Alright, instead of “shut up,” I should have said “stay out of our way.” Why?
You’ve made two claims here, and I’m going to have to ask for a cite. As far as I know, France was a full participant in GWI and deployed around 10K troops. You may be thinking of when France denied overflight rights to the US when it bombed Libya during the Reagan administration.
As for the claim abour repudiating war debts, exactly what are you referring to here? The only debt I’m aware of from France to the US is Marshall plan debt. Are you saying France repudiated that?
Given that you repeatedly make factual assertions that turn out to be completely false, please provide evidence to back up these claims. Otherwise, you really should stop making these assertions.
If another country was pushing for an unnecessary war, I would hope that the US would pro-actively attempt to thwart that country, ally or not.
Were it not for the French, there would be no United States.
Here is a link on Frances WWII debt. I only googled a bit but the only things I could find that said anything about the french not paying any war debts referred to WWI or were message board.
Anyway, here’s the relevant part, bolding mine.
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And name their city streets after American cop killers.
Don’t get me started on their Ira Einhorn hypocrisy.
I’ve disdained the French well before it became fashionable.
Well, I don’t have enough knowledge about these particular claims to engage in an accurate debate. I’ll just leave it at saying that my cursory knowledge of these particular subjects seems to be in opposition to your viewpoint. If anyone has a better response, I’d be interested, though.
Hmm, I hadn’t considered WWI debt. SA, is this what you are referring to? Because a number of countries defaulted on debts during the depression, and I don’t think that it’s fair to blame the French solely for that.
And metro stations (temporarily at least) in rememberance of the seige and massacres at Vukovar. Your point?
Actually, let’s. What’s the ‘hypocricy’, exactly?
If I were name a street after a French serial killer, or an assassin don’t you think some criticism would be warranted? In fairness, the street naming was an act of Parisians, not the French as a whole.
The complaint was that the US had the death penalty and Einhorn was at risk being executed, so they refused to extradite him. However, Einhorn had already been tried and sentence to life in prison, so the death penalty issue was a non-starter.
They also complained about Einhorn being tried in absentia, which is legal in both US and French courts.
That’s a bit odd, considering they had 11,000 troops on the ground in the Gulf at the time. Link. I think MrManfrengenfresen is correct - you’re thinking of Libya. Link.
I weep for the state of education in history in America these days.
Too bad we aren’t at least taught to avoid acting from a position of ignorance.
Um… are we forgetting here that what the French govt said at the time (no matter what their motives) was right, while what the US govt. said at the time was wrong. So governments don’t have a responsibility to speak the truth and act accordingly by it?
:dubious: This could explain a lot about Dubya’s administration
That’s right, Futile. That’s the bottom fucking line. We claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we had to invade RIGHT NOW to keep them from using them. The French and Germans said “I don’t know about that…” Turns out they were right and we were wrong.
The French felt that it was in their best interest that this war didn’t take place at all.
You know, being allies with somebody goes both ways.
Sorry in advance for the lengthy semi-hijack.
Yes, assuming everyone agreed that the person in question was in fact a serial killer.
Although no name has been mentioned, I assume the subject is Mumia Abu-Jamal. This is certainly not the thread in which to argue his guilt or innocence, and from what I know of the case he probably IS guilty, but there remains considerable controversy over how his conviction was obtained. The death penalty was abolished long ago in many European countries, and the view is widely held that its retention in the USA is a barbaric practice, espceially so if there if there is some question as to whether the person convicted received a fair trial.
Although Mumia is likely far from the best choice for canonisation in this way, I personally have no problem with what at bottom, and no matter how misguided, is most likely a sincere gesture of protest against the death penalty. Beyond that, I would need to see cited a clear statement by any French spokesperson that naming a street after Mumia was specifically done to “celebrate a cop killer”. I lived in France for ten years, and I noticed no particular tendency among the population to applaud the killing of policemen, of any nationality.
Re: Ira Einhorn, I presume you are aware that, after the personal intervention of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, he was eventually returned to Pennsylvania, underwent a retrial and was duly (re)convicted. According to this Salon article, the main reason for the holdup was this:
The issue, in other words, was not the death penalty, it was the fact that under Pennsylvania law of the time, Einhorn would have not been subject to a retrial if extradited. Later on, Pennsylvania amended its laws to permit such a retrial, and although controversy apparently remains as to whether this could be applied retroactively, Jospin intervened (this instance of applying executive pressure on French courts was itself controversial) and Einhorn was eventually extradited.
In both cases, therefore, I don’t see that much reason to accept that the actions taken by French authorities were done purely to flip the bird at the USA, over any other explanation. Hey, if for whatever personal you feel it’s important to dislike the French, then go for it, but upon examination the reasons you cited don’t seem to hold water all that well.
Which brings to mind the thought …
There’s still time for the French to belatedly join the Iraq “adventure”, assist in bringing about a resolution to the problem … and then later claim all the credit for liberating those poor Iraqis from tyranny. 
That’s true, and I probably should be complaining about the anit-death penalty movement that decided to make Mumia the poster child for their movement rather than some poor guy who is more than likely innocent. I’m not fond of the death penalty in most cases, and I feel that the ranks of death row are filled with innocent people. So of all these potential candidates, why did they end up with Mumia?
Barbaric or not, all could have done better than to celebrate him, French included.
But that’s enough for now.
If Bush and the Republicans get re-elected, I wouldn’t necessarily be so sure about that.
BTW, I’ve noticed the U.S. seems to have more problems with France when it has a conservative nationalistic President like DeGaulle or Chirac? Compared to leaders like those two guys, dealing with a Socialist like Mitterand was a breeze.
MrManfrengenfrensen, look!ninjas, you are indeed correct. It was our attack on Libya I was thinking of. I retract my statement. France could indeed have had a legitimate reason to deny us overflight under that circumstance. I resented it at the time and still do, but I can see how they would have arrived at the choice they made without it necessarily being out of anti-American spirit. Thank you.
MrManfrengenfrensen, did you see my first post referring to the time I heard that France blew off its war debt? I mentioned that it was made by one of my teachers in junior high school, and I asked if anyone had further information. I was not necessarily stating it as fact but rather an impression I’d carried all this time due to his having made the remark. Also, this was in the early sixties and he could very well have been referring to WWI whereas I took it to mean WWII.
Dog80, being allies goes both ways. And being allies is not working to thwart your ally when it is trying to take action to protect itself.
Futile Gesture, the resentment aimed at France has nothing to do with whether or not it was right about WMD. They didn’t know, anymore than we or any of the other countries of the world knew, that Iraq didn’t have WMD. And their claim wasn’t that we were going in despite the fact Iraq didn’t have WMD, they wanted to continue to play the waiting game and that’s what they were trying to accomplish. It wasn’t a case of France saying we were going in for a non-existent reason in which they knew better; it was a case, again, of going for delay, delay, delay. And since no one could say just when WMD could actually fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, I’m sure Bush felt he couldn’t afford to wait. And just for the record, I felt that way myself and I still do.