creating a philosophical and "scientific" foundation for the development of French anti-Americanism.
Scholars of the French Enlightenment considered American plant and animal life degenerate, inferior to that in Europe. Children born in the New World were incapable of prolonged thought. Venereal disease had its home there. At the same time as the creation of the United States, and while a part of fashionable Paris was titillated by the Yankee insurgents, Roger writes, by 1778 in France a "a globally negative image of America was anchored in the literate public."
For Roger, the North's victory in the Civil War, with France on the side of the South, and "dreaming of the dismemberment" of the United States, was for the French an imagined prologue to American wars in the world beyond. In the author's view, emphasis on the pro-Union sentiment of a Victor Hugo or a Jules Verne is an "ideological painting over" that obscures the Civil War as a "crystallization of French anti-Americanism."
The American peril turned into an ominous certainty for the French in 1898, when the Americans defeated the Spanish colonial forces in Havana and Manila and became an "imperial" nation. For Roger, more than 100 years of anti-American sedimentation in France take shape at this point and harden. Conservatives and monarchists in France joined forces with their sworn domestic enemies, the Republicans and anti-clerical factions, in damning the Americans - now seen as a Yankee race apart, "hard and vindictive," and far less compatible than the English or Germans.
It is here that Roger comes to one of his central theses:
"At the highest point of discord in a divided France (in 1898), anti-Americanism is the only 'French passion' that calms the other passions, effaces antagonisms and reconciles the harshest adversaries. Patching things up at the expense of the United States or, at the least, halting hostilities between French factions in the face of a supposed common enemy will remain a constant of political and intellectual life.
"It is impossible to understand French anti-Americanism or its timelessness if you don't see the social-national benefits it represents in manufacturing a tissue of consensus."
The presence of anti-Americanism is central to the author's reading of the periods following World Wars I and II. By 1930, Georges Clemenceau, the French war hero, tells the Americans "your intervention was easy on you, costing 56,000 lives instead of our 1,364,000 killed."
The United States, which demanded payment by France of its war debts in the 1920s, was soon "Uncle Shylock," the title, tinged with anti-Semitism, of a popular book of the period. After 1945, Roger writes, the French Communist Party's theme of a new "Hitler Made in U.S.A." was taken over, albeit with greater subtlety, by a vast number of French anti-American intellectuals.
Why the Americans and not the Germans, after three wars fought between the neighbors on the Rhine from 1870 to 1945?
"Because since 1945," Roger said in an interview, "there is an enormous effort not to demonize the Germans. The Communists said Eisenhower was the heir of Hitler, and in a sense this succeeded in passing the hatred from the Germans to the Americans. In spite of the wars, among French intellectuals there's been admiration for German scholarship and culture. At the same time, for these people, Picasso or Sartre, and so many others, the United States was the expression of the nonintellectual, the anti-spiritual."
Without the immigrant waves of the Germans, Italians or British to the United States, Roger believes, the French, among the Europeans, uniquely lacked individual, family or warmly personal links to the Americans. This meant that French intellectuals, virtually all suspicious or contemptuous, give or take a Tocqueville, in historical terms had the making of the tone of the relationship all to themselves.
Now, he discounts the idea that French animosity toward the United States is linked to some kind of rivalry between two countries, believing they have universal cultures. Indeed, Roger argues, the idea never existed until very recently, with the French, who see their exceptionalism as linked to their revolution, always believing there never was a real, legitimizing revolution in America.
To the researchers who thought anti-Americanism would depart with the French taste for American films, clothes and consumerism, Roger replies that watching American movies represents no commitment to their values. The Sept. 11 attacks resulted in a moment of emotion, he found, but no change in an anti-American mind-set.
The United States of French anti-Americanism, Roger said, was an "imaginary Franco-French construction."
By reflex, Roger suggests, France characterizes certain domestic failings as American, and therefore tends to excuse or remove itself from the issues it has let get out of hand, like violence, racial tensions or the failed integration of immigrant groups.
"We keep creating a mythological America in order to avoid asking ourselves questions about our real problems," he told a reporter. "And they're problems that the Americans don't have much to do with."
John Vinocur International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
2 new books scrutinize a traditional Gallic obsession
PARIS Two new books by French authors, one at the top of the best-seller list, the other described as a work of exceptional scholarship, are confronting the French with the proposition that their anti-Americanism is a self-inflicted national illness.
