Krauthammer's French Follies (Archival Materials)

Against the Grain: Krauthammer's French Follies
By Thomas Riggins

It is interesting to read between the lines of some of the ultra-right’s more illogical proponents – such as Charles Krauthammer who regularly bloviates on the last page of Time magazine. His essay of July 12 ‘04 is a case in point. When properly interpreted it reveals how bankrupt and self-destructive the Bush administration’s Iraqi policy has become.

Krauthammer calls his screed "Why the French Act Isn’t Funny Anymore." He thinks the French used to be funny – playing at grandeur and all that, but not now. Now they are thwarting the best-laid plans of Bush and Blair and have become a pain in the derriere. So he treats us to a real Jeremiad against French President Jacque Chirac, a representative of French conservatism. But his article actually provides support for the French position that he is attacking as "anti-Americanism" (read "anti-Bushism").

So what’s got Krauthammer’s goat? He, along with the whole crew of the usual ultra-right suspects, is up in arms over Chirac’s refusal to be a willing puppet of George Bush and to aid and abet him in his treacherous and disastrous military interventions in the Muslim world (although he teamed up with him against the Haitians).

Here is a proof of French obstructionism, according to Krauthammer. At the recent NATO meeting in Istanbul who should show up but Hamid Karzai, former US-sponsored terrorist against the progressive (women have rights) Soviet-supported Afghan government and now "supremely courageous President of Afghanistan" (or al least a small part of it – maybe Kabul during the day).

Like that other product of "democratic reconstruction" ("re-"?), Iyad Allawi, CIA agent and Prime Minister of the American-controlled part of Iraq (the Green Zone) who was appointed to office as was Bush – Karzai is totally dependent on his US handlers for survival. His mission to Istanbul was "to beg for our troops to protect his country" as a big Taliban-Al Qaeda resurgence threatens the election choreography laid out for September. NATO agreed to send some troops to help out at election time but France vetoed the US demand to immediately dispatch special NATO forces.

So is it France’s fault that Karzai has insufficient military support to back up his government? Not! Krauthammer rants about the "war" in Afghanistan as "the good war," "the war of undeniable (sic) necessity," "the war everyone (sic) supported," etc., but Chirac "with a flick of a hand" (those effete French) dismisses both Karzai and the US.

The truth, however, is quite different. Revelations in recent books, films and the press, including Time magazine if Krauthammer would bother to read it, have shown that Bush and his unindicted co-conspirators, after making a lot of woop-de-doo about the tragedy of 9/11, cynically manipulated the emotions of the American people to justify not a so-called war on terror and thus an attack on the Taliban-Osama bin Laden forces in Afghanistan, which was used as a diversion to cover an imperialist take over of Iraq for the purpose of good old fashion geo-political domination of the Middle East and control of the natural resources (oil) of the Iraqi people.

To this end the Bush regime (an unelected cabal of unbridled reactionaries out to enrich their corporate masters at the expense of ordinary Americans as well as the people of the targeted countries they seek to control) diverted money and troops from the "real" war on terror to the invasion of Iraq.

If Karzai finds himself down and out in Istanbul and Kabul it is not the French who are to blame but the betrayal by Bush and his gang of their own puppet. Just as the bin Laden family flew out of the US after 9/11, courtesy of President Bush, so Osama himself was allowed to flee out of Afghanistan amidst all the smoke and mirrors of "the war against terror."

It wasn’t Chirac’s hand flick but George W. Bush’s ("Now watch this drive!") manipulations not only of Karzai and his followers, but of the American people as well, that has brought Afghanistan to the sorry mess it is now in.

Krauthammer, of course, knows all of this but as an ultra-right cheerleader his journalistic skills are addressed to the sixty percent of the population the mass media he works for has convinced that Iraq was in on 9/11. Nevertheless, he does admit that the French are not really acting out of "pique" over lost grandeur or personal "antipathy" to Bush. So what are the dastardly French up to?

The policy of France, Krauthammer says, is based on an attempt to look out for "its own safety and strategic gain." How shockingly un-American!

Krauthammer predicts "a radical change in the balance of power in the Mediterranean world" due to the future growth of Muslim populations both in Europe and the Middle East. France "does not want to be on the wrong side of this history." How near sighted could they be when they could join up with Bush on the wrong side?

Chirac has, with his right side of history outlook, engaged in "a classic policy of appeasement" consisting in not backing the US and its struggle to give "democratic futures to Afghanistan and Iraq."

Need more proof? Take the case of Palestine. Instead of following the Israeli-US lead in "shunning Yasser Arafat for supporting terrorism and obstructing peace" (we all know how Israel and the US have such clean hands in this regard) – the French foreign minister actually visited Arafat and (gasp!) shook his hand! Zut alors!

This shows that France is on "a collision course with America." Rather, I think, it’s just an example of the US being on a collision course with most of the world. Oh, did I forget to mention that Yasser Arafat, unlike George W. Bush, is actually a democratically elected leader of his people. But of course, the Palestinians would be much better off if they had another leader – perhaps they could ask Paul Bremer to appoint one for them (in consultation with Ariel Sharon, of course).


--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs.