A French view of Jack's Iraq legacy.

CHIRAC OF ARABIA

December 23, 2006 (Asharq Alawsat) - In the winter of 2002 and the spring of 2003, Jacques Chirac resembled a tornado of political energy focused on a single objective: preventing the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad. ... But why? This is the question that Eric Aeschimann and Christophe Boltanski, two journalists with the Parisian daily Liberation, pose in their new book [Chirac d'Arabie : Les mirages d'une politique française] that studies Chirac's broader policies with regard to the Middle East.

... The bond of friendship that Chirac had established with Saddam Hussein in the 1970s may have been one reason for the French leader's continued support to the very end of the Baathist regime. Another reason may have been the substantial commercial interests that France had developed in Iraq thanks to the sanctions imposed by the UN after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. It is also possible that Saddam Hussein had helped finance Chirac's neo-Gaullist party, along with several other French political parties and groups both on the right and the left, for years.

DIPLOMATIC MISFIRE
Jack Guesses Wrong On Iraq

Nevertheless, and contrary to the two authors' implicit claim that Chirac was pursuing a very personal course on Iraq, the French president was acting in accordance with a well-established French policies that went beyond tactical calculations. Chirac saw his opposition to the war in Iraq as a natural reflection of France's so-called "Arab policy" as developed by President Charles De Gaulle a quarter of a century earlier. In 1967, De Gaulle reversed France's pro-Israel policy, as developed by successive Socialist governments in Paris, and initiated a new strategy aimed at wooing the Arabs. This was a natural development if only because the end of the war in Algeria had removed the major cause of Arab hostility towards France.

In the particular case of Iraq, Chirac had even more reason to stick to traditional French policies. The French state-owned oil company, CFP, had been active in Iraq for decades, making it the second most important jewel in the French energy crown after Algeria. By contrast, British and American oil companies had been shut out of Iraq since the late 1950s. The two "Anglo-Saxon" powers did not even have an embassy in Baghdad until the mid 1980s.

Aeschimann and Boltanski are critical of Chirac for what they see as his poor judgment in splitting the Western democracies. Chirac, however, was acting on the basis of traditional French policy, as presented to him by the Quai d'Orsay.

... What did Chirac learn from the experience? The authors say he ended up with a "bitter taste in his mouth". This was not because Saddam Hussein was eventually toppled. What chagrined the French leader most was that, to his horror, he found out that Arab leaders, in fact, resented France's attitude. Officially hostile to the war in public, most Arab leaders in private reproached France for championing Saddam Hussein's cause. After the war, that attitude was translated into a virtual freeze of Franco-Arab relations and a significant decline in commercial exchanges.

... [Another] point of interest concerns the actual effect of France's desperate efforts to thumb its nose at the "Anglo-Saxons" whenever possible. Some analysts claim that France's anti-American posture has done great harm both to the Western democracies and to the cause of stability and peace, especially in the Middle East. Other pundits, however, argue that whatever Chirac did, ultimately had no effect, if only because France lacks the power to make a real difference on any issue. In other words, Chirac has been playing a game of simulation diplomacy in the same way one may play Monopoly on a rainy weekend.

Yet no amount of received policy or diplomatic continuity can explain Jack & co.'s ham-handed handling. Certainly MM. Aeschimann et Boltanski have put the lie to the fairy tale of French principled opposition. One might still respect a France who declared her opposition in aggressive defense of economic and national interests. (Russia spares us moral pretensions when defending its economic interests by defending Iran, for example.) Who honestly believed Jack & co.'s high-toned twaddle about French principles, what with French adventures in the Republic of the Comoros and abetment in Rwanda and minacious nuclear posturing -- to link but a few recent violations of advertised principle.

PFFT (What is this?): Bad bet 4 | Bad cess 4 | Bad Jack 4 | Rayonnement français 0

"May have's" and "it's possible" don't make it a fact Damian, and I'm not trying to undermine "Chiraq" 's relationship with Saddam.
As for implying the US has always kept their hands clean in regards to Iraq, commercially and militarly, I'm afraid you had way too much cheap Champagne during the Holidays.

Ah, M. Zmx,

And simply rejecting surmises is less of a fact, why, no fact at all.

Of course, your quarrel is with the cheap champagne drunk by your compatriots, MM. Aeschimann and Boltanski, and the reviewer for Asharq Alawsat -- who we wager has had no champagne at all -- whose opinions we have reported.

Now sit up straight and read the post again. Carefully this time, not just the first paragraph. [We patiently wait.] Now, tell us exactly where you find any implication about clean or dirty American hands in the above post? Exactly.

You don't even think. You reflexively offer this stale non sequitur whenever you have no argument to the opinions on offer. In this case French opinions critical of French policy on Iraq.

It looks like you are the one who has posted with a head full of cheap champagne.

DGB