For one of the authors, the anti-Americanism of the French is a willful delusion, an attempt by a dominant political and intellectual caste to mask its own failures and insignificance.
For the other, French anti-Americanism is a centuries-old tradition - a layered accumulation of condescension and fear, vastly more significant than the French gift of a Statue of Liberty to the United States or the assistance of a Marquis de Lafayette - and a rare terrain in French national life where conflicting political and intellectual forces can find common ground.
The books' novelty is two-fold. One is in their premises and the other in their success.
The academic work essentially subordinates the official idea of a history of good relations between the two societies to focus on the evolving genealogy of French revulsion from and opposition to the United States.
Both books distinguish French anti-Americanism from normal criticism of the United States as pushing criticism beyond the rational to a level of virulence where it essentially defines French problems and inadequacies while undermining France's capacity to make its way in the world.
For a study that insists on what the author calls a profoundly French malaise inherent in French anti-Americanism - an essentially contrarian concept here - Philippe Roger's book, "L'Ennemi americain," has been received with exceptional praise. Le Monde described it as "a chef d'oeuvre of semantic history" and Le Nouvel Observateur said it was a "masterly" analysis of a French tradition that reflects a combination of stupidity, ignorance, and paranoia.
Jean-Francois Revel's "L'Obsession anti-americaine" has been rewarded with the number 1 place on the nonfiction best-seller list. The writer, the single right-of-center pillar of French intellectual life known outside the country, argues that anti-Americanism in Europe and particularly in France is so reflexive, even when the United States is right, that it has resulted in the Americans' no longer paying any attention to criticism even when it is reasonable.
In a commentary last week, Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations, an establishment think tank, acknowledged that resentment about France's historical decline was reflected in French anti-Americanism. But while calling "L'Ennemi americain" a work of "great erudition," he refused to accept either of the books' most obvious common message.
"No serious study allows crossing the line to conclude the existence of deep, chronic and active anti-Americanism in France or any other European country for that matter," de Montbrial wrote.
Criticism of President George W. Bush's foreign policy, said de Montbrial, was hardly anti-Americanism. But neither Revel or Roger would disagree.
In contrast, Revel describes anti-Americanism as a constant alibi - "a consolation," he says - for European failure. France, he argues, is the "advanced laboratory where the most extreme and pointed ideas on the United States come together to be spread in a form that's milder and less polemical in Europe and elsewhere."
Revel is clearly singling out a kind of argumentation that developed in France about the real causes of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The explanation centered, he suggests, on resentment against America, its emergence as the sole superpower and its role as guardian of Israel. This viewpoint, he says, was elevated "in certain European capitals" - read, Paris - "to the rank of obsession and virtual lone principal in foreign policy."
Roger's book is the more remarkable of the two for its factual density, unique scholarship and bold vision. The title, "The American Enemy," is not a mere verbal challenge. Parallel to the official history of friendship and compatibility, Roger finds accusations of American coarseness, ingratitude, degeneration, violence and anti-democratic instincts constant themes across centuries of French commentary on America.
Roger points to the period of 1750 to 1770, that of the gestation of the United States, as creating a philosophical and "scientific" foundation for the development of French anti-Americanism.
Scholars of the French Enlightenment considered American plant and animal life degenerate, inferior to that in Europe. Children born in the New World were incapable of prolonged thought. Venereal disease had its home there. At the same time as the creation of the United States, and while a part of fashionable Paris was titillated by the Yankee insurgents, Roger writes, by 1778 in France a "a globally negative image of America was anchored in the literate public."
For Roger, the North's victory in the Civil War, with France on the side of the South, and "dreaming of the dismemberment" of the United States, was for the French an imagined prologue to American wars in the world beyond. In the author's view, emphasis on the pro-Union sentiment of a Victor Hugo or a Jules Verne is an "ideological painting over" that obscures the Civil War as a "crystallization of French anti-Americanism."
The American peril turned into an ominous certainty for the French in 1898, when the Americans defeated the Spanish colonial forces in Havana and Manila and became an "imperial" nation. For Roger, more than 100 years of anti-American sedimentation in France take shape at this point and harden. Conservatives and monarchists in France joined forces with their sworn domestic enemies, the Republicans and anti-clerical factions, in damning the Americans - now seen as a Yankee race apart, "hard and vindictive," and far less compatible than the English or Germans.
