With friends like the French…
: A brilliant Page 1 on the New York Post today going after the French for siding with Saddam vs. us. The best of it is a Page 1 squib from columnist Steve Dunleavy that’s not visible online:
As I gaze out at this cemetery — the final resting place of nearly 10,000 American kids who made the ultimate sacrifice to save France from Hitler — my heart fills with rage. Where are the French now, as Americans prepare to put their soldiers on the line to fight today’s Hitler, Saddam Hussein?
Honest disagreement is fine. Diplomatic intervention to bring peace is defensible. I still have plenty of questions about the Bush war strategy and I don’t begrudge the French (and Germans and Russians and Belgians theirs).
But all this public, political repudiation of America is dangerous right now.
I grew up in a frogophobic home. My World-War-II-era parents never lost their bitterness toward ungrateful French; they vowed never to go to France. I bet you that France lost billions of American trade and tourist dollars because of this tension
The danger of thumbing your nose at us today is that a new generation could adopt this same attitude: The French don’t like us? Well, we’ll make it mutual.
