Response 3 to Letter to Editor

> World War 2 is also aslightly different story although here, the US
> for a change played the biggest role with Russia and the UK. Germany
> declared war on the US on Dec 11 1941 and not the other way around (the US
> declaring war!). Please note that a depopulated and convalescent Francehad
> already been at war since Sept 3rd 1939 or 2 years and 3 months before the
> USwas finally forced to realize that Hitler was a threat! Although totally
> unprepared (as all the other democracies were in 1939) France alone faced
> the German to honor her commitment to defend Poland.

Dear Claude:

Totally unprepared, you say? You dishonor the ghosts of your martial French ancestors. We knew full well what was going on in Germany, and we'd spent years preparing. You need a lesson in French history, subtlety, and our desire for peace and self-advantage at any price.

When war with Germany came, we had as many troops and perhaps 3 times as many tanks as they did. And on top of that, from 1929 to 1940 we'd sunk an enormous amount of resources into building a staggeringly large and expensive system of forts along the German border, the Maginot Line.

Unprepared? Bah.

Ecoutez!

1933: Hitler elected on a platform of anger against the Versailles Treaty that ended WWI. ("Why do they hate us?" we might have asked). Hitler's Mein Kampf had come out in 1924 in case anyone had any question about his plans for ethnic cleansing and world domination. We were well aware.

1935: Germany begins rearmament, including an air force and navy that had been banned by the Treaty of Versailles. We could have easily gone in and removed Hitler at this point with minimal loss of life. But were we to start another war with Germany when they hadn't fired a shot at us? We had troubles enough of our own in the 30's. And wouldn't this only push their population against us and further into the arms of the Nazis? Did we really want a possibly messy occupation? Leave them to their devices and they might simmer down. Meanwhile, we're enjoying Peace!

1936: Germany reoccupies the Rhineland; this was to be kept free of any military presence per the Treaty of Versailles. We protested ineffectually in the League of Nations. We could have again gone in, almost as easily, and knocked over Hitler at this point too. But again, we craved Peace. Let them blow off some steam. We might not have to fight. Savor the Peace!

March 1938. Germany marches into Austria. We do nothing. It was mostly Germans there anyway, after all.

September 1938. Munich. Along with Britain, we give Hitler the part of our ally Czechoslovakia that he wants, to see if we can buy peace for ourselves by sacrificing others. In exchange for this, Hitler signs a pact promising never to invade France or England. Chamberlain returns triumphantly to London, saying he had achieved "peace in our time." We could still have gone in, but it was becoming more costly every day.

March 1939. Hitler tears up the Munich agreement and incorporates the whole of Western Czechoslovakia into Germany.

Sept 1939. Hitler invades our ally Poland and we finally draw the line and declare war. I don't know why you said France was facing Germany alone after this; even I must admit the Brits were by our side. We could have gone into Germany while Hitler's army was occupied with Poland in the east. But...maybe if we waited behind our walls...Hitler would be content with Poland and we wouldn't actually have to fight in spite of the war declaration? Maybe he'd focus on invading Russia? Hitler gambled correctly on Western timidity. "Little worms" he called us to his advisors. But we weren't worms: we simply wanted Peace. Is that so wrong?

May 1940. We're invaded. Our Maginot Line proves useless as Hitler goes around it through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes forest. We avoid suffering by an early surrender: 6 weeks in: a record in the annals of warfare. And by voluntarily turning over our fleet intact to the Germans for their use against England. And by helping them round up Jews. We managed rather well during the German occupation and suffered relatively few atrocities. I know this doesn't *sound* all that great in retrospect, but wasn't that better than millions of Frenchmen senselessly dying again as in WWI? And did we know at the time that we'd ever be liberated?

We continued to cling to Peace, of a sort. Do not blame us if you didn't experience the trenches of WWI for yourself!

1944: The Americans and British gallantly allow de Gaulle to ride first into Paris, as if he'd played any significant role in its liberation. *I* was the one holding down the fort, who had to do the tough work of working out a deal with Hitler and figure out the right...words...for Frenchmen to be able to swallow this and still hold their heads high. De Gaulle had done nothing comparatively but serve as a useful propaganda piece implying the mass of Frenchmen were against Germany. Nonsense, given the ease of the occupation, but this served British/American interests.

