War in Irak

In this forum, i've seen a lot of attacks againt France and french army.

This people forgot that 2 000 000 french soldiers died in first and second world wars.

I've found this article of an american journal. A way to reconsider french position in 2003.

French translation at the bottom.
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http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/...003/1107nj1.htm

he French Were Right
By Paul Starobin, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Nov. 7, 2003

Let's just say this at the start, since this is the beginning, not the end, of the discussion about how to grapple with the post-9/11 world (and because it's the grown-up, big-man thing to do): The French were right. Let's say it again: The French -- yes, those "cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys," as their detractors in the United States so pungently called them -- were right.


"Be careful!" That was the exclamation-point warning French President Jacques Rene Chirac sent to "my American friends" in a March 16 interview on CNN, just before the Pentagon began its invasion of Iraq. "Think twice before you do something which is not necessary and may be very dangerous," Chirac advised. And this was not some last-minute heads-up, but the culmination of a full-brief argument that the French advanced against the perils of a U.S.-led intervention, pressed over months at the United Nations in New York and at meetings in Paris, Prague, and Washington. There were, of course, other war critics in Europe and elsewhere, but nobody presented the arguments more insistently or comprehensively than did the French, God bless 'em.


But the Americans, or at least the Bush administration, paid no heed to the French warnings, which were not simply that war was a bad idea, but that an invasion's consequences could be harmful to Western interests and to the larger war on terror. And now the administration is finding itself in an increasingly unhappy situation in Iraq, with its 130,000-strong contingent there the target of a sophisticated and lethal guerrilla campaign waged by foreign Islamic fighters and Saddam Hussein loyalists. Back home, a majority of the American public is opposed to Congress's backing of the president's request for $87 billion for military and reconstruction needs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the White House strains to explain the failure, so far, to find weapons of mass destruction, whose supposed presence in the country, after all, was a prime rationale for the war. Even avid war proponents concede that the United States is in for "a long, hard slog" in Iraq, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote in a recently leaked memo. America, in short, is at risk of getting trapped in a hell of its own making. Leave it to a philosopher on the Seine to anticipate this sort of predicament. The Left Bank existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre called his 1944 play, on the suffering that human beings tend to visit on themselves, No Exit.

In blame-game Washington, critics are asking how the administration got into this mess, and why its forecasts of the war's aftermath were so mistaken. But perhaps the most helpful question is not "Why the Administration Was Wrong," but rather, "How the French Managed to Get It Right." To ask how the Bush camp got offtrack is to pose a car-wreck type of question, and all such inquiries tend to be disfigured by partisan, factional enmity. But to ask why the French were right is to put the matter in a more positive, constructive vein. And the question has a ripe urgency, worth pursuing not as a matter of assigning historical bragging rights but as an aid to a necessary rethinking of the Iraq campaign that the administration, albeit in a fitful, truculent mood, has in any event already begun, with its recent plea for help from the United Nations and other countries, France included, and its stepped-up efforts to put more Iraqis in charge of security.

Hold on. Were the French really right? After all, Iraq is not a finished matter. What looks like a mess today may yet get sorted out. Most supporters of the war continue to believe it was justified, despite the problems it has caused. Nevertheless, at this juncture, it is plain that the French, and in particular Chirac and his advisers, had a certain analytical purchase on the situation that the Bush administration lacked.

The French made three basic claims -- all countered, in varying degrees of intensity, by the administration. The first was that the threat posed by Saddam was not imminent, and that's borne out by all available evidence, not least the latest report by Bush-appointed arms inspector David Kay, in which he stated that no weapons of mass destruction had been found. The second claim was that democracy-building in Iraq was going to be a lengthy, difficult, bloody process -- with the Iraqi population very likely to view the Americans as occupiers, not liberators. Quite apart from the spate of attacks on U.S. soldiers by various fanatics, this claim is borne out by polls showing that a majority of Iraqis would like the United States to leave. And third, the French correctly predicted that the Muslim world would perceive a U.S.-led intervention lacking the explicit blessing of the United Nations as illegitimate -- and thus would incite even greater anger toward America.

"A war in Iraq could trigger more frustration, bitterness, in the Arab world and beyond, in the Muslim world," Jean-David Levitte, French ambassador to the U.S., warned in remarks on February 7 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. Touche. "Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," an administration-appointed panel, headed by a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Edward Djerejian, recently reported on post-invasion attitudes in the Muslim world.

Still seething over the French prewar position on Iraq, administration officials are hardly of a mind to bestow awards on the French for prescience. The Democrats, many of whom supported the war, would have no political gain in citing the unpopular French as role models for their thinking, even if the statements now made by the party's leaders in Congress and its presidential candidates so closely resemble prewar French comments. ("The war was an unnecessary war," retired Gen. Wesley Clark pronounced, a la Chirac, on October 9.)

As for the administration, even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a relative moderate, still gets huffy at the mention of the French. "We were right, they were wrong, and I am here," a Powell aide, in an interview with The New York Times, quoted his boss as saying at a September meeting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad.

U.S. media presentations of the French arguments have been on a similar plane. The "cheese-eatin'" tag (would that be Brie or Roquefort?) derives from an eight-year-old episode of the animated television show The Simpsons, in which a reluctant teacher of French greets his elementary-school charges with the rousing salutation "Bonjour, ye cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys!" It fell to a pop-culturally informed conservative polemicist, National Review scribe Jonah Goldberg, to revive and popularize the insult in the prewar name-calling. The New York Post is still calling the French "weasels."

From the tenor of the discussion, in Washington and the hinterlands, you might think that the Elysee Palace opposes by reflex whatever the White House says. But the French are only selectively stubborn. France was the only country, other than the United States, to conduct air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, with their Mirage jets and Super Etenard fighters hitting more than 30 targets during Operation Anaconda in March 2002. The French enthusiastically backed the Afghanistan war, breaking with Washington only on the Iraq question.

