Americans have hated France for years; they are the only nationality who you could make the butt of an ethnic joke and not get any complaints.
As for the current situation, it’s easier to make the French a scapegoat than it is to answer the legitimate questions about the war that they bring up.
Sounds like political debating to me.
Off we go to Great Debates.
Nah us brits aren’t jocks.
we are the slightly geeky/awkward kid who desperately wants to be cool - like his dad and grandad were when they were at school.
We have a crush on Canada - but she has always had a bit of a sweet spot for that drama-arty-farty git France. So when America promised to make us cool if we helped him pick on France, we jumped at the chance.
We are hoping that us hanging out with America will impress her. It doesn’t appear to be working - although Spain (cute foreign exchange student) keeps winking at us.
The problem is that its costing us all our real friends - and we know that America will leave us in the lurch the moment the football season starts up and his attention wanes.
We confess all these fears to our only remaining real friend - Holland (a kind of stoned version of ferris bueller - who somehow manages to be both an indivdual AND cool. bastard.)
his advice?
“Just chill man…”
Oh yeah, and for the record this kind of low level race-hatred has always existed between the French and the British. Its just been bloody ages since we had a decent excuse to air it in public.
For me its the government. Since WW2 they’ve been increasingly anti-American, even when we’ve been trying to help and protect them. Recently, Chirac seems to lie every other word. (Remember when he swore he’d not opppose the US after the last resolution?)
The fact that they are making economic deals with Iraq and may be on the verge of ruining the UN counts, too.
For me it’s that damn French Impressionistic music that goes on and on in a misty boring sort of way and puts me to sleep.
Though Ravel did a great orchestration of Moussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. So I can’t hate the French.
I’ll even send them all my snails.
Questionable plumbing.
Candida (one-time resident)
Basically its because the French are not towing the line. Not many countries dare to openly speak out against the Americans. The French will allways do what they believe is in their best interests and fuck everyone else
In terms of French politicians and political decision-making the French are easy to hate. Actually, despise is probably the better word.
I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for a country which holds itself out to be some kind of moral world leader while making billions out of supplying weapons to the enemies of its allies, ignoring world opinion while contaminating the South Pacific with its nuclear tests and supporting terrorism as a means to further its own political ends.
The High School analogy above has it all wrong - France is the self-righteous little prick who dobs you in to the teachers if you’ve done something wrong then steals your lunch, tries to move in on your girlfriend and slashes the tyres on your car in the dead of night.
If you want to improve the world, forget Iraq - invade France. Shut down their weapons and military technology export business and suddenly you’ve got way less problems with Iraq, North Korea and most of the Middle East.
I think the problem is that they are perceived to have their fingers in their ears, their eyes closed and they’re humming “lalalalalalalalala” like they can’t hear anything.
Not even waiting for the new resolution language and not even acting like they could give a shit about new framework? WTF? And then lobbying against the FUTURE resolutions?
The UN isn’t very dynamic or open minded with them taking these stances. They’ve taken the hard line before, but now they aren’t even ACTING like anything is open to debate.
From their non-military role in NATO, to their extremism at the UN, should they be making ANY decisions about potential military action?
And, is there resentment agaisnt US backed moves because the US vetos any resolutiona against Israel?
The Brits that are visiting me for business this week tell me that they have always hated the French and that we are just catching up.
Hey, I’m no rah-rah war advocate, but thing that pisses me off about the French (and some others) is this silly call for more and longer inspections as an alternative to war. Get a clue-- there wouldn’t be ONE SINGLE INSPECTOR in Iraq right now if the US weren’t spending BILLIONS of $$ to keep a huge military force poised to strike.
Here’s a suggestion: We’ll keep the inspections going for as long a time as France will pay for us to have our military on high alert. In that case, I think the war would start in 1 week.
Gimme a break. The US is the only superpower now. We’ve kicked ass since world war II and the only war we lost, we still kicked ass militarily. We are a superpower in the economy, our markets affect the rest of the world. When was the last time the world economy rose or fell because the french stock market moved? Yahoo.com can legally sell stuff from the people that the french collaborated with and thats OK because people here are mature, knowledgable and savy enuf NOT to buy them if they dont want to.
Whats wrong with being against war? well, nothing if you are prepared to clean up the mess that happens afterwards. War is going to happen whether its now under US terms or later under Saddams terms. Now is better. Later is bad.
oh BTW cute quote on the fucking for virginity thing. Heres another one,
Si vis pacem, para bellum
We’re still talking about France, right?
“Starting”? 
Tdn, I get your humor (not that I thought it was funny), but the US gave up weapons testing, and supplying cruel dictators with arms. The United States doesn not support terrorism.
World opinion, I think has nothing to do with anything; the majority is not always, or even usually, right.
However, when we did those things, it was becaus we knew the consequences of failure was too horrible to comtemplate; we were not about to roll over and die and surrender the world to an aggressive USSR. France does it to make some cheap cash. They are like some pale, thin bastard kid who robs a 7-11 and shoots the Clerk for 20 dollars. The US would be the grim lawman trying to keep the deperadoes out of town, and hauling them in for a hangin’ party if they attacked.
Like nixdad said, it’s the hypocricy. If France came out and said, “We don’t want a war, because it will jeopardize our oil contracts, and because we want to gain political capital by standing up to the US on something, anything,” I would disagree with them, but I would have some respect for their position.
Germany opposes the war, but it’s because Germany is steadfastly against any war, any time. I disagree, but they’re entitled to their opinions.
Turkey is (debatedly) against letting us use their bases, because they don’t want to get attacked. Regrettable, yes, but they have a valid point.
But France… France, who is supposed to be our ally, and should at least do us the favor of being honest with us, goes on and on about how pre-emptive war is immoral (and really, this isn’t a pre-emptive war, and they should know it). How waging war unilaterally is foolish (firstly, this is far from a unilateral endeavor, unless by “unilateral” you mean “not unanimous”, and secondly, France certainly doesn’t seem opposed to unilateral action when it suits her purposes). They accuse us of bribing nations into supporting our war, while simultaneously politely informing eastern European nations that if they ever want into the EU, they better not side with the US.
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys? I wish it were that simple. The French are by no means a passive bunch - they’re as hostile as anyone when their interests are at stake. And all that is fine, really. But do they have to pretend that they’re doing all this for the sake of the world order?
And to head off the inevitable smug quip, yes, I’m still talking about France.
Oh, and X-Slayer, can I get a translation for your quote?
Jeff
Jeff:
My latin is a bit rusty, but I’d guess it means “if you seek peace, prepare for war”.
Are you talking about the French or the US here, Philster? 
Seriously, thrashing the French is the hip thing to do lately. It’s just a fad, nothing more. Robin Williams did it too. I prefer not to, but hey, everyone gets to have their petty hatreds, right?
What annoys me more is our elected representatives wasting their time, effort, and influence in legislating the names of their food. :rolleyes:
Starting?
A witty phrase but it doesn’t hold water. I can’t think of any examples where a belligerent nation was stopped from aggression by a peace rally. Please provide any cites to the contrary.
FTR I do not hate France or its people but don’t think the government is acting in the best interst of the world at large.
It really cracks me up how those, that are indeed suddenly rabid anti-French, use arguements that are equally applicable to the US.
If not more so.