1946-50: The Americans and British gallantly allow France a seat on the Security Council, as if France had been one of the victors. Again De Gaulle had done nothing to merit this, but it served British/American interests by being one more vote for their side. The Iron Curtain descends, America organizes NATO and the Marshall Plan, the Cold War begins.

1966: France withdraws its military from NATO command, having looked at a map and realized the US couldn't defend West Germany without also defending France. So why should France contribute any troops? This wasn't me acting, but it was a move after my own heart. It's called subtlety, not obliviousness, and it's the Americans who were unprepared.

So there, Claude, are a few highlights of 20th century French history of which you seemed ignorant. We are clever and rarely caught unprepared. We have many stratagems. Call us worms as Hitler did, if you must editorialize, but do not call us stupid.

But, I hear you saying, the policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany did not actually work. We were occupied. Is there not some lesson to be learned, somewhere in this stack of historical hay?

Why do you insult us, Claude? Do you imagine we are oblivious to this too? We have incorporated *all* the relevant lessons we learned from dealing with Nazi Germany into revision 2.0 of our PAP initiative (Peace At Any Price).

It's now SmartPAP.

Next time we do as follows: we're going to make sure the bad guys really know who their friends are. We're going to sell them technology, ink some big commercial deals, cover their backs with our UN veto, and point them towards some nice juicy Polands. Whom we don't much like anyway, truth be told. Even if they are, technically, our allies. That only makes the subtlety all the more exquisite, the gratitude we earn for our betrayal all the greater, our safety all the more guaranteed.

For if X is basically benign and considers us an ally, and Y is dangerous and unpredictable, betraying X is always the right move. What are they gonna do: nuke us? Invade? Maybe we'll be in the diplomatic doghouse for a while, big whoop, and meanwhile we're safe from Y and we're earning billions in commercial agreements.

You wait and see: our cities will be safe, for a time, and we'll have some highly gratifying opportunities for lecturing the victims on how they brought these disasters on themselves.

For in the nature of things we must all come to hate our benefactors. I see that even more clearly now that I'm in heaven. Gratitude is an exhausting and open-ended emotion, which in the end always becomes intolerable; hatred and contempt for one's benefactor are the only ways out.

I stopped being grateful to God for heaven long ago. I didn't ask to be born, I lived my life deterministically according to physics ("I could do no other", as Luther said), and here I am. So what? It's all his game and his pieces. When the mood strikes I blame him for all I had to put up with in life, but here I still sit, safe and inviolate. Does he take it personally? Evidently not. Bless him for that, anyway.

Well you've probably got some more ranting against Bush to do, and I'm off to meet Joe Stalin for some class he's sitting in on in Texas. All I can say is I hope there are some pretty girls in there; it's more tedious up here than you might imagine.

Petain

Response 2 to Letter to Editor

> My goal here is not to smear the crucial
> help that the US provided France in the last 7 months of WW1 or ignore that
> the US, UK and Russia gave back France its freedom in 1945, but just to
> shed light on historical facts totally twisted, distorted or at best
> ignored by your reporters.

Dear Claude:

Correction: we *tried* to give you your freedom back, but my troops only got partway into Germany before they ran into the American and British army.

I was able to bring full freedom to Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Germany at least got a half-measure of it, in the East.

It's a pity: French wine and perfume would have gone so perfectly with Cuban cigars and Stoli vodka in our Party stores.

True freedom is possible only when dictatorship of the proletariat has been achieved. The Marshall Plan set you back 40 years, and then the Americans sat on the border facing us down another 40 years.

Sorry we let you down. It's painful and I'll follow your lead in not speaking of it.

And I agree with you: the Americans ruin everything.

You would have made a fine Party member in my day, Claude. That bit about "distortions of history" was worthy of my own propagandists.

Your Uncle Joe

P.S. In my disembodied dream state (heaven is strange), I am auditing a women's studies class in Austin, Texas. Have you ever considered Lenin's coffin as phallic totem? Not sure I buy it but they've got some interesting perspectives.