No more persuasive is the widely voiced (in the U.S.) argument that the French were defending wide-reaching and profitable commercial relationships with Saddam's regime. The truth is that France enjoyed minor economic ties with Saddam. Under the United Nations' now-defunct Oil for Food program with Saddam's Iraq, the French were only the 13th-largest participant. The U.S. under that program bought more than 50 percent of Iraq's total oil exports, the French 8 percent.

So the answer to the question of why the French were right has to begin with an admission that their intransigence cannot be dismissed as a knee-jerk impulse or narrowly self-interested plank. Au contraire. What divided the two longtime allies -- each of which has been a beacon for liberal Western values over the past two centuries -- was a deep analytical chasm. An understanding of how the French got to the place they got to and stubbornly clung to, even as relations with Washington badly deteriorated, requires a probe of the substance and roots of the French position.

That may not sound like much fun. Even though they deny it, the French are already gloating that their much-maligned prewar forecast has proved to be on target. But here's the good news -- and it really is very good news. One big reason the French were right is that they were thinking along the lines that Americans are generally apt to think -- that is, in a cautious, pragmatic way, informed by their own particular trial-and-error experience, in this case as an occupier forced out of Algeria and as a front-line battler, long before 9/11, against global Islamic terrorist groups.

The Bush administration, by contrast, approached Iraq the way the French are often thought to approach large world problems -- with a grandiose sweep of the theoretical hand, a tack exemplified by the big-ideas neoconservative crowd, whose own thinking, ironically, draws on European political philosophy. So as the administration rethinks Iraq, the way back to a sound position may lie at home, in the great but neglected tradition of American Pragmatism. And then everyone can forget about the French.

The Prism: Algeria
A pragmatic approach starts with memory -- with the ability to distill lessons from analogous past experiences. That can be a tricky business. American critics of the war, particularly those on the left, cited Vietnam as a cautionary parallel. Perhaps that is apt, since the Vietnam conflict did involve a clash of civilizations, and the U.S. never fully understood the alien social and political milieu in which its forces were operating.

But Vietnam is not a Muslim or Middle Eastern country, and it was a Cold War theater, in which both the Soviet Union and China assisted anti-U.S. guerrilla bands. There is only one Western country with an intimate, bloody, and recent experience of what it is like to be an occupying power in an Arab land, facing an Islamic insurgency. That country is France, which granted independence to Algeria in 1963 after failing to subdue an eight-year-long rebellion by cold-blooded assassins who didn't blanch at bombing Algiers nightclubs frequented by French teenagers.

The memory remains etched into the French political consciousness. No event since the Second World War is a heavier or more painful burden for France than is the Algerian uprising. Algeria, on the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, had a much closer connection to France than Vietnam ever did to the United States. During the 132 years of French rule, starting in the 1830s, Algeria was, in legal, constitutional terms, an annexed section of France, not a colony. The Algerian uprising, with its demand for independence, destroyed the fourth French Republic by precipitating a coup attempt by the French military against civilian political leaders viewed as feckless. It also established itself as the central prism through which the French political elite came to view the Muslim world in general and the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamic militancy in particular.

And even more than that, Algeria forced France to re-examine its political, economic, and cultural relations with the entire non-Western portion of humanity. Algeria contained the lesson of a classic "failure," the British historian Alistair Horne wrote in A Savage War of Peace, his definitive 1977 account of the conflict; he called it "the failure either to meet, or even comprehend, the aspirations of the Third World."

The Islamic world, as the most immediately problematic for the French, received France's priority attention. In the United States, it was only with 9/11 that beginning a dialogue with the Muslim community came to seem urgent, but the French, because of Algeria, had embarked on this road decades before. "The U.S. is still a bit virginal in its relationship with the Islamic part of the world," notes Simon Serfaty, a Frenchman born 60 years ago in colonial Morocco, who is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The French know this part of the world better."

The Algerian uprising certainly made a powerful impression on a young man destined for France's highest political office: Jacques Chirac. Conscripted in 1956, at the age of 23, to serve as an officer in the French army, Chirac commanded a platoon in an isolated mountainous region of Algeria. The mission was to keep order. But order proved impossible to keep, with the local population protective of the fellaghas, the armed resistance fighters from the Fronte de Liberation Nationale (FLN). Chirac himself was not wounded in engagements with the guerrillas, but some of his men were, and some were killed. In a speech to the French Military Academy in 1996, he called his time there the most important formative experience of his life.

According to an old friend and adviser, Algeria principally taught Chirac that occupation, even under the best of intentions, is impossible when popular sentiments have turned against the occupier: "His experience is that despite all the goodwill, when you are an occupier, when you are seen [by the local people] as an occupier, the people will want you to get out." And if Chirac was convinced of anything, according to this source, it was that the Americans would ultimately be viewed not as liberators in Iraq but as occupiers. He foresaw a kind of re-enactment of the Algerian tragedy, the source adds, a "vicious circle" in which increasingly violent acts against the occupier are met with an increasingly harsh response -- a cycle that inevitably sours local people against the occupation.

As the French side tells it, this perspective was at the heart of a disagreement between Chirac and Bush at a private talk late last November in Prague, where U.S. and European leaders were gathered to discuss enlarging NATO. (Although the pair talked on the telephone, this was their main exchange before the war started six months later.) According to a senior French official who reviewed a French handwritten transcript of the meeting, Chirac talked not about the risks of the major combat phase of a military campaign, which the French expected to go quickly, but about the perils of the postwar phase, in particular the dangers of underestimating the force of Arab nationalism and the prevalence of violence in a country that had never known democracy. According to the French source, Bush replied that he expected postwar armed resistance from elements connected to Saddam's Baathist regime -- but thought it unlikely that the population as a whole would come to see the U.S. as occupiers. And Chirac, according to the source, told Bush that history would decide who was right. The White House recently declined to comment on the meeting.

Seven months after Saddam's toppling, the struggle for the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people goes on. But a survey of Iraqi public opinion, done in August for the American Enterprise Institute by pollster John Zogby, tends to confirm Chirac's instinct. Yes, the poll found that on the whole, Iraqis were very glad to be rid of Saddam; 70 percent said they expected Iraq to be "much better" or "somewhat better" in five years. That was the finding the administration and AEI highlighted. But asked whether America and Britain should help make sure a representative government is set up in Iraq or just let Iraqis work this out themselves, 60 percent responded "Iraqis alone." Asked whether the U.S. over the next five years would help or hurt Iraq, 36 percent said "help" and 50 percent said "hurt." In an interview on the poll's results, Zogby said: "The results are not good, from the perspective of the Bush administration. Something is not working, and there is plenty of polling evidence to show that something is not working." He continued: "The Americans misread the situation. They honestly thought the Iraqis were going to be welcoming them."

Traumatic experiences can be distorting, but the French fixation on Algeria, if that's what it is, seems appropriate. The uprising was not just a defeat for an aging, corrupt imperial power. It was also an awakening experience for such coming-of-age insurgents as Yasir Arafat and a forerunner of Islamic militants' decision to use terror to achieve broad political objectives. The conflict introduced the French to the same kind of deadly enemy that U.S. forces now find themselves battling in the streets of Baghdad. Better late than never, the Pentagon in September arranged for senior Special Forces officers a screening of The Battle of Algiers, the 1966 film showing how crack French paratroopers rolled up terrorist cells in the Algerian capital, in one of France's few clear-cut victories in that war. The message is twofold. On the one hand, the paratroopers forced the FLN to abandon the campaign in the capital. But the insurgency itself was not extinguished -- and eventually, it was the unremitting toll of French casualties and a public backlash in France against the army's harsh tactics against the Algerian population that caused the French to cut and run.

If an Iraqi version of the Algerian drama were to continue playing out, then the final act would be an abrupt, poorly planned pullout by a politically pressured Washington. Noting the growing domestic outcry over U.S. casualties in Iraq -- which, at 379 killed as of November 4, are quite small according to the historical standards of armed conflict -- the French believe this may well happen, despite Bush's vow to stay the course until Iraq is stable and democratic. And the result, Paris worries, would be a giant mess on Europe's doorstep. At this stage, "the worst-case scenario for us would be for [the U.S.] to leave," Levitte said in a recent interview at his Georgetown quarters. "If you want to build democracy in Iraq, you must be prepared to pay a price."

From Appeasement To Afghanistan
So the French are not virgins when it comes to occupations. Nor are they virgins when it comes to countering international terrorism. They left Algeria feeling humiliated and somewhat cowed. In their first stab at constructing a policy to deal with the strange new threat of Islamic terrorism, the French adopted a policy of appeasement -- an approach that included tacit permission for globally oriented terrorist groups to use French soil as a base, so long as the groups did not make France itself a target. Not surprisingly, France became a haven for international terrorists. But several decades later, Paris possessed counter-terrorism capabilities, oriented toward preventing attacks, second to none in the Western world in effectiveness. And French Mirages were dropping bombs on Afghanistan.

Behind this turnaround is a story of how the French learned what works in the struggle against Islamic terrorism. Along with Algeria, this learning experience powerfully shaped the French perspective on the post-9/11 world, and it helps explain why the French felt so strongly that Iraq was a secondary priority in the struggle against terrorism.

One of the few in Washington who has done a careful parsing of the French experience in counter-terrorism is an unassuming former Rand analyst, Jeremy Shapiro, who these days hangs his hat at the Brookings Institution as a research associate in the think tank's center on the United States and France. A 1989 Harvard graduate who's fluent in French, Shapiro has cultivated contacts among counter-terrorist experts at law enforcement agencies in both Paris and Washington. For obscure policy journals, he's been writing such pieces as "The U.S. Can Learn From the French in the War Against Terrorism."

In an interview at his cramped Brookings quarters, Shapiro right away warmed to the topic. "The French were among the first to note that terrorism was a global movement," he said. But before they came to this realization, they floundered. In the 1980s, a wave of bombings struck Paris targets, including department stores and subways. Not only were the French unable to prevent these attacks, they were also clueless about the perpetrators and motives. At first they thought that domestic neo-Nazi militants were behind an assault on a synagogue in a wealthy section of Paris. Only belatedly did they realize that responsibility lay with terrorists from the Middle East.

The French had descended to this low point through their adoption of what Shapiro calls the "sanctuary doctrine" -- a morally repugnant effort to isolate France from international terrorism by taking a neutral stance toward global terrorist groups. The idea was to give the terrorists no reason to attack France. (Better they hit someone else.)

It didn't work. Other countries actively battling terrorism, such as Spain and Israel, were understandably outraged that France was sheltering their enemies. Some splinter terrorist bands failed to recognize France as a "sanctuary" and targeted French interests anyway. And amid the Paris attacks, the French public demanded a get-tough approach.

As a result, French counter-terrorism policy evolved to its current emphasis on suppression and prevention. The key to this policy is what Shapiro calls the "Alan Greenspan" choice. In effect, France decided to de-politicize the anti-terrorism battle. "The French treat terrorism like we treat central banking -- as too serious to be left to the politicians," Shapiro says. At the heart of the French system is a group of Paris-based magistrates with sweeping investigative powers of the sort that a John Ashcroft would die for. Through the expertise accumulated over numerous investigations, the magistrates managed to burrow deeply into the roots of global Islamic terrorist networks and thus gain information on attacks even as they were being plotted.

The results are impressive -- and have helped protect not just the French but Americans, too. Shapiro's textbook example is the apprehension of terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999 with a trunk full of explosives he planned to use to attack Los Angeles International Airport. Even though he had few connections to France, French anti-terrorism officials had been tracking Ressam for more than three years and had repeatedly warned Canadian authorities of his plans to attack North American targets. The French provided the FBI with a full dossier on Ressam, helped U.S. officials identify his associates, and sent an expert to testify at Ressam's trial, at which he was convicted.

