Although by his grandstanding, the congressman took a firmer position on the war than most of the AWOL Congress, his brainstorm is unworthy of comment but that it was nowhere rejected by the administration. By their silence, The White House tacitly approved assailing the French in a bigoted way. It's a perilous attitude, which can go on to take any nationality off the menu. To country and world, Maison Bush offers only two menu choices: with me or agin' me. In this case, France is simply a country sincerely convinced that it's wrong to tout the Bushian line on invading Iraq.
France, as the most gutsy and unequivocal in the opposing majority, unwilling to cower before the President, is stricken from polite dinner conversation. The French government, not as ruler but as representative of an open democracy and responding to the will of over 80% of its citizens, is dismissed as traitor to the unquestionable infallibility emanating from The White House. The result, from the halls of Congress to Jay Leno, it's open season on the French.
As an historic (and non-billing) ally of the US, France's decision to oppose the President's eager military action against Iraq, instead of taken as brave and dignified disagreement from a free people, is used to punish the voice of an entire country - a country just as deeply compassionate and supportive of the U.S. following September 11. If they were French then, they are French now, and the cynicism and self-serving that U.S. officials aspire to portray France with, betrays where real cynicism and self-dealing resides. But what must be the slur-bottom of anti-French digs comes from United States Representative Ginny Brown-Waite.
The Florida congresswoman introduced legislation proposing that the U.S. offer to pay veteran's families who wish to disinter the remains of their loved ones buried in U.S. military cemeteries in France, the cost of reburial in the United States. This gentlewoman's attribution for her magnanimous gesture is her feeling that the French government does not appreciate the sacrifice American soldiers made to defend the freedom the French enjoy. Her principle frustration: France threatened to veto the UN resolution approving the US attack on Iraq. For this unpardonable act of sovereignty, the U.S. government should offer to disturb from their rest the interred remains of devoted American dead.
Seventy-four thousand American war dead lie in France and Belgium in United States military cemeteries. Fuming at French impetuousness, this United States Representative makes a statement about France upon the honor of these fallen. To this low mark does meanness raise its head and not recognize itself.
Let this congresswoman reach her fleshy arm into the earthen grave. Awake its entombed. Hear its honorable occupant, "Madam Congresswoman, you don't understand, my place is here, with my brothers, my brother-dead." Let her take pause.
Generalized swipes or their approval by the elected leadership of a country against a nationality, people or race lays potentially lethal tracks. Should these low digs and cheap swipes become currency against French independence or any country unsupportive of U.S. government whims or dictates, the essential meaning of a liberal American democracy will not survive, not in this nation and certainly not in any attempt to export it on the barrel of a gun or otherwise. Dissent from intolerance is America's - big of heart, generous of spirit - truest way. The way the Bush White House in fact claims to be.
I don't believe these jabs evince the start of a nasty trend because I don't believe they strike a chord with most Americans. Yet a government as powerful as America's can skillfully manufacture opinion to suit its purpose. For the right and proper course then, all that this country's leadership need do is listen to its citizens, but then that would be - so French.
March 26, 2003