Gack.
Missing lines:
So who is Gilles Munier? Is there really a “French-Iraq Association for Economic Cooperation”?
Fuck 'em.
Let them rebuild Vietnam, first.
Originally posted by Brutus
You really are quite the ignoramus aren’t you?
Disagree with the French position all you want but Neo Vichy?
Please!
Either your understanding of French history is inexusably pathetic or you’re tossing about emtionally loaded hyperbole in the hope of getting a reaction.
Either way you make a most compelling case for your own cannonization as St.Fuckwit, patron of cretins and dullards.
By the way I dearly hope this is sarcasm.
What, and you think no other countries are lining up their plans for a piece of the action? Everyone’s already in line with their dinner plates at the ready, jostling for position. The French would be mad to delay, waiting until the war is over would be too late.
Anyway, you don’t get to start a war claiming to be selfless heroes of liberty and democracy, and then demand first pick of the spoils at the end. It may not seem fair, but that’s what being selfless heroes is all about. You pull this trick too often and even people with very limited memories may begin to doubt your real motives.
Unfortunately we’ve already reached this point. The US will engineer things so that they receive the lion’s share. All aid given will not be charity, but carefully calculated investment in expectation of profitable returns. A selected few other countries will be tossed the left overs in payment for their support and France will get squat except knowing that their suspicions were proved correct.
You all talk like the US has a moral right to tell the Iraqi’s who should rebuild their country. Is this a war of liberation, like Bush would love us to believe, or occupation?
Shouldn’t it be up to the newly freed Irakis to decide? Or are they supposed to be freed only to the extent that they will have to submit to US decisions?
Beside, Chirac stance is perfectly consistent. If you’re opposed to the invasion of a country, then necessarily, you must oppose to the invading powers’ will to administer said country. You might believe that the US is right in waging this war, but try to see tings from the other side : imagine, say, that Mexico decide, without reason to do so, to invade Guatemala and then state that it will administer the country after the take over (and grant various rebuilding contracts paid with Guatemala money to Mexican corporation). If the US opposed the invasion of Guatemala, shouldn’t it oppose too the administration of Guatemala by the Mexicans after the war?
I don’t know about the “french-Irak Association for economic cooperation”, but Gilles Munier is the secretary general of an association called “amities franco-irakiennes” (“franco-Iraki frienships”). Here’s their website (in french).
Apparently, there were some important personalities amongst the founding members of this association (ambassadors, parliament members, writers, etc…), including a former french minister of defense who resigned when France decided to participate in the first Gulf War. So, this association isn’t a club of weirdos and possibly has some actual political influence.
LOL. Unfortunately a correlative exists here in the US…we already know lots of Arabs would like to kill us, and will die trying. The Islamic world beamed into our living rooms at night consists of people chanting “Death to America, Death to Israel” and burning flags and whatnot. You know. We got that. Thanks.
But I agree with you about not letting current disagreements spill over into blocking a UN-Iraqi team effort at reconstruction. I too am interested in avoiding the appearance of colonialism.
Heck, if you let the French take any part, their revisionist history textbooks will eventually record their crucial role in the democratization of Iraq.
Right after the chapter on how the entire country was in La Résistance.
bolding mine
I fully concur with Collounsbury. I feel an almost surreal sense of disconnect from the news reporting this war, both here and abroad. It seems we’re getting the rah-rah sports version, complete with the latest models (load up on options!) and uniforms while overseas they’re hearing dead civilians, dead Brits, bombing, bombing, bombing, starving Iraqi’s and more of the same. I am quite alarmed at the progressively violent nature of the so-called peace protests around the world, the anti-American bias of the media in many parts of the world, and the future implications of both. This is a war in primetime, and war can never be anything but ugly. We do not come off looking like the good guys when bodies are splashed on network news.
I’m afraid we’re going to win the Iraq battle and lose the bigger war.
Ditto.