It's posts like this one that make it very difficult for me to take Andrew Sullivan seriously. He has some interesting things to say from time to time, but he never lets accuracy get in the way of taking a cheap shot. Sullivan writes:
"Paris never wanted to be involved, but the notion that even a chief appeaser of Islamist terror can escape its fury is getting less and less persuasive. French journalists have been kidnapped in Iraq in protest of France's admirable secularism in its education system. France refuses to give up its head-scarf ban in schools. More innocents are likely to be murdered. One can only hope that Paris gets the message. There is no escaping this fight. It is civilization or Jihadism. We can and should debate tactics; but the sides are clear enough."
This commentary suffers from two basic problems. 1) Sullivan is equating the invasion of Iraq with the fight against "Jihadism" when the two are entirely different things. 2) It's inaccurate (should we say a lie?) to say that France hasn't taken a tough line in fighting Islamic militants. Just the opposite has been the case. Does no one remember the 1990's when France was fighting Islamic rebels inside its own borders? A strong argument can be made that the government in Paris as been pursuring a tough and aggressive line in this fight longer than the governments in Washington and London have.
Posted by armand at August 30, 2004 03:51 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsI was making fun of the French long before it was fashionable, but now I am just plain sick of it. Like everything else that the right wing gets a hold of (including this country), they have ruined it for the rest of us.
I can think of a lot of things to call a government that is willing to get people killed over a headscarf ban. “Arch-appeaser” isn’t one of them. Actually I find the whole thing strangely reassuring. France, it turns out, is not some ideal Eurotopia where political decisions are based on reason and respect for basic human dignity. Their government is just as narrow minded as ours! Perhaps this incident might allow our two great nations to set aside previous differences.
With this in mind, let me make some concrete suggestions about the terms of our future cooperation against Jihadism.
1. The U.S. could support a French invasion of Algeria. After all, Algeria seems to fit the Bush Doctrine criteria for a pre-emptive attack (almost every country does). It has “sponsored” terrorism in the past. It has a predominantly Islamic population. They had nothing to do with September 11th. And we don’t like them very much.
2. France could host an exchange program for right wing American legislators to learn about how to develop laws that limit “jihadist” (i.e. non-Christian) religious expression.
3. The United States could send France the 10-Commandments Monument removed from an Alabama court house last summer as a “thank you” for the Statue of Liberty.
My only questions is do the French understand that the Jihadists hate us "because we are free"?
Posted by: Stalin at September 1, 2004 02:41 PM | PERMALINKIt's been interesting to hear the press coverage of the relationship between the head scarf ban and the hostages in Iraq.
It seems like it's been a real eye opener for those who thought being pro-Arab was some sort of inoculation.
"Stalin." That's classic. I want to start a Chechnya thread if I get around to it this evening. Stay tuned.
Posted by: binky at September 1, 2004 03:40 PM | PERMALINK