Stardate 20030214.1205

(On Screen): Kent writes:

Here is Le Monde's reaction to the now-famous New York Post cover story last week.

(the gist of it: "we DO remember. We DO care. But we just don't understand WHY this is so important to you")

If they don't understand, they need to take a trip to southern Manhattan.

But they're lying; they (at least, their leaders) understand all too well. They know exactly why we're doing it. And their reason to oppose it is equally well understood: they're working to their own advantage. All their acts and policies are entirely self-interested.

I have no moral objection to self interest. Indeed, I think most people and most nations act out of enlightened self interest most of the time, and this is how things should be. What I object to is people who act self-interested but try to pretend that they serve a higher philosophical interest and are acting out of moral principle. What I object to is pious hypocrisy.

You may have noticed that I do not lambaste the Russians, even when they've opposed us. They're self-interested but make no pretense otherwise. I can work with someone like that, if they are self-interested but honest about it. Then I can clearly see where their interests are congruent to mine or not, and figure out how to make it worth their while to work with me.

I object to pious hypocrisy directly, on straight moral grounds, and I also dislike it on a practical level because pious hypocrites are loose cannons. They can become trapped by their own rhetoric even when it forces them to act against their own self-interest, which is what's happening now with France. It has reached the point where what they are doing is harming them badly but I don't think there's any way out any longer.

There is considerable dispute about just exactly what the French are really working for. Probably there are several things, and covering up perfidy is likely one of them. Mark Steyn thinks that they are mainly working to try to control the future of the EU, because at this formative stage the direction will be set which will become increasingly difficult to change as momentum builds.

To the French, something very astonishing has happened: "Europe" was supposed to be France writ large, a "union" built in France's image. To that end, they took it for granted that the entire Continent would inevitably come to be as semi-detached from NATO as the French have been since 1966. To M. Chirac, Tony Blair is the odd man out, with his strange Anglo-Saxon hang-ups about the transatlantic alliance. But, as has become obvious, to the Czechs, Poles, Bulgars, Romanians and everybody else, it's Chirac who's the misfit.

What to do about this appalling lèse-majesté?

Answer: Get rid of Blair.

Chirac has, in fact, for a long time been attempting to assume the mantle of voice-of-Europe and tried to proclaim his policies as being those of Europe overall. (I referred to this once as his L'Europe c'est moi act.) The core of this is France's vision of the European Union as a power equal to and opposed to the US; the EU as the only force on earth powerful enough to hold the hyperpower in check. Clearly this mandates that "Europe speak with one voice" and that what it should say is "America sucks".

And for a while it almost seemed to be working. But now it's all collapsed, with many countries of Europe clearly stating that they actually like America, not to mention saying that they're fed up with Paris trying to take control of the EU. Schröder has gone much too far and is now in deep political trouble in part because of this; he'll be gone soon, and Chirac will be alone to continue the struggle (except for France's lapdog Belgium).

If Le Monde says that they do remember and they do care, then they're only partly telling the truth. They do remember, but they don't care. There is no gratitude; it's been decades since there's really been any gratitude amongst their leaders, if indeed there ever was any. Relations between De Gaulle and the rest of the allies were always rough, even before the war was won, and never really got better. And he set the path on which Chirac now treads. Anti-Americanism has always been the hallmark of French foreign policy since the founding of the Fifth Republic.

Lee Harris says that the primary motivation for this is frustration and shame and a cultural unwillingness to accept responsibility for their own fate. France no longer is at the center of the stage; it is small and unimportant; a has-been. Greece was once the paramount military power of the Mediterranean region but has not been for millennia. Italy once dominated the region, but no longer. France, too, was once important but is now old, feeble, declining – and pissed off about it. And they blame us.

When someone resents you because you are strong and they are weak, the worst thing you can do is to give them charity. It only makes them hate you more, because it forces them to acknowledge that they cannot help themselves and must rely on you. Your charity, perhaps given with the best of intentions,