In this context, the French response to 9/11 represented a final repudiation of the sanctuary doctrine. The notion that France could somehow hide from terrorism was replaced by a newfound sense of solidarity, all the more startling given the anti-Americanism that had long been a staple of French politics. "We Are All Americans" -- "Nous Sommes Tous Americains" -- the front page of Le Monde declared on September 13, 2001. And with Levitte at the helm of the U.N. Security Council (his assignment before he took up residence in Washington as the French ambassador), that body, for the first time in its history, declared that an act of terrorism was equivalent to an act of war. It was with that legal predicate that France joined the U.S. in the campaign to topple the Taliban.

Iraq: A Question Of Legitimacy
Unity, of course, proved short-lived, as the real possibility of a war in Iraq came into focus in the fall of 2002. France's clear priority was a continued focus on Al Qaeda and related networks -- and the pursuit of what they viewed as unfinished business in the campaign against Taliban and other Islamic fighters regrouping in Afghanistan and Pakistan. French citizens were themselves directly under attack -- a Qaeda bomb had killed 11 French engineers at the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. "This is the main threat," Levitte said in a briefing at the European Institute, a Washington think tank, on January 29. Based on its own knowledge of Al Qaeda and related Islamic networks, the French saw nothing to connect Saddam's regime with Osama bin Laden and company. In December 2002, French authorities arrested a dozen North African Arabs who had links to Al Qaeda and were plotting to attack targets in Paris. French authorities suspected links between Al Qaeda and Chechen rebels, but not between Al Qaeda and Baghdad, French officials stated publicly at that time.

Still, the French did not rule out the use of force in Iraq. Rather, French opposition to a U.S.-initiated strike on Iraq centered on the question of legitimacy. On whose authority, they asked, could military force justifiably be used? This is an old tug-of-war between the two countries, going back to the early days of the Cold War, but Iraq elevated this disagreement to a new level of antagonism. The French reject the idea of American Exceptionalism -- a venerable fixture of the U.S. political psyche and staple of presidential speeches. American Exceptionalism is the notion that the United States has a unique crusader role to play in advancing freedom in the world, and can accomplish this mission not only because of its immense military power but also because of the compelling example it has set in creating a dynamic, democratic society at home.

The French, who after their anti-monarchical revolution in the 18th century staked a similar claim to a liberal, torch-bearing Exceptionalism, don't accept any of this. They insist that legitimacy, particularly with respect to the use of force, resides exclusively in the institutions of the "international community," namely the U.N. Security Council. "I am totally against unilateralism in the modern world," Chirac told The New York Times in a September 8, 2002, interview.

To a grated-on U.S. ear, this may sound like nothing more than the usual French rant against the United States as the world's hyperpuissance, or hyperpower. And, of course, the French, in arguing for a decisive role for the U.N. Security Council, are seeking to preserve an important role for themselves as one of the five permanent, veto-wielding members of that body. Nonetheless, it is also possible to believe that the French have a better practical fix on how the world sees America -- and multilateral institutions such as the U.N. -- than the Americans themselves have. American Exceptionalism works only when foreigners buy into it. If they don't, then the U.S. insistence on having its way truly does amount to bullying. And in this regard, world public opinion, loudly and clearly, seems to be saying, "I'll take the U.N." For example, in Iraq itself, while a majority of Iraqis in Zogby's recent poll said they thought the U.S. would "hurt," not "help," Iraq over the next five years, the same question about the U.N. drew an opposite response, with 50 percent saying it would "help" Iraq and just 19 percent saying "hurt."

Polling in the broader Muslim world underscores what, to advocates of American Exceptionalism, can only seem contradictory. On the one hand, the U.S. intervention in Iraq significantly inflamed Muslim opinion. A June survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that anti-American attitudes had spread from the Middle East to Islamic countries such as Indonesia, where favorable ratings for the U.S. had plunged from 61 percent to 15 percent over the course of 12 months. The survey also found that majorities in leading Muslim countries were worried about the U.S. as a potential military threat. Yet the Pew team also found that large majorities in most Islamic countries aspired to Western-style democracy. The Muslim world seems to like the product the U.S. is selling -- but not the salesman. They'd prefer to get the product from another store, and they seem to think the U.N. is that store.

All of which, of course, is what the French have been arguing -- at a higher decibel level than anyone else. "The French sometimes say out loud what others are thinking," says Charles William Maynes, president of the Eurasia Foundation in Washington. And this has long driven Washington nuts. Maynes remembers from his days as a Foreign Service officer for the State Department in the 1960s that it was "very difficult to get a rational discussion" within the department about France or India. "I decided that that was because they were democratic countries that had an independent policy and their own view of the world."

Pragmatism, Anyone?
Let's review. The French got it right in Iraq for three basic reasons. First, the French, by virtue of their own experience, had the best of all prisms with which to view the Iraq showdown: Algeria. Second, the French, because of the improvements they had made in their counter-terrorism efforts, were in a position to make their own independent determination of the threat posed by Al Qaeda and related groups versus the threat posed by Saddam's regime. And third, the French possessed good antennae; they had a clear reading of world, and in particular Muslim, public opinion on whether a U.S.-led intervention would be viewed as legitimate. They were better listeners than the Americans were.

In its exasperation with the French, Washington says it is Paris that has become lost in languid abstractions. "It's easy to toss out nice theories about sovereignty, and occupation, and liberation, and all that," Colin Powell complained to reporters on his plane last month after a round of inconclusive talks with the French on an expanded U.N. role in Iraq.

But he's picking on the French for the wrong reason. The Bush camp had run up against Jacques Chirac -- a stubborn 70-year-old man. Not even his friends regard him as a conceptual thinker or grand strategist. He's prone not to airy theorizing but to condescension. On the Iraq matter, he revealed his sense of superiority over Bush, a man 14 years his junior who entered the White House without a track record in foreign affairs. (Chirac has a higher estimation of Bush's father, a multilateralist who fought in World War II and headed the CIA before becoming president.) That final "Be careful!" warning was preceded by a vintage -- which is to say, patronizing -- Chirac pronouncement: "Personally, I have some experience of international political life."