It is here that Roger comes to one of his central theses:
"At the highest point of discord in a divided France (in 1898), anti-Americanism is the only 'French passion' that calms the other passions, effaces antagonisms and reconciles the harshest adversaries. Patching things up at the expense of the United States or, at the least, halting hostilities between French factions in the face of a supposed common enemy will remain a constant of political and intellectual life.
"It is impossible to understand French anti-Americanism or its timelessness if you don't see the social-national benefits it represents in manufacturing a tissue of consensus."
The presence of anti-Americanism is central to the author's reading of the periods following World Wars I and II. By 1930, Georges Clemenceau, the French war hero, tells the Americans "your intervention was easy on you, costing 56,000 lives instead of our 1,364,000 killed."
The United States, which demanded payment by France of its war debts in the 1920s, was soon "Uncle Shylock," the title, tinged with anti-Semitism, of a popular book of the period. After 1945, Roger writes, the French Communist Party's theme of a new "Hitler Made in U.S.A." was taken over, albeit with greater subtlety, by a vast number of French anti-American intellectuals.
Why the Americans and not the Germans, after three wars fought between the neighbors on the Rhine from 1870 to 1945?
"Because since 1945," Roger said in an interview, "there is an enormous effort not to demonize the Germans. The Communists said Eisenhower was the heir of Hitler, and in a sense this succeeded in passing the hatred from the Germans to the Americans. In spite of the wars, among French intellectuals there's been admiration for German scholarship and culture. At the same time, for these people, Picasso or Sartre, and so many others, the United States was the expression of the nonintellectual, the anti-spiritual."
Without the immigrant waves of the Germans, Italians or British to the United States, Roger believes, the French, among the Europeans, uniquely lacked individual, family or warmly personal links to the Americans. This meant that French intellectuals, virtually all suspicious or contemptuous, give or take a Tocqueville, in historical terms had the making of the tone of the relationship all to themselves.
Now, he discounts the idea that French animosity toward the United States is linked to some kind of rivalry between two countries, believing they have universal cultures. Indeed, Roger argues, the idea never existed until very recently, with the French, who see their exceptionalism as linked to their revolution, always believing there never was a real, legitimizing revolution in America.
To the researchers who thought anti-Americanism would depart with the French taste for American films, clothes and consumerism, Roger replies that watching American movies represents no commitment to their values. The Sept. 11 attacks resulted in a moment of emotion, he found, but no change in an anti-American mind-set.
The United States of French anti-Americanism, Roger said, was an "imaginary Franco-French construction."
By reflex, Roger suggests, France characterizes certain domestic failings as American, and therefore tends to excuse or remove itself from the issues it has let get out of hand, like violence, racial tensions or the failed integration of immigrant groups.
"We keep creating a mythological America in order to avoid asking ourselves questions about our real problems," he told a reporter. "And they're problems that the Americans don't have much to do with."
janneman said:
Hi,
It sounds like djdan is on a crusade and as such would not let the truth be sullied by the facts!
My initial reaction to his posts was that these were the outpourings of the new office of propoganda from the Dept. of Defence (Pentagon). Tax payers money well spent.
pf
Re: Re: Re: PEACEFUL MOTIVE TO GO TO WAR...
So, what are you trying to say? How much aid has Saddam given out? You are trying to compare Bush to Saddam, right? Or are you simply joining the crowd to dump on the USA?
But, did you factor in the billions that we spend for world defense? Remember, we are the dominant protective force in the far east. Many of those countries there that are free remain free because of us and the billions we spend. I mean, if we left S. Korea do you think it would stay free for long? How about Taiwan? Norht Korea is always making threats against Japan, who also depends on us. We have spent trillions on our European bases, once helping to keep the communists from spreading into western Europe. Was that a waste?
I guess if we didn't spend so much keeping freedom alive that maybe we could spend a little more for direct aid.
Maybe we should pull out of other countries. Think of all the money we could save. If North Korea starts to invade South Korean, or China starts to annex Taiwan, you can all take to the streets again and protest to stop it. That will work, right?
ppfred said:
So, what are you trying to say? How much aid has Saddam given out? You are trying to compare Bush to Saddam, right? Or are you simply joining the crowd to dump on the USA?
