"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Tuesday, May 6
Frog Baseball
The behavior of the French government during the crisis leading up to the war in Iraq left me as pissed as anyone. In fact, I posted a note over at Slate's Fray bulletin board titled "Screw The French" - a note that got me heartily flamed last year. My point then was that, though the French population was heavily against war, the policy of the French goverment was determined by how it could best interfere with the actions of the United State. I felt that the German government (for example) opposed the war out of a genuine desire to avoid bloodshed. The French, however, just wanted to stick a thumb in our collective eye.
(Please note that I've drawn a distinction between the government of France and its people. The French have every right to express whatever opinions they feel. But if their government pursues a cynical policy of obstructionism solely in order to curry favor with those who feel oppressed by the US, as I believe they did, that government deserves to be villified.)
There is, however, one thing that bothers me about the wave of criticism of France that has followed the failure of diplomacy at the United Nations: the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". "Cheese-eating"? What about Wisconsin? I never saw a Frenchman go around with a block of cheese stuck on his head (to be fair, it's Swiss cheese). Let's leave aside the "monkey" reference for a moment and take on the heart of this insult, French military prowess.
It's true that the French surrendered to Nazi Germany after barely a month of fighting. Their army was wholly unprepared for the blitzkreig, and as a result, the German tanks split their country into pieces like an axe chops kindling. I say that this was more a failure of their leadership than a failure of their fighting force. The British were just as unprepared for the attack through the Ardennes forest, and should have been slaughtered at Dunkirk. Instead, some Anglo fellow-feeling from Hitler allowed them to beat a heroic/embarrasing defeat. Only the immovable Churchill and his refusal to yield kept them going through the dark days when they faced off against an army that controlled almost all of Europe. The French had no such leader to inspire them.
It's also worth remembering that the bloody hopelessness of the First World War's Western Front was played out almost exclusively in France. France endured such bitter fighting for so little gain that some units had to be forced back into line through decimation, the execution of every tenth man as a warning to the others. While America likes to believe we played a major role in defeating the Kaiser's Germany, we were little more than the weight that tipped the scale at a key moment, turning aside a huge German offensive and breaking the back of their army. An entire generation of young men was virtually eliminated as the best of France, Germany, and Great Britain fought and died for little.
After sacrificing so much to "win" this war, France found its role on the world stage already shrinking. Instead of surging ahead into facist totalitarianism as Germany and many other countries did, France tried to hold onto the remains of the imperial century - without success. The sudden success of the 1940 attack broke whatever was left of France's will.
So, while I despise France's current government, I don't think we should question the prowess of a country that gave us the armies of Louis XIV, of Napolean, a country that gave us a leader who famously said "My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent am attacking."