It's very hard to know what to do about something if you haven't been there before. That's when the temptation to adopt a guiding theoretical framework to make sense of an unfamiliar and threatening landscape can become seductive. It may be too early for a conclusive verdict on the biggest of the big ideas that the neocons around Bush have offered -- the idea that a regime change in Iraq can spur a democratic transformation of the authoritarian political culture of the entire Arab Middle East. But that idea most certainly belongs in the category of untested hypothesis.

The neocons are not experts on the Middle East. One of their prime intellectual influences is an abstruse political philosopher, Leo Strauss, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany whose students at the University of Chicago included Paul Wolfowitz, now serving as Bush's deputy secretary of Defense and the administration's leading proponent of using Iraq as a laboratory for democratic nation building in the region. Straussians tend to believe in the ability of intellectual elites -- modern-day philosopher-kings -- to discern truths unavailable to lesser minds. "It's a European style of getting the peasants to do what 'we' say," said James Pinkerton, a critic of the Iraq intervention who worked in the Bush I White House.

Even if America can't tap a particular memory to deal with the post-9/11 world, it does have available to it that old and poignant tradition of American pragmatism. And it is a poignant tradition. Modern American Pragmatism, as the American critic Louis Menand tells the story in his Pulitzer-Prize winning book, The Metaphysical Club, was hatched after the Civil War as a kind of antidote to overly ideological and moralistic views of the world. The pragmatists came to their new lights as a result of their own hard, tragic experiences. Of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the movement's charter thinkers, Menand writes: "He had gone off to fight because of his moral beliefs, which he held with singular fervor. The war did more than make him lose those beliefs. It made him lose his belief in beliefs. It impressed on his mind, in the most graphic and indelible way, a certain idea about the limits of ideas."

There is a danger in this line of thinking -- the risk that an excess of pragmatism will spill over into cynicism and a paralyzing pessimism. But there's danger, too, in an excess of theory, spilling over into recklessness. "The limits of ideas" -- now there's an intriguing concept. How un-what-we-think-of-as-French. How ripe for America to re-explore.

« Les Français avaient raison », titre le « National Journal », hebdomadaire de référence du monde politique américain. Un texte-clé pour saisir le tournant de la guerre en Irak publié par le Nouvel Obs sous la signature de Paul Starobin

« Disons-le d’emblée, puisque le débat ne fait que débuter sur le meilleur moyen de penser le monde de l’après-11 septembre (et parce que c’est la seule attitude adulte, la seule digne d’un homme) : les Français avaient raison. Répétons-le : les Français - oui, ces « singes veules bouffeurs de fromage », comme leurs détracteurs américains les appelaient si éloquemment - avaient raison.

« Soyez prudents ! » Telle était la mise en garde, point d’exclamation compris, que le président Jacques René Chirac a adressée à « [ses] amis américains » lors d’une interview accordée à CNN le 16 mars, juste avant que le Pentagone déclenche l’invasion de l’Irak. « Réfléchissez bien avant de faire quelque chose qui n’est pas nécessaire, mais qui peut se révéler très dangereux », conseillait Chirac. Et il ne s’agissait pas là d’un avertissement de dernière minute, mais du point culminant d’une démonstration longuement développée par la France, soulignant les dangers d’une intervention sous l’égide américaine, et défendue pendant des mois à New York auprès des Nations unies et lors de réunions à Paris, à Prague et à Washington. Bien sûr, la guerre ne manquait pas d’opposants, en Europe et ailleurs, mais personne n’a avancé d’arguments hostiles avec autant d’insistance ou d’exhaustivité que les Français, Dieu les bénisse.

Mais les Américains, ou du moins le gouvernement Bush, n’ont pas prêté attention à ces mises-en-garde françaises, qui faisaient valoir non seulement que cette guerre était une mauvaise idée, mais que cette invasion pouvait avoir des conséquences néfastes pour les intérêts occidentaux et pour la lutte contre le terrorisme. Et voilà que notre gouvernement se retrouve dans une position de plus en plus inconfortable en Irak, où un contingent de 130000 hommes est la cible d’une campagne de guérilla sophistiquée et sanglante, menée à la fois par des combattants islamistes étrangers et par des partisans de Saddam Hussein.

Aux États-Unis mêmes, la majorité de l’opinion s’oppose à ce que le Congrès accorde au président les 87 milliards de dollars qu’il demande pour les opérations militaires et la reconstruction en Irak et en Afghanistan. En outre, la Maison-Blanche s’efforce tant bien que mal d’expliquer l’absence à ce jour d’armes de destruction massive, dont l’existence supposée était après tout la raison première de cette guerre.

Même les va-t-en-guerre les plus acharnés reconnaissent que les États-Unis sont voués à « une longue et pénible corvée » en Irak, comme l’écrivait le secrétaire d’Etat à la Défense Donald Rumsfeld dans un mémo récemment révélé au public. Bref, l’Amérique risque fort de se retrouver prise à un piège qu’elle s’est tendu à elle-même. Les Français avaient trois revendications majeures : la menace constituée par Saddam n’était pas imminente et aucune arme de destruction massive n’avait été trouvée ; installer la démocratie en Irak serait un processus lent et sanglant ; une intervention hors du cadre des Nations unies amplifierait la colère contre l’Amérique dans le monde musulman.

Toute approche pragmatique repose sur la mémoire, sur la faculté de tirer des leçons d’expériences passées similaires. Ce qui ne va pas de soi. Les opposants américains à la guerre, et particulièrement les opposants de gauche, étayaient leur mise en garde par un parallèle avec le Vietnam. Cela n’avait rien d’absurde, puisque le conflit vietnamien impliquait effectivement un choc de civilisations, et que les Américains n’ont jamais vraiment compris le milieu social et politique radicalement étranger où opéraient leurs forces armées.

