ADN

It's just an arrogant remark, the kind that creates anti-us sentiment. It just shows plain ignorance and a desperate attempt to look better than them. It's about as witty as changing the name of French Fries to Liberty Fries. It's so pathetic it just makes one want to cry.

Study a bit of the WWII history and you might actually find out that France's resistance was also a vital part on defeating Germany. Read a bit on current peacekeeping operations and you will find out most of peacekeepers in Africa are French.

American and French rivalry started in the 70's when France withdrew from NATO. The US was so offended that started all this anti-French propaganda - and to which the French responded in kind. I would go as far as to calling it childish.

I live in France in Paris suburb and I would like to say be careful to what the media says. I never saw on TV that 300 cities were razed!!!! Or maybe I missed something!!! I am not saying that the images are fake and nothing happend but it is more localised than what is show on TV!!!

I am not nearly as ignorant of the French as you assume, and as you must cling to history to defend them, then so will I employ history to clarify my statement as being more than just an uniformed media fed anti-french sentiment.

Two sound and recent reasons to note the French as asshats:

1. Hezbollah†™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¾¢‚¬Å¡‚¢s goals are clear and can be summed up through statement made by Nasrallah made in March 2003: †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™¢¢¬‚¦‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦¢‚¬Å“Death to America was, is and will stay our slogan.†™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬? When Chirac met Nasrallah, the French President said, †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™¢¢¬‚¦‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦¢‚¬Å“Hezbollah is an important component of the Lebanese society†™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬?.

2. France actively supported and TRAINED the Hutu army in Rwanda for their campaign of Genocide of the Tutsi. Some of the officers ever wore Hutu uniforms and led skirmishes. In fact, the French representative at the conmemoration of the genocide was booed out of the stadium, after the president of Rwanda during his speech condemmed France for its behavior.

There is no real history of victory in French war, so they stopped trying, and stuck to cooking, making cheese, and therefore became famous for their "whine". Name one sound victory against someone other than women and children, or other French, and I will tear it apart.

They hid from the Muslims ever since they couldn't beat this enemy who was not even accumstomed to the land they were fighting in. Finally, they considered it a sound victory when they couldn't keep them out of their country, and focused on instead making sure they don't have an unpleasant stay in their country, so they don't get kicked out by the Muslims. It is their meddling that made most of the Anti-Western sentiment actions that we have to deal with now.

I am from Louisiana, and we pretty much have to study the history of Defeat,. um, I mean French military campaigns. I am far from ignorant on the subject.

Little known fact, Japan refused to lend AXIS troops to the occupation of France, because the Japanese would only tackle opponents with honor and ability. This led to the ill-repute of the French which the Japanese had lost respect for in the crushing defeat they suffered in French Indochina. They figured why bother invading, we already whipped them soundly.

and and by the way, let's see how that curfew did, that Paris refused to impose:

Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, youths torched 617 vehicles, down from 1,173 a night earlier, police said. Incidents were reported in 116 towns, down from 226. Police made 280 arrests, raising the total to 1,830 since the violence broke out 13 nights ago.

They also forget to mention that the "arrests" were mostly "house arrests" and the kids are having a harder time finding cars that haven't been torched. Face it, the French are afraid to do anything real punitive to the rioters because they will get their asses handed to them by the mobs if they rise up with full force.

We have riots as well,.. But they usually involve more than criminals getting killed accidentally while hiding from the cops they shot at.

Ch

I did not imply you were ignorant, I accused the General's comment of that.

France might have trained the Hutus, but the US trained and armed the Taliban and in particular certain Bin Laden. And guess who trained and armed today's nost evil character (Saddam)? And guess who gave him his chemical weapons? I'll give you a hint. Those old chemical weapons say "MADE IN THE USA". How can anybody acuse anybody else with those cards? I'm not defending the French. Weapons is a very dirty business and nobody is clean. Not France and certainly not the US.

