The Fault
by Pascal Bruckner, Andre Glucksmann, and Romain Goupil
translated by Thomas Lewis
LeMonde, April 14, 2003
What a joy to see the jubilant Iraqi people celebrating their liberation and ⦠their liberators! Several months ago, France claimed it was channeling the warlike enthusiasm of the United States into a United Nationsâ âlegalityâ. Unfortunately, opposition to the war degenerated into a systematic opposition to Washington. Rightly or wrongly, our leaders gave one the feeling they were protecting Saddam, by clinging stubbornly to an arm-wrestling match with their Anglo-Saxon allies.
Friendship gave way to open hostility, despite diplomatic smiles and denials such as: âThe Americans are not our enemiesâ¦â By its intransigence and the promise of a veto, âwhatever the circumstances,â our country divided Europe, and paralyzed Nato and the United Nations. By not issuing a common and precise ultimatum which might have forced the Iraqi dictator to yield, it ruined all non-military options. Far from avoiding war, the âpeace campâ hastened it by playing the devilâs advocate against Uncle Sam. France put itself out of the game, looking ridiculous. You donât lead a great nation by getting intoxicated with media success and verbal contests. In this respect, Tony Blair, who took the risk of confronting his electorate while remaining faithful to his convictions, proved to be a true head of state.
The presidential line of conduct has been reflected in public opinion. One day we'll have to tell the story of the hysteria, the collective intoxication which took over France for months, the anguish of the Apocalypse that seized our best minds, the almost Soviet-like atmosphere that bound together 90 percent of the population in a triumph of monolithic thought, allergic to the least criticism. We'll have to study the partisan coverage of the war by the media - which, with very few exceptions, was less objective than militant, minimizing the horrors of the Baathist tyranny in order to better condemn the Anglo-American expedition, guilty of all the crimes, all the offenses, all the misfortunes of the region.
For weeks, Baghdad Television invaded our brains and our little windows on the world, to the point that the very rare Iraqi dissidents who were invited on had to excuse themselves for existing, and a French singer, in a gesture of unusual obscenity, left the studio of a variety show on FR3 when Saad Salam, a member of the Iraqi opposition, arrived. We'll have to explain why the Kurdish minority was forbidden to demonstrate during this period, while the nephews of Saddam paraded our boulevards waving his portraits, howling slogans to his glory, going so far as trying to lynch the Iraqi poet in exile, Salah Al-Hamdani. We'll have to analyze the alarming proportion of French (33%) who did not wish for a victory by the coalition, pronouncing themselves de facto for a victory by Saddam Hussein.
There is no choice but to accept that anti-Americanism is not an accident brought on by recent events or a simple reluctance in facing this administration in Washington, but rather a political creed, binding one group with another, in spite of their divergences: the Front National and the Greens, the socialists and the conservatives, the communists, the monarchists.... On the right the same as the left, it's rare to find those who haven't yielded to this "nationalism of imbeciles" which is always a symptom of resentment and decline.
These days, we've enjoyed opposing French intelligence with American narrow-mindedness, and the wisdom of old Europe with the madness of the New World, led by "King Bush" (*). The result: one of the most frightening dictators of the Middle East has fallen, yet France contributed nothing to his fall.
On the contrary, it did everything in its power to delay it. While Baghdad danced, Paris looked annoyed. As certain intellectuals and politicians publicly expressed their confusion, indeed their "nausea" faced with the Anglo-Saxon victory, the weekly Marianne used the title "The Catastrophe" to describe the day when Baghdad tasted the first hours of its deliverance. We'll have to get used to it: in our democracies there will always be a sizable number of citizens driven to despair by the fall of a dictator. Maybe the country of human rights doesn't love liberty as much as it flaunts this idea and pretends to love it. From Jean-Marie Le Pen to Jean-Pierre Chevenement, Saddam Hussein counted a number of comrades among us, discreetly renamed "friends of the Iraqi people". Is the Republique, along with Moscow and Berlin, going to introduce a national day of mourning, so we can all cry for disappearance of the Iraqi regime?
The second Gulf War has been a defining moment. A new outbreak of anti-semitic and ethnic hatred, an economic and social crisis, defiling a British military cemetery, beating up Jews and members of the Iraqi opposition during large "peace" marches, forming an alliance, in the rear, with the unsavoury Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Chechens, a reception in Paris for the African tyrant Robert Mugabe, public insults addressed to the Eastern European countries, guilty of not responding to our beck and call. Our great nation is not writing one of its most glorious pages.
The future of liberated Iraq remains highly problematic, and its pacification is far from certain. It's not certain that Washington will be modest in its victory, nor that the military victory will be magically crowned by an agreement of hearts and minds. Nothing assures us that the Bush government will get down to settling the Palestinian issue, despite its promises, nothing guarantees that peace will carry the day in the Middle East. But by its choices, Paris has condemned itself to having only a marginal role to play in this region of the world. History continues, but will France still be a part of it?
(* NB: In the original this was "Ubush Roi", a reference to the monstrous "hero" of Alfred Jarry's satirical play Ubu Roi, a hideous caricature of a dictator who is a cross between Macbeth and Mr Punch -CB)
http://www.cinderellabloggerfeller.blogspot.com/
NOTE: Neither Rupert Murdoch nor the president of Spain had any known role in the writing of the above essay.
now why do they really hate us? i read a few interviews with bin laden where he explicitly states why. no need to guess. i probably won't get the order of importance right but here they are.