Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, eh?

Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Bolded items from here on are my comments.

We have been enjoying a lovely little spate of French-bashing here lately. Jonah Goldberg of National Review, who admits that French-bashing is “shtick” (as it is to many American comedians), has popularized the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” to describe the French.

It gets a lot less attractive than that. Or funnier, depending on your point of view

George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: “How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it’s never been tried.”

That was certainly amusing. It’s called satire, Molly, one of the tools a writer uses to convey his point and still make his writing interesting.

One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren’t many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Adolf Hitler. By and large, these guys were slaughtered. Hardly a glowing tribute to the courage of the French.

On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. They were out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and, above all, out-tanked. They got slaughtered, but they stood and they fought. Ha-ha, how funny. Ironic, actually. And, I would remind you that their officers, their generals, their civilian leaders who caused them to be slaughtered were

wait for it

FRENCH! Patton said “Don’t be a fool and die for your country. Let the other sonofabitch die for his.” Racking up big numbers for your own troops is shameful, at best, and criminal at worst.

In the few places where they had tanks, they held splendidly. No one has ever said that individual French troops, officers, and units did not fight bravely. The first Gulf War saw a few Iraqi units fight bravely, too. But what we saw, what we remember, are the other tens of thousands who didn’t.

Relying on the Maginot Line was one of the great military follies of modern history, but it does not reflect on the courage of those who died for France in 1940. For 18 months after that execrable defeat, the United States of America continued to have cordial diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany. Horseshit! The Maginot Line reflects perfectly on the courage of French troops. Who surrendered nearly en masse to the Germans after the mobile French troops had been defeated. No sterling defenses of fortifications, here. And, pray tell, Molly, how does the fact that the United States failed to go to war immediately upon the fall of France have anything to do with anything else? Would you like me to list the aid we provided Britain in that eighteen months, the Americans who fought and died in an undeclared war with Hitler’s Germany in that eighteen months?

One of the great what-ifs of history is: What would have happened if Franklin Roosevelt had lived to the end of his last term? Fantasy alert. Stay tuned for lunacy.

How many wars have been lost in the peace?

For those of you who have not read Paris 1919, I recommend it highly. Roosevelt was anti-colonialist. That system was a great evil, a greater horror even than Nazism or Stalinism. Huh? OK, same old screed, different era. The West was worse than the Nazis or the Communists. Of course, we had to be, we were the West.

If you have read Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, you have some idea. The French were in it up to their necks. The book is about Belgian colonial horrors in the Congo, arguably the worst of the colonial situations. The French did better, the Brits better still. The Belgians might be up there with Hitler, but the French and Brits don’t compare at all.

Instead of insisting on freedom for the colonies of Europe, we let our allies carry on with the system, leaving the British in India and Africa, and the French in Vietnam and Algeria, to everyone’s eventual regret. You twit. The colonies had another generation to add educated people to their population, to build a more modern society. If you think it was bad as it really happened, imagine if they had been “freed” one or two generations earlier. The world was in a mess in 1945. The only undamaged economy was the United States. I daresay we would be living in a Communist world at this point, if your pipe dream had been carried out. No one but us would have been left strong enough to stop the expansion of Communism.

Surrender monkeys? Try Dien Bien Phu. Yes, the French did surrender, didn’t they? After 6,000 French died in a no-hope position. Ever heard of the Foreign Legion? Of the paratroopers, called “paras”? The trouble we could have saved ourselves if we had only paid attention to Dien Bien Phu. Horseshit! Having learned NO lessons from either World War about fixed positions, and completely underestimating their opponent YET AGAIN, the French lost at Dien Bien Phu. Most of the troops there, BTW, Molly, were Foreign Legion WHO ARE NOT, BY LAW, ALLOWED TO BE FRENCH. And there are no lessons we DID NOT learn from this battle. We won every battle we fought in Vietnam. We lost the war in Washington, not in Vietnam.

Then came Algeria. As nasty a war as has ever been fought. If you have seen the film Battle of Algiers, you have some idea. Five generations of pieds noirs, French colonialists, thought it was their country. All you know about it is from a movie? Moron! How long have your people lived in the United States, Molly? A lot less than five generations? How would you feel if the Apaches decided to revolt and throw you out? Algeria was the first Islamic insurgency, and it took place in a state of the Republic of France. Not a colony, not a territory, but an actual part of France. Just like California is to the United States, Molly.

Charles de Gaulle came back into power in 1958, specifically elected to keep Algeria French. I consider de Gaulle’s long, slow, delicate, elephantine withdrawal (de Gaulle even looked like an elephant) one of the single greatest acts of statesmanship in history. Only de Gaulle could have done that. One of the greatest acts of deceit and abandonment of principles in history. de Gaulle did the equivalent of giving New Mexico back to the Apaches. This is the type of French behavior we’re talking about, Molly. No moral fiber, there, just a steady and reliable willingness to SURRENDER!

Those were the years when France learned about terrorism. The plastiquers were all over Paris. The “plastic” bombs, the ones you can stick like Play-Do underneath the ledge of some building, were the popular weapon du jour. It made Israel today look tame. For France, terrorism is “Been there, done that.” Only in your tiny mind does it make Israel look tame. Far more damage, far more bombings, far more deaths in Israel. And the whole “Been there, done that” thing. Molly, that really applies to the French citizens that French government officials turned over to the Nazi during World War Two. They experienced terrorism unlike any YOU have ever seen.

The other night on 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney, who fought in France and certainly has a right to be critical, chided the French for forgetting all that sacrifice. But I think he got it backward: The French remember too well. They sure don’t show it very often, Molly. Despite OUR sacrifices, they’ve been a very unreliable friend, and more often than not, a thorn in our side.

I was in Paris on Sept. 11, 2001. The reaction was so immediate, so generous, so overwhelming.

Not just the government, but the people kept bringing flowers to the American embassy. They covered the American Cathedral, the American Church, anything they could find that was American.

They didn’t just leave flowers — they wrote notes with them. I read more than 100 of them. Not only did they refer, again and again, to Normandy, to never forgetting, but there were even some in ancient, spidery handwriting referring to WWI: “Lafayette is still with you.” That’s right. Because when he went home, your Revolution threw him in prison.

Look, the French are not a touchy-feely people. They’re more, like, logical. For them to approach total strangers in the streets who look American and hug them is seriously extraordinary. I got patted so much I felt like a Labrador retriever. I wish Andy Rooney had been there. Only you could describe the French as logical. Even they don’t, Molly.

This is where I think the real difference is. We Americans are famously ahistorical. We can barely be bothered to remember what happened last week, or last month, much less last year. Nonsense. We remember the Civil War, the Alamo, the Maine. We remember too well. We remember our friends and our enemies. Is France our friend?

The French are really stuck on history. (Some might claim this is because the French are better educated than we are. I won’t go there.) The French really suck at history. They refuse to learn from it. The repeat the same mistakes over and over. They’re on their Fifth Republic, Molly, we’re still on our first. That alone says that they’re not very good at history.

Does it not occur to anyone that these are very old friends of ours, trying to tell us what they think they know about being hated by weak enemies in the Third World? “What they think they know”. Yeah, that’s right. Tell us about caving in to terror. Tell us about losing, over and over, the same old way. Tell us about your racism and condescending attitude to the Third World. Tell us how to fail, as a world power and as a moral leader. We’re learning from your example, France, so just keep talking.