In regards to your history of war, I would have to say it is not very accurate. France, the UK, Spain, Germany, even Portugal and the Netherlands were hardened warriors centuries before the US even existed.

As to very recent wars, the US has proven to be quite the warmonger, but then to our current level of civilization that's not supposed to be good. Refusing to invade countries for the hell of it is not cowardice. And as far as I am concerned they were right. Pandora's box has been opened and there is no way back.

Did they hide from the muslims? What kind of statement is that? Because they let them into their country? Just like Irish, Italian, Hindus, etc., that were let into the US?

Do you want a French victory? Read a bit on someone called Napoleon. And don't tell me he was eventually defeated. All empires are and all will be. Those wars were real military achivements. Invading small countries that have practically non-existent military using the most advanced, best equipped armies is not.

As to the French defeat in Indochina, do not forget who got defeated next.

I love the mention of Napoleon's victory, so called. He clearly won because he gave up more than he gained, and then lost what he had gained. how can this be considered a win? He just balanced his losses to what was not immediately his priority, and then lost everything else too.. Selling huge vestments of National efforts (Like Louisiana, which was majority interest in the New World for dirt cheap to claim a victory which you can't even maintain is hardly a resume-worthy item for a military genius.

The French have been hiding from the Muslims behind the Pyrenees for how many centuries? Oh wait, there not hiding anymore, they are being assimilated. and this is exactly like the riots of the immigrant, which were quickly resolved, and rarely involved the destruction of so much private property (granted: people had very little).

The Taliban and Hussein are two completely different issues, and evolved into situations beyond American control and absolute chaos. Read my history on these areas, for a clue. Our vested interest in the area were corrupted by certain individual private parties, which have all but high-jacked our govt at times.

As for bin Laden, as Afghan rebels fought Soviet invaders during the 1980s, the United States gave aid from afar while Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden provided support from within Afghanistan. In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, Bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. We traded with them as a independent party, but most of their munitions came from private parties, paid with Bin Laden's extreme wealth. We did not train them, but many we trained for other purposes joined his cause. In 1995, he first turned that force against us.

As for the Taliban, We funded the Taliban through the Pakistanis who were our enemy's enemy, and all that money could have been cut off but it would not have stopped what was going on. We knew what was going on there. We wanted a stable locally supported Afghanistan authoritatve body so we could put a pipeline down through there so we could raise up from dependency on Saudi Arabia, and keep the russians from communizing all of Afghanistan. That's really what we were up to. Hell, we barely understood Muslim nationalism vs. Religious Tyranny at the time.

Our biggest flaws internationally, and in particular in the middle East, have been created by adopting the French philosophy of war: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." It is simply not applicable to the religious and geographical bonds which defy borders of countries, and we are gloabally starting to see the repurcussions of that mode of thinking.

by the way, Those old chemical weapons which say "MADE IN THE USA" on them were not originally chemical weapons, and have parts we never sold them.

And when we put the Ba'ath party in place, with Hussein at the top, he was not killing Kurds by the truckload, he was ensuring that Qasim would not back soviet communist agendas in the region, and we would not have a Iraq/Iran allegience which would have crippled the entire free world. Again with the "enemy of my enemy issue."

But this article was about their inability to properly maintain a damage control, on a widescale riot, not their inability to have a sound miltary victory.

I am not saying America is immune to critique, I am saying after America was posted globally as slow to respond to disorder in ONE city of New orleans, how could this razing of more than 100 cities recieve less global coverage, or at least be more accepted as ok? I think the simple answer is that no one expects much of the French when they are trying to enforce Order, even in their own borders.

vertical,
raum

By the way, Napoleon was actually a Corsican, hardly a French aristocrat, and his armies suffered heavily until he hired non-French mercanaries to balance out the French handicap in his ranks. Oh, and HE LOST ALL HIS GAIN AND GAMBLE, and ended up in a deep financial embarrassment they have never managed to crawl out of - They stand as the only Party in the New World struggle to accomplish this BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. Go France!

