Stardate 20011003.0801 (On Screen): France has committed to help the US militarily, sort of. They will send a whopping
two ships to the Indian ocean, only one of which is a warship (and probably not their carrier; likely it will be a destroyer). That should come in handy in case it becomes necessary to fight a surface action against the Afghanistan Navy, and in case all the American destroyers and cruisers out there (more than fifty of them which are part of four carrier battle groups) manage to get disabled. France has also magnanimously offered to let the US use French airspace to launch attacks against Afghanistan, which might only come up if we launch B2 strikes from Missouri. This is pitiful; it's completely token and symbolic. It has no military significance at all -- and it comes with the inevitable strings attached:
Chirac and Jospin have pledged to help Washington's 'war on terrorism' while insisting Paris would remain sovereign over the extent of any involvement. In other words, they might take their lonely warship and go home with it at any time, which means we can't rely on it.
No mention of aircraft or troops or anything actually capable of helping. Not even the Foreign Legion. Article 5 of the NATO charter, which has been invoked, says that an attack on any member will be considered an attack on all, and that each nation would respond militarily as if it had been the one which had been attacked. If the attack had been on Paris instead of NYC, would the French have sent exactly one warship to the Indian ocean to sit off the coast of Pakistan and look fierce?
But I suspect that the US didn't actually ask for anything more and may not even have asked for this, simply because it 
didn't want the help, and the entanglement which would come with that help. (Now to see what the Italians do; that should be amusing.) (discuss)
Update: The warship that France is committing isn't even a destroyer; it's the frigate Courbet and it was already in the Indian Ocean. Fantastic; simply fantastic.