Mais le Vietnam ne fait pas partie du Proche-Orient, ce n’est pas un pays musulman ; en outre, c’était l’un des théâtres de la guerre froide, où l’Union soviétique comme la Chine prêtaient main-forte aux guérillas antiaméricaines. Un seul pays occidental a fait l’expérience récente, intime et sanglante d’être en position de puissance occupante en territoire arabe, face au soulèvement d’une population musulmane : et ce pays, c’est la France, qui a accordé l’indépendance à l’Algérie en 1962 après avoir échoué pendant huit ans à mater une rébellion menée par des adversaires qui tuaient de sang-froid, n’hésitant pas à poser des bombes dans des boîtes de nuit d’Alger fréquentées par des adolescents français.

Selon un de ses vieux amis et conseillers, Chirac a retenu de l’expérience algérienne la leçon suivante : une occupation, même animée des meilleures intentions, est vouée à l’échec dès lors que le sentiment populaire est hostile à l’occupant : « Il a appris qu’avec toute la bonne volonté du monde, quand on est l’occupant, quand on est perçu comme tel, la population veut que vous partiez. » Et selon la même source, Chirac était convaincu par-dessus tout que les Américains finiraient par apparaître aux yeux des Irakiens non comme des libérateurs, mais comme des occupants. Il prévoyait une sorte de répétition de la tragédie algérienne, un « cercle vicieux » où des actions de plus en plus violentes contre l’occupant provoqueraient de sa part une riposte de plus en plus brutale, en un cycle qui attiserait fatalement le ressentiment de la population à l’encontre de l’occupant.

Selon les protagonistes français, c’est cette vision qui formait le nœud du désaccord entre Chirac et Bush lors de leur tête-à-tête de novembre dernier à Prague, où les dirigeants américains et européens étaient réunis pour discuter de l’élargissement de l’Otan (malgré des entretiens téléphoniques, ce fut leur dernier grand échange de vues pendant les six mois précédant la guerre).

Selon un haut dirigeant français qui a eu accès aux minutes manuscrites de cette conversation, Chirac avait évoqué non les risques posés par la phase de combat de cette campagne militaire, que les Français prévoyaient de courte durée, mais les périls de l’après-guerre, notamment le danger de sous-estimer la vigueur du nationalisme arabe, et la violence qui prévaudrait dans un pays qui n’avait jamais connu la démocratie.

Toujours de même source, Bush aurait répliqué qu’il s’attendait pour l’après-guerre à une résistance armée d’éléments liés au régime baassiste de Saddam, mais jugeait hautement improbable que la population dans son ensemble en vienne à considérer les Américains comme des occupants. Et Chirac aurait rétorqué à Bush que l’histoire trancherait. La Maison-Blanche s’est refusée dernièrement à tout commentaire sur cette rencontre.

Les Français ne sont donc pas des novices en matière d’occupation. Pas plus que lorsqu’il s’agit de contrer le terrorisme international. Ils avaient quitté l’Algérie avec un sentiment d’humiliation, et quelque peu échaudés. Dans leurs premiers efforts pour faire face à la menace nouvelle du terrorisme islamiste, ils ont adopté une politique de conciliation, une approche qui accordait aux groupes terroristes à visées internationales la permission tacite d’utiliser le territoire français comme base logistique, tant que ces groupes ne prendraient pas la France elle-même pour cible. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que la France soit devenue un havre pour les terroristes internationaux. Mais après quelques décennies Paris disposait d’un potentiel antiterroriste, axé sur la prévention des attentats, d’une efficacité sans égale dans le monde occidental. Et les Mirage français larguaient des bombes sur l’Afghanistan.

Derrière cette volte-face se cachent les leçons qu’ont apprises les Français sur les moyens à employer pour lutter contre le terrorisme islamiste. C’est cette expérience, conjuguée à celle de la guerre d’Algérie, qui a façonné avec une grande netteté le point de vue français sur l’après-11 septembre, et qui aide à comprendre pourquoi les Français étaient tellement convaincus que l’Irak n’était qu’un enjeu secondaire dans la lutte contre le terrorisme.

De fait, la France a décidé de dépolitiser la lutte contre le terrorisme. « Les Français abordent le terrorisme comme nous abordons la question de la Banque centrale : une affaire trop sérieuse pour être confiée aux politiciens », explique Jeremy Shapiro. Le dispositif français repose sur une équipe de magistrats parisiens dont les pouvoirs d’investigation quasi illimités feraient pâlir d’envie John Ashcroft. Grâce à une compétence bâtie sur d’innombrables enquêtes, ces magistrats sont parvenus à remonter aux racines des réseaux du terrorisme islamiste international, et donc à obtenir des informations sur les attentats au stade même de leur préparation.

Les résultats sont impressionnants, et ont contribué à protéger non seulement les Français mais aussi les Américains. Dans ce contexte, la réaction française au 11 septembre représentait l’ultime répudiation de la doctrine de l’immunité territoriale. A l’idée que la France était en quelque sorte à l’abri du terrorisme a succédé une solidarité nouvelle, d’autant plus étonnante que l’antiaméricanisme était une constante de la politique française. « Nous sommes tous américains », proclamait la une du « Monde » le 13 septembre 2001. Et c’est sous la présidence de Jean-David Levitte (devenu depuis ambassadeur de France à Washington) que le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations unies a, pour la première fois de son histoire, déclaré qu’un acte de terrorisme équivalait à un acte de guerre. C’est en s’appuyant sur ce fondement légal que la France s’est associée aux États-Unis dans leur campagne pour renverser les talibans. l Cette unité, on le sait, a été de courte durée, s’effritant à mesure que la perspective d’une guerre en Irak devenait de plus en plus probable au fil de l’automne 2002. La France avait pour priorité affichée de se concentrer sur Al-Qaida et les réseaux terroristes affiliés, et sur la poursuite d’un combat qu’elle considérait comme inachevé contre les talibans et autres combattants islamistes qui se regroupaient en Afghanistan et au Pakistan.

