FRANCE'S VILLEPIN CALLS FOR 2008 IRAQ TROOP EXIT
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts March 17, 2007 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Friday urged the United States and other foreign nations to withdraw from Iraq in 2008 and said the war had "shattered" America's image abroad.
Here are some foreign bad boys (and here and here) we'd like out of Iraq. Oh, but France is not here minding her own. No, no. She is mucking in the life-and-death struggle of the state of Iraq, yet again attempting an intervention on behalf of the terrorists.
... "We must be clear on a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. I believe that it should take place within a year, during the year 2008," said Villepin. "This will allow Iraqis to feel that their future is in their hands and put them back on the path of national sovereignty."
Why does France continue to beat this drum (and here and here) when Iraq and neighbors could not be plainer in their insistence on the presence of coalition troops?
Because France has a huge stake in the failure of the coalition mission in Iraq.
Read any of the numerous political obituaries for Jack. There is only one agreed accomplishment for his twelve years in office: Jack, and in his person, France, opposed the American-led liberation of Iraq.
But this is not an accomplishment. France did not dissuade the coalition. Iraq was liberated. Saddam was ousted, hunted, caught, judged, and hanged by the neck. So this one accomplishment is a nonaccomplishment, a failure. It is only with the failure of the coalition mission that Jack and France can pretend to vindication. "I told you so" isn't much of a legacy, but it's all Jack has a shot at and he desperately wants it.
It is worth remembering that Dom, Jack's point man in opposing America, could not bring himself to pronounce for the success of the coalition as it swept through Iraq (item No.3). And though at the time Jack enjoyed headlines and soundbites and the ephermeral adulation of the peace mob, the back channels of the regional powers -- the very powers Jack sought to please -- considered French opposition obnoxious:
The authors [of Chirac d'Arabie : Les mirages d'une politique française] 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.
Even were the coalition mission to fail, where's the glory for France?
[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.
PFFT (What is this?): Iraq be damned 4 | Rayonnement français 0
