Asymmetrical Information

FWIW, Michael Ledeen on NRO's The Corner addressed this essay too:
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_02_16_corner-archive.asp#004008.

Maybe everyone reading here already reads The Corner, but if not, hope this is of interest.

I like Woolsey, but if he's going to start lecturing us about questionable sniping at other nations, I seem to recall a column he wrote not so long ago when he compared the U.S. and President Bush to the sheriff in High Noon, with the rest of the world cast as the cowardly townspeople. As an online friend from Australia reminded me when I quoted the column approvingly, there were troops from a number of countries assisting us at that time in dealing with the Afghanistan, some of who ended up losing their lives in the endeavor (I apologized, having forgotten that in my irritation at the U.S. bashing that triggered the column). If the caricature of the French as a bunch of incompetent cowards is a tad over the top, so are some of the stereotypes Old Europe is directing at the U.S. and Dubya. Metaphor war is hell. :-)

I agree all around. For one thing, the French bashing is mainly humorous; humor sometimes sacrifices factual accuracy. Few intelligent American observers don't know that the French have been staunch allies in the past.

For another, one gets tired of the constant lecturing by the French and others who act as if the US is a reckless teenager with no experience in foreign affairs. We've been a major world power over a hundred years and have been THE leading power in the world for the past sixty years.

And the slavery analogy is just silly. Yes, it was a dark chapter in our history, but it was a chapter shared by virtually all societies. And it hardly compares to collaborating with the Nazis.

Spot on with identifying the "go home to your children, Europe" article written by Woolsey, Eiland. It was the perfect analogy. Great movie, too; killer, one-song soundtrack.

Seeing as how the two columns are diametrically opposed, he seems not to have realized what leaving Europe to its idiosyncracies actually entailed. Of course, in his heart, Woolsey's left of center. I can imagine how he'd react to Americans, by and large, finally taking their allies to task for unjustified recalcitrance. He'd react by writing a evra-buddy gatha' round column. But I'd rather read Woolsey than Ivins.

Um, slavery "hardly compares" to collaborating with the Nazis?

It's true, there are few things that do compare to helping Nazis, but enslaving another race for over a century has to be pretty high up there among the contenders.

Woolsey could have picked a better example than the Battle of the Marne. There is considerable current interest into the question of whether the Germans knew they were overextended and Gallieni's reinforcements merely occupied what the Germans were pulling back from in the first instance. Evidence of that was the rapid establishment of in depth defenses in front of the French counterattacks in that battle. So Woolsey's piece de resistence begs the question of whether a defense of Paris at that precise point in the history of the war in 1914 was a military necessity, or if events elsewhere (such as Tannenberg) had decided for the Germans that Paris was not the most viable objective even before those taxis rolled.

Um, slavery "hardly compares" to collaborating with the Nazis?

It's true, there are few things that do compare to helping Nazis, but enslaving another race for over a century has to be pretty high up there among the contenders.

France isn't exactly pristine where slavery is concerned -- and, of course, its extensive use of serfdom and colonial exploitation aren't much better, either. Remember, what made slavery awful wasn't its racial aspect, but its human one. France made ample use of the forced labor of people with few legal or political rights; they just didn't usually call them "slaves".

Here's my problem with these "France has heroes too" parallels: French war heroes are people who fought to defend France. American war heroes are... um, people who fought to defend France, actually. To this day, our major war heroes are WW2-era ones. What makes France's equivocations so annoying and worth of ridicule is that France doesn't have a tradition of fighting to defend anyone except themselves; we do.

"What makes France's equivocations so annoying and worth of ridicule is that France doesn't have a tradition of fighting to defend anyone except themselves; we do."

Not to mention that, since they've opted out of the military aspect of NATO since the mid-sixties, they've been freeloading off of the American taxpayer and the taxpayers of their neighbors who do contribute to the defense alliance of NATO. After all, it's much more profitable to sell those Mirage fighters and Exocet missiles to Saddam Hussein than to pull their own weight in defending Europe. Oh, and let's not forget that their refusal to allow U.S. fighters to cross their airspace during the punitive raid on Libya in 1986 cost U.S. pilots their lives. Or building Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant, forcing the Israeli Air Force to stand against the united condemnation of the world to save the world from the inevitable consequences of that act of cowardice. Anyone know the French word for "albatross"?

Part of the problem w/ the whole business of French losses in World War I is that they were the result of French stupidity. Why was it necessary to deploy French troops (scraped up by Gallieni) by taxicab?

Because the best French minds had committed France's best armies to the frontiers near Alsace-Lorraine. Where they were then expended, to little avail and at horrible, horrible cost, for weeks. All the while, the Germans were engaged in "the great wheel", to the north of Paris.

So, the cream of the French army dies (in highly visible pantalons rouge) in huge numbers (classified through at least the 1980s), while Paris is effectively left wide open.