Au vu de ce qu’ils savaient d’Al-Qaida et des réseaux terroristes apparentés, les Français ne percevaient aucun lien entre le régime de Saddam et Ben Laden et consorts. En décembre 2002, les autorités françaises ont arrêté une dizaine de Maghrébins liés à Al-Qaida, qui préparaient des attentats contre des cibles parisiennes. Elles soupçonnaient l’existence de liens entre Al-Qaida et les rebelles tchétchènes, mais pas entre Al-Qaida et Bagdad ; à l’époque, des responsables français l’ont publiquement déclaré.

Cependant, les Français n’excluaient pas le recours à la force contre l’Irak. En fait, l’hostilité française à une attaque lancée par les États-Unis se fondait sur une question de légitimité. De quelle autorité, demandaient-ils, se prévaloir pour justifier le recours à l’action militaire ? Vieille pomme de discorde entre les deux pays, qui remonte au début de la guerre froide ; mais l’Irak transformait ce différend en véritable antagonisme.

Les Français rejettent l’idée de l’exceptionnalisme américain, ce spectre qui hante notre inconscient politique et qui resurgit régulièrement dans les discours de nos présidents. L’exceptionnalisme américain, c’est l’idée que les États-Unis auraient un rôle unique à jouer dans la croisade pour la liberté dans le monde, et qu’ils seraient à même d’accomplir cette mission non seulement grâce à leur gigantesque puissance militaire, mais également par l’exemple irrésistible qu’ils offriraient au monde d’une société démocratique et dynamique réussie.

Récapitulons. Les Français avaient vu juste sur l’Irak, pour trois raisons majeures. Premièrement, du fait de leur expérience, ils disposaient du meilleur des prismes pour observer la confrontation irakienne : l’Algérie. Deuxièmement grâce à leurs efforts couronnés de succès dans la lutte antiterroriste, ils étaient en mesure d’évaluer par eux-mêmes la menace représentée respectivement par Al-Qaida et les groupes similaires et par le régime de Saddam.

Enfin, les Français avaient de bonnes antennes : ils possédaient une vision exacte de la position qu’adopterait l’opinion publique internationale, et plus particulièrement musulmane, vis-à-vis de la prétendue légitimité d’une intervention américaine. Ils se sont montrés des observateurs plus attentifs et plus lucides que les Américains.

Et les Français ont été critiqués pour de mauvaises raisons. Bush et son camp se sont heurtés à Jacques Chirac, à son obstination et à ses 70 ans. Personne, pas même ses amis, ne le considère comme un théoricien ou un grand stratège. Et il a un penchant moins pour les concepts vagues que pour la condescendance. Sur la question irakienne, il a laissé paraître son sentiment de supériorité sur Bush, de quatorze ans son cadet, un homme entré à la Maison-Blanche sans aucune expérience préalable des affaires étrangères (Chirac a davantage d’estime pour Bush senior, ce multilatéraliste qui a combattu pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et a dirigé la CIA avant d’accéder à la présidence). Sa mise en garde finale (« Soyez prudents ! ») était précédée d’une déclaration typiquement chiraquienne - autrement dit, condescendante : « Personnellement, j’ai une certaine expérience de la politique internationale. » P. S.

(Traduit de l’anglais par Serge Chauvin © National Journal Group Inc.)

Some will say that Algiers is not Irak and throw out of the window 130 years of political experience with the Muslims

"New Europe" Giving US the Cold Shoulder


Source: Deutsche Welle German radio


"After committing troops to the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, the so-called "New European" states are gradually turning their backs on the United States as rewards fail to materialize.

US President George W. Bush's previously faithful and proud New European allies are gradually withdrawing their support for his cause in Iraq. In the space of just a few months, Bush's more faithful allies in central and Eastern Europe have one by one begun a complete or partial withdrawal of their troops from Iraq.

Yet, only two years ago, the heads of former communist bloc countries were prepared to brave the irritation of France and Germany, standing firmly at the United States' side. Recognizing the role played by Washington in helping fall of communism, they were sympathetic to the Bush crusade for freedom.

But the Bush regime has remained largely ungrateful for their efforts.

So now even Bulgaria, which orchestrated Eastern Europe's support for the campaign against Saddam Hussein, announced on Thursday that it would reduce its presence in Iraq by 100 soldiers at the end of June. Bulgarian Defense Minister Nicolas Svinarov said his government would examine the question of the withdrawal before the end of March.

The Baltic former Soviet republic of Latvia already reduced its small contingent in November, Hungary has withdrawn all its 300 troops and Poland cut its troops at the time of the Iraqi parliamentary elections on January 30, from 2,400 soldiers to 1,700. Poland, which controls a zone to the south of Baghdad, predicts that it will recall several hundred more troops from July.

East European governments have played down their decisions. "This is not a political decision, the contingent's reduction was dictated by practical reasons," Latvia's Defense Minister Atis Slakteris said. And Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski used the Iraqi elections to claim that a new era had begun for the country.

Anxious to hold on to one of its better allies in Europe, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quietly accepted Poland's arguments. Less diplomatic was her Danish counterpart Per Stig Möller, who harshly criticized Poland. "I think it's simply absurd to say that now that democracy is in place we can leave," said Möller.

In Hungary the reasons for withdrawal are clear. Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany (photo) could not secure a two-thirds parliamentary majority to extend the mandate. The conservative opposition refused to give its support, arguing that the large majority of Hungarians opposed the country's presence in Iraq.

And across most of the region opinions have only slightly changed over the past two years in their opposition to a military presence in Iraq.

In Hungary, before the parliamentary vote, 54 percent of people asked supported withdrawing troops compared to just 19 percent who wanted to maintain the troops.

In Poland more than two-thirds of citizens oppose deployment of their soldiers in Iraq against less than 30 percent who are in favor.

For his part Bush has done little or nothing to compensate the governments who took a risk in going against public opinion, although he did travel to the Slovak capital Bratislava last month to publicly thank Slovaks.

But the lucrative contracts for reconstructing Iraq were late in coming, just like the financial aid promised by Washington. Poland was awarded just one sizeable contract, worth 241 million euros ($320 million) for supplying armies in Iraq.

