Gotta agree with Bookworm on this one, Christopher Hitchens is at his best when he puts his intelligence and wit to work on the leftists.
During the early debates over the Iraq war, one was constantly being challenged to contrast the “unilateralism” of the Bush administration with the more mature and “European” approach of Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin, the gleesome threesome who (along with the Chinese dictatorship) protected Saddam Hussein at the United Nations. What a difference a couple of years has made. Tony Blair may be stepping down as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but for the first time in a very long time, the heads of state in Paris and Berlin are both “Atlanticist” in their outlook. One might add that Chirac quit the Élysée Palace looking and sounding like a stroke victim who had long ceased to have anything relevant to say and that Schröder disgraced the German Social Democrats by barely waiting to leave office before signing up as a lobbyist for a Russian-based energy cartel. And is it necessary to add that Putin has revived the worst traditions of Great Russian chauvinism, crushing all domestic opposition at home while bullying Ukraine, Georgia, and most recently Estonia, and flaunting his connection to the ultra-reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. What a crew they were and are! The fourth member of the anti-Bush coalition of the willful, the cold-eyed Chinese post-Stalinists, are still engaged in a blood-for-oil scandal whereby Beijing provides the sinews of war to the genocidal regime that cleanses Darfur, while paying to buy most of Sudan’s petroleum.
The single best symbol of the change in France is the appointment of Bernard Kouchner to the post of foreign minister. Had the Socialist Party won the election, it is highly unlikely that such a distinguished socialist would ever have been allowed through the doors of the Quai d’Orsay. (Yes, comrades, history actually is dialectical and paradoxical.) In the present climate of the United States, a man like Kouchner would be regarded as a neoconservative. He was a prominent figure in the leftist rebellion of 1968, before breaking with some of his earlier illusions and opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—the true and original source of many of our woes in the Islamic world. The group he co-founded—Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières—was a pioneer in the highly necessary proclamation that left politics should always be anti-totalitarian. (His former counterpart, Joschka Fischer of Germany, also took a version of this view before Schröder’s smirking Realpolitik became too much, and too popular in Germany, for him to withstand.)
Now, I have no illusion that the French will now become our new best friend in the world but it’s a good sign that a country other then Britain has come to it’s senses. It only took a bizillion cars being burnt and riots filling the streets but better late then never huh?
Of course the legislative elections in France are coming up next month and knowing the French, they may well install a very anti-American legislature….but C’est la vie.
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I believe the student riots this past year put the nation firmly in the grip of Sarkozy. The plan to repeal employment protections for young employees was abandoned after the sniveling brats through a temper tantrum.
I too have my reservations about Sarkozy.
Sarkozy proposed and the French Constitutional Council approved a broadly worded law banning mere citizens from filming acts of violence and broadcasting them on the net.
Choosing liberty
Over time, free nations grow stronger and dictatorships grow weaker…Freedom honors and unleashes human creativity — and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations. Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity, and the best …