If there is skepticism about World War I, it is that the French performance was so highly, highly questionable. Not of the individual poilu, but of the entire strategic and operational concept. Mistakes, scarily, that have been repeated since; in World War II's failed defense of France, in Indochina in the failed defense of Hanoi and northern Vietnam, in Algeria. THAT, I think, is what some of us, at least, are highly, highly skeptical of....

France is the sort of ally you can always depend upon to be right there when they need you the most -Shannon Petan.

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." Jacques Chirac, President of France.
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." Rush Limbaugh

"What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?" Dennis Miller

The key to Understanding France is simple, here is all you have to know:

1) France believes the U.N. must rule the world.

2) The French also, believe that Europe should control the U.N.

3) And the French firmly believe that France and only France alone can and should rule Europe.

To understand this principle is to understand completely France's foreign policy.

A Little Insight on French History

France is a country with a divided soul: on the one side, a record of humanistic Enlightenment philosophy and modern art unrivalled by any other nation; on the other side, a record of scandals such as the appeasement of the Nazis from the 1930s until the end of World War II.

It was only a few years ago that historians revealed the unfortunate fact that before D-Day the "French Resistance" was almost entirely made up of Jews, Spanish Republican refugees who had fled across the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, North African Arabs, Armenians, and other "un-French" elements.

The French weren't of much use during World War II. The Germans stormed into Paris and stayed there. Hence the old joke, "Why are the boulevards in Paris lined with trees on both sides of the street? So the Germans can always march in the shade."

Some of the French did fight in uniform, as when they fired on U.S. forces during Operation Torch in North Africa. Being French they didn't fight for long. Oh, and later they claimed to have liberated Paris, with some administrative support from the U.S. Third Army.

Despite what you've heard from the French, most of them didn't join the resistance. That is except when the war was over, at which point thousands claimed to have fought the Germans tooth and nail, when in fact the worst they did was serve the occupiers abnormally small portions of foie gras.

France is the sort of ally you can always depend upon to be right there when they need you the most -Shannon Petan.

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." Jacques Chirac, President of France.
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." Rush Limbaugh

"What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?" Dennis Miller

The key to Understanding France is simple, here is all you have to know:

1) France believes the U.N. must rule the world.

2) The French also, believe that Europe should control the U.N.

3) And the French firmly believe that France and only France alone can and should rule Europe.

To understand this principle is to understand completely France's foreign policy.

A Little Insight on French History

France is a country with a divided soul: on the one side, a record of humanistic Enlightenment philosophy and modern art unrivalled by any other nation; on the other side, a record of scandals such as the appeasement of the Nazis from the 1930s until the end of World War II.

It was only a few years ago that historians revealed the unfortunate fact that before D-Day the "French Resistance" was almost entirely made up of Jews, Spanish Republican refugees who had fled across the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, North African Arabs, Armenians, and other "un-French" elements.

The French weren't of much use during World War II. The Germans stormed into Paris and stayed there. Hence the old joke, "Why are the boulevards in Paris lined with trees on both sides of the street? So the Germans can always march in the shade."

Some of the French did fight in uniform, as when they fired on U.S. forces during Operation Torch in North Africa. Being French they didn't fight for long. Oh, and later they claimed to have liberated Paris, with some administrative support from the U.S. Third Army.

Despite what you've heard from the French, most of them didn't join the resistance. That is except when the war was over, at which point thousands claimed to have fought the Germans tooth and nail, when in fact the worst they did was serve the occupiers abnormally small portions of foie gras.

France is the sort of ally you can always depend upon to be right there when they need you the most -Shannon Petan.

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." Jacques Chirac, President of France.
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." Rush Limbaugh

"What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?" Dennis Miller

The key to Understanding France is simple, here is all you have to know:

1) France believes the U.N. must rule the world.

2) The French also, believe that Europe should control the U.N.

3) And the French firmly believe that France and only France alone can and should rule Europe.

To understand this principle is to understand completely France's foreign policy.

A Little Insight on French History

France is a country with a divided soul: on the one side, a record of humanistic Enlightenment philosophy and modern art unrivalled by any other nation; on the other side, a record of scandals such as the appeasement of the Nazis from the 1930s until the end of World War II.

It was only a few years ago that historians revealed the unfortunate fact that before D-Day the "French Resistance" was almost entirely made up of Jews, Spanish Republican refugees who had fled across the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, North African Arabs, Armenians, and other "un-French" elements.

The French weren't of much use during World War II. The Germans stormed into Paris and stayed there. Hence the old joke, "Why are the boulevards in Paris lined with trees on both sides of the street? So the Germans can always march in the shade."

Some of the French did fight in uniform, as when they fired on U.S. forces during Operation Torch in North Africa. Being French they didn't fight for long. Oh, and later they claimed to have liberated Paris, with some administrative support from the U.S. Third Army.

Despite what you've heard from the French, most of them didn't join the resistance. That is except when the war was over, at which point thousands claimed to have fought the Germans tooth and nail, when in fact the worst they did was serve the occupiers abnormally small portions of foie gras.

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