:roll: Can the people who wish to speak about French victory cite anything other than the victories of one deposed General with little lasting influence on the Country's borders or influence? I think not.

Joan of Arc is the exception, and she fought for God, above France. So they burned her at the stake for winning. Such is the price of victory in France, no?

All possible claims to French victory have systematically been erased by an almost allergic French opposition to any lasting victory.

Can a country be allergic to its own spine?

Sorry raum, if you are the kind of person who wants to believe that training the Taliban, Saddam and selling him chemical weapons is different, better or even the other country's fault (we did it but it was their policy???), then I'm no longer discussing this. Believe what you want.

By the way, I still need to see a purely US military victory that was not against some small poor country with a puny little army.

As to your original question, I assure you there is an entire world who cares.

there has been more international exposure and response to the explosion in the Radisson in Jordan that killed 5 people than the 100+ cities in chaos with more than 100 dead in France.

I am not debating that I do not care. Maybe you didn't get this. I do care. But the riots in France were severely played down, compared to other media explosions lately for things far less dramatic. I have seen more about T.O.'s arrogance and Britney Spear's relationship history than the current French riots, even in international news sources.

As far as solely US victories,.. that's not the way we fight. We are an ALLIED nation. We didn't even fight our own civil war alone... Oh, and we are also some 800+ years younger than France.

And no one can compare the Saddam Hussein we helped put in power (who was not even a Muslim,. btw) with the man he became when he succombed to the power people freely gave him. We did this to maintain a stay in the Middle East, and to disallow a monopoly in Saudi Arabia, ran by enemies of the US. Oh, and the world was so happy we did it. Now, we get blamed because people kept giving him more power thnawe wanted him to have, and he went full blown bat shit psycho on the Kurds,.. whch we had forced him to protect. We tried to stop his atrocity, and we met with international criticism, so we let him stay, and that was blamed on us as well. BUT NEVER did we suit up as iraqis and kill kurds, like the French did to tutsi in Rwanda. And once again, the weapons we gave were CONVERTED to chemical weapons from the conventional provision we had supplied them with.

(I am not happy about it, and i would have never alowed the killing of the kurds without armed response, despite international criticism. That was our fault: inaction.)

I am not saying that the Norns do not have an impressive history,.. nor am I saying the French have made no sound contribution to the world. I love what France once was, even if they have no penchant for the battlefield. I also have no issue with Muslims, in particular. But to freely allow anti-western sentiments among training camps within yor borders when you yourself are WESTERN is just stupid. I am in awe especially of their scientists of some repute and Voltaire in particular. Their writers such Boudelaire and Mallory, their mystics such as Alphonse Louis Constant, and the decadance of the French Victorian and Bohemian eras... but it is foolish to not acknowledge that their trend of pacifism is their thorn de'side, and with the exception fo the Norns, their stock has no miltary history of accomplishment despite huge numbers and technical advances. They couldn't even defeat the Panama Canal, and there was no real enemy! As a result they have lost most of their allies because they constantly shun them when they campaign for global stability, in exchange for apeasing their immigrant population from countries that they support FOR NO REASON other than they wish to avoid conflict. We in the USA call that "being a wimp" and it ends with riots in your streets and terrorist training camps in your country that you can't uproot, while you cling to your culture and traditions. It will be revealed that the very sentiment of the French is not shared by the terrorists they harbour, and they stand to become divided among themselves, if they make no stance.

Personally, I hope to see France before I need papers to enter Paristan.

vertical,
raum

now, two weeks later,.. France is still anticipating a down-turn in the violence... but they have posted riot police around Paris. Um, I was under the impression a two week long riot killing citizens and destroying hundreds of people's property might warrant actually DISPATCH of RIOT POLICE.

Reat assured, Chirac will address the subject when Order has been returned (likely in 2006 at this rate).