With doublespeaking France, honor gets lost in translation

[Tiger in Spain 0]

French is the traditional language of diplomacy. Diplomacy is the art of saying one thing while doing another.

In recent weeks, France stepped forward to act as a broker of peace in Lebanon. “Act” is the key verb in that last sentence, as it now would seem that the only other verifiable part of the sentence is “in recent weeks.”

To correctly parse that sentence, one must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or “peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is true when France further suggested it wanted to “lead” a “strong” “multinational” “force” there.

I don’t speak French, so I have no idea what the actual French words are for those concepts or what possible nuances there may be. I’ve been relying on news reports in English, which now inform me that the French do not intend to send any significant number of troops to what is supposed to be a force of 15,000 in Lebanon, like everyone thought they said they would.

The heady moment of peace brokering having passed, uponsober reflection, the French now say they already have a general and some staff in south Lebanon ordering about UNIFIL, the U.N. monitoring entity there. That’s plenty of leadership, the French suggested: All France needs to contribute now is another 200 combat engineers.

In tactical terms, when it comes to securing a Middle East conflict zone, that can be referred to as “squat.”

The United Nations, which is trying to salvage what is left of its own self-respect after the utter failure of UNIFIL in Lebanon, is now publicly begging European nations to contribute troops.

To find the last plain-speaking French leader, it is necessary to go back to Napoleon Bonaparte. He said he was going to take over Europe, and proceeded to do so. No, scratch that. He said he was going to bring French liberty and equality to Europe, then crowned himself emperor. Subsequent French history offers us a sordid string of third world colonizations followed by bloody wars to hang on long after the time to relinquish colonies had passed, setting the stage for corrupt government and prolonged conflict in places like Vietnam.

More recently, we’ve seen the naked hypocrisy of Dominic de Villepin in the United Nations, braying about his humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people, while trying to ensure mass murderer Saddam Hussein remained in power to honor his French contracts.

The shamelessness of France knows no bounds. They have a domestic Arabic population and business interests in the Mideast to satisfy. They desperately want to be taken seriously as a major power. So they sat down with the United States and hammered out a peace plan. Then, before the ink was dry, they shrugged a Gallic shrug.

I wish I could be charitable here and find some good excuses for the French. Ernest Hemingway, who had a soft spot for them, used to like to say, “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk.” But Hemingway, unlike the French, had a sense of honor.

French was once the lingua franca, back when men wore powdered wigs and France was a power to be reckoned with. None of those things are true now. French has been replaced by English as the language of foreign policy, business, tourism, the Internet and just about everything else.

If we, those of us who enjoy conducting business in English rather than say, Chinese or Arabic, want it to stay that way, I’d suggest step one is that we should continue to state clearly our intentions and do what we say we aregoing to do. Even when the world doesn’t necessarily like what we are saying.

That is our French lesson for the day.

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[rexbo 104]

And imagine a world with John Kerry as President, his entire foreign policy plan was to follow the French.

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The United States is not just the world’s sole superpower, it is the world’s only responsible power.

Consider the recent action related to a peacekeeping force taking control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah. France initially agreed with the United States on a United Nations resolution creating an international force that would operate with robust rules of engagement to confront the terrorist guerrilla group. When the Arabs balked, France insisted that the rules of engagement be made considerably vaguer. Since France was going to lead the force, the U.S. deferred to Paris, which has subsequently said that it will contribute only 200 combat engineers to the force because ... the rules on engagement are so vague.

...

When President Bush is gone, conservative foreign policy will change. But it won’t be a change the foreign-policy establishment likes. It won’t be toward a let’s-talk-even-more-to-the-French multilateralism as represented by Nebraska’s tiresome Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel. It will be something more selfish and hardheaded, something more French in its motivation — Bush without the soft touches. Then, the world will miss the earnest do-gooding United States of old.

[DKW 86 7,440]

France: Tell the UN you are totally committed to the UN Peacekeeping Operation and you will send a whopping 400 troops in there. Then send in only 200 basically non-combatants and whine about what you are sending.

400 Troops alone, man, you might be able to actually hold on to part of one small village. But then again these is the same French troops that famously sell used weapons as "Dropped once, never fired." The real legend of Napoleon is that he actually won a battle using French men as soldiers. French males can also be described as invertebrates, spineless. Chirac is actualy a lower level species. He is not close to being an actual human.