But, did you factor in the billions that we spend for world defense? Remember, we are the dominant protective force in the far east. Many of those countries there that are free remain free because of us and the billions we spend. I mean, if we left S. Korea do you think it would stay free for long? How about Taiwan? Norht Korea is always making threats against Japan, who also depends on us. We have spent trillions on our European bases, once helping to keep the communists from spreading into western Europe. Was that a waste?
I guess if we didn't spend so much keeping freedom alive that maybe we could spend a little more for direct aid.
Maybe we should pull out of other countries. Think of all the money we could save. If North Korea starts to invade South Korean, or China starts to annex Taiwan, you can all take to the streets again and protest to stop it. That will work, right?
Janneman,
I think the 95% of people how support peace ( in this moment , not in general ) are a good , decent and respectable people.
They think [ war = inocent people died ] and they have 100% right.
In my childhood , 20 years ago I was a forced peace suporter .
And I know what is psihological-war .
Gustave le Bon - is a French author ( my prefered ) wich described very well how the people-mass thinking.
If you will read this books you will undersand why I am so cruel with this naive child how think they defend peace.
http://authorsdirectory.com/biograp...e/l_authors_gustave_le_bon_online_books.shtml
Regards ,
Dan
I think the 95% of people how support peace ( in this moment , not in general ) are a good , decent and respectable people.
They think [ war = inocent people died ] and they have 100% right.
In my childhood , 20 years ago I was a forced peace suporter .
And I know what is psihological-war .
Gustave le Bon - is a French author ( my prefered ) wich described very well how the people-mass thinking.
If you will read this books you will undersand why I am so cruel with this naive child how think they defend peace.
http://authorsdirectory.com/biograp...e/l_authors_gustave_le_bon_online_books.shtml
Regards ,
Dan
What is tarpey.net ?
Free web-site hosting server ?
I do not understand what kind of link is from this server and me !
Dan
Free web-site hosting server ?
I do not understand what kind of link is from this server and me !
Dan
till said:
Actually, I feel we need to pull out of Europe. The cold war is over and you guys should be able to swim on your own. But, the fact is, you guys have screwed it up twice already and it cost the USA big time to come in and fix things and, though you obviously hate us, the fact that you guys fail to understand who the bad guys of the world are makes us want to stay put just to make sure we don't have to come back later and take care of a big mess when it is a thousand times harder to correct.
Now, I would like us to pause and think clearly here. All of us are for peace. When we go back to the audio forums here, we will all try to help each other and be friendly. We are all want the same thing, but we simply disagree on how to achieve it. I feel that peace can only be obtained through strength, and that Saddam will either never back down without force or, if he does, it will only be because of the strong US position. You feel peace can be obtained by negotiations - even though it may take decades and involve untold misery in the people being oppressed. I feel that Saddam is a worldwide mennance, and you say that unless we go after all the despots of the world, we should leave him alone and, by the way, it is the USA who are the real bad guys. I feel the US, and the trillions we have spent, is the major reason so much of the world is free today, and you think that freedom is something that one doesn't have to fight for and we are cheapskates in foreign aid.
Is my summary correct?
Again, I love to debate and since this is a US holiday, I am indulging myself.
what the USA does in other countrys?
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/ipresscom/ipress2003/ipresscom2003-03_op_20030117.htm
aid for a friend ...
I´m not against doing something for more peace in iraq, palästina or elswere. But what the US does is not bringing peace, they bring war. If you really want to bring peace there, the price is high. It will only work with lots of UN soldiers for a long time. Not with thowing bombs. US bombing strategie is the proof for they want the opposite of what they say. It´s ok to send a lot of soldiers there, but not US - UN legitimated. And once more - a lot of us don´t trust the USA goverment at the moment. We fear them much more than those "bad" communists in moscouw. We don´t accept them as leader.
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/ipresscom/ipress2003/ipresscom2003-03_op_20030117.htm
aid for a friend ...
I´m not against doing something for more peace in iraq, palästina or elswere. But what the US does is not bringing peace, they bring war. If you really want to bring peace there, the price is high. It will only work with lots of UN soldiers for a long time. Not with thowing bombs. US bombing strategie is the proof for they want the opposite of what they say. It´s ok to send a lot of soldiers there, but not US - UN legitimated. And once more - a lot of us don´t trust the USA goverment at the moment. We fear them much more than those "bad" communists in moscouw. We don´t accept them as leader.
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