And while dozens of "New Europe's" soldiers have already been killed in Iraq, the region's inhabitants consider they are still treated as second class citizens by Washington.

Despite their governments' strong lobbying to Bush, they are still subject to visa requirements for visiting the United States. "


Iama

Contracts ? Hey. But Bush needs that money for his tax cuts. The finger to the allies, the finger

In this forum there were "a lot of attacks" in any direction. You simply cannot claim that France was in some way discriminated here. In the same way we can claim that right here, in this Romanian forum, there were a lot of attacks against Romania and Romanian values. Somebody else may feel justified to consider that Hungary is a victim of written attacks here. An Internet searcher from Russia would not be pleased by some certain things. And the politics of the present American leadership are the preferred target of other people, including me from time to time.
Thus I claim it is kind of odd equality in this situation...

Considering the title of this topic, "War in Iraq": A previous topic, "Picture of the Day - "Progress" in Iraq / Update", with 927 posts on 62 pages, was closed on February 7, 2005.
When we will have something in mind about Iraq, let check it first if it was also in the previous topic.

And regarding the French soldiers who sacrificed their lives, if some people forgot it, this does not make any point. There are so many things forgotten in history, that if we would like to start a topic called "The forgotten events of history", this topic would never end.
Moreover, the majority of people simply do not know history of any kind, so they do not know about the 2 million French soldiers who died mostly in WWI, but they do not know about other 10000001 facts.

PS: Why did you insert all that long text in both English and French? But anyway, it may be useful in some 3000 years from now, when the archeologists will discover the CD backup made by Dragos in the archeological digging sites of Bucharest, and they will use it to decipher French starting from English.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 26, 2005 04:59 am

Is this a propaganda type text?


"Memo from the first Marines


"Setbacks and tragedy are part and parcel of war and must be accepted on the battlefield. We can and will achieve our goals in Iraq. Waiting for war in the Saudi Arabian desert as a young corporal in 1991, I recall reading news clippings portending massive tank battles, fiery death from Saddam Hussein's 'flame trenches' and bitter defeat at the hands of the fourth-largest army in the world. My platoon was told to expect 75% casualties. Being Marines and, therefore, naturally cocky, we still felt pretty good about our abilities. The panicky predictions failed to come true... Nobody from my platoon died. Strength, ingenuity and willpower won the day. Crushing the fourth-largest army in the world in four days seemed to crush the doubts back home... In the spring of last year, I was a Marine captain, back with the division for Operation Iraqi Freedom... I was again subjected to the panicky analyses of talking heads. There weren't enough troops to do the job, the oil fields would be destroyed, we couldn't fight in urban terrain, our offensive would grind to a halt, and we should expect more than 10,000 casualties... [However,] I knew that our tempo was keeping the enemy on his heels and that our plan would lead us to victory... Mourning our losses quietly, the Marines drove to Baghdad, then to Tikrit, liberating the Iraqi people while losing fewer men than were lost in Desert Storm... Just weeks ago, I read that the supply lines were cut, ammunition and food were dwindling, the 'Sunni Triangle' was exploding, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was leading a widespread Shiite revolt, and the country was nearing civil war. As I write this, the supply lines are open, there's plenty of ammunition and food, the Sunni Triangle is back to status quo, and Sadr is marginalized in Najaf. Once again, dire predictions of failure and disaster have been dismissed by American willpower and military professionalism. War is inherently ugly and dramatic... All we ask is that Americans stand by us by supporting not just the troops, but also the mission. We'll take care of the rest."


Major Ben Connable
Foreign-Area Officer and Intelligence Officer with the 1st Marine Division
Ramadi, Iraq "

Iama

Source: http://braden.buzzword.com/discuss/msgRead...36;633?mode=day

>they will use it to decipher French starting from English.

In this age unfortunately, the Romanian doesn't exist anymore except in books.

If you consider interesting the pathetic anglomaniacal cultural leveling we are witnessing today, I really don't know what to say to you...

Now that Romania is signing its entry ticket in the EU, I can only regret that a number of you look more to the other side of the Atlantic, than more closely to Prague, Warsaw, Rome or Berlin...

That will not stop me however to be interested in Romania and its history...which is tied to that of my own country.

[translated by admin]

I don't know that I would call it "propaganda". Cocky? Yes. Arrogant? Maybe. But personally I don't mind some arrogance from soldiers who are in a combat zone. Confidence in your equipment, training, and comrades is a good thing.

Major Connable's description of the panicked tone of some of the US media reports is correct. I remember in 1991, hearing how it would take months and thousands of US casualties, and then the ground war only lasted 100 hours. In 2003, the prediction the US would be "welcomed as liberators" did not come true, but the gloomiest predictions have not come true either.

I don't believe the reports that Iraq is all smiling children and flowers, but I don't believe it's a hopeless mess either. Even the Iraqi security forces, that I had very little confidence in, seem to be getting more effective.

I have to agree with Florin -- many countries have had their policies, and their military performance, criticized in this forum.

As for why France has been criticized, I would say look at the outcome of the major conflicts of the 20th century. Yes, France was on the winning side in WW1 and WW2. But it is difficult to call them great French victories. The smaller conflicts -- Vietnam, Algeria? Yes, other countries made choices and fought wars as they disengaged from their colonial empires. But here too, these cannot honestly be called great successes.

None of this is meant to insult the bravery or skill of the French who died in WW1 or WW2. If individual bravery, patriotism, and self-sacrifice were all it took to win wars, human history would be very different. Industrial capacity, technology, leadership, geography and many other factors matter too. Yes, France has had some successes in these areas. But the painful truth is that in both WW1 and WW2, they were not successful enough.

I say this as an American who has had to remind Americans that France was the first ally of the USA, and that the US owes its existence as an independent nation to French support. (Yeah, we would probably be independent anyway by now, but who knows?). Each of our countries has needed help from the other, and received it.

Remember too that you are on a Romanian forum... certainly a country that knows about unfortunate geography, and knows very well that you can be on the winning side of a war and it still feels like you lost.

Please post only in English, as the forum rules require it.