I hear the terms Stalinist and Fascist bandied about a lot in here in class as if they were interchangable. Could you write them a letter or something, Claude? I killed 30 million people trying to stamp out reactionary fascism. Some days I wonder why I bothered.

Response 1 to Letter to Editor

> I cannot help but wonder
> what would the US have done if, like France between 1914-18, after 5 years
> of facing a twice more numerous enemy in a trench war just 100 miles away
> from the country’s heart, with a line of death stretching for thousands of
> miles, where each assault yielded 60% casualties and where 50% of able men
> had already perished…my answer is “white flag” unlike the French who fought
> to the end and won but paid a horrendous price.

Dear America:

I have the result of a thought experiment that may interest you. I asked myself what would have happened had you had to endure the horrors we French did in WWI. And guess what? You surrendered.

The test was conducted under the most rigorous experimental conditions: I smoked 12 Marlboro cigarettes, drank some cheap Chilean wine, and meditated on the "billions served" sign outside a McDonald's restaurant in Paris while chanting the serenity prayer.

I ran the simulation ten times before contacting you, to be sure of the result. And each time, I am sorry to say, it ended with white flags. Your troops were literally crapping their pants in four of the scenarios I ran.

Perhaps you should keep this virtual surrender in mind before you so breezily remind us of WWII?

Claude

-------------------------------------------------

Dear Michael Douglas:

If you had witnessed what Catherine Zeta-Jones was doing in my mind last night as I was hovering over the bidet, you would think twice before having another child with this woman.

Lesbian tendencies and a rather unsavory familiarity with Mini-Me.

Enough said?

She is not what she seems!!

Claude

---------------------------------------------------

Dear Claude:

What a coincidence! We have run a thought experiment of our own, on how the French military might do against an American glee club. Perhaps you would likewise be interested in the result:

France Surrenders to Texas High School

Letter to the Editor, and Four Responses to it

A French friend also forwarded me this "letter to the Editor from a French dude", which I'll reprint here because I couldn't find it online. My responses to it will follow in subsequent posts.

Dear Sir/ Madame

By solely publishing on a daily basis articles and letters describing the French as viscerally anti American and sullying the proud history of France with an avalanche of historical distortions; your Newspaper in particular and the US press in general projects abroad a very unpleasant and false image of this country’s press. Far from defending US interests this ultimately hurts them. I do not expect you to publish my letter since a quick survey of your past editorials show that the only letters making it through your politburo censorship are those of a viscerally anti French mud slinging minority who bring nothing more than insults to what should be a serious debate.

A great majority of the French, German and even English (according to UK polls showing 80% opposition to an Iraq invasion) are torn between their attachment and sympathy to the US and what they believe is a policy gone out of control by the Bush administration. Every nation in the World agrees that Saddam should be disposed of. However nobody understands the link with 9/11 because it is a well-known fact that Saddam Hussein is hated (or was hated until President Bush made him a hero) by the religious Moslems who he killed in great numbers to secure his power.

Basic knowledge of geographic, demographic, cultural, economical and geopolitical facts show that Iraq is a little country on the surface of the earth and that with Saddam gone, Iraq runs equal with West Virginia in the ranking of present and future threats to the Western world. People wonder what the CIA and all other western secret services are doing to justify their existence after they failed to kill one man despite their multi billion $ budgets. I would have personally ordered a shower of cruise missiles striking (minutes after) everything around the building where Dan Rather was interviewing Saddam, this would have saved lots of human lives, preserved Nato, saved $200 billion and not played in Bin Ladden’s dreams for the war to start and prove him right.

Nobody understands how the average US citizen, as described by the Media, seems to be so gullible to believe that one needs 200,000 men to get rid of one dictator. One of my (numerous) most conservative American friends who voted for Bush (no longer!) quoted Herman Goerings’ words (Hitler’s right arm) who when asked how it was possible to rally the masses behind war against a perceived threat said: “All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” My friend also told me that unlike today he never previously thought for a second that this could ever work with the inherently skeptic American. Neither did I!

I am not going to waste time defending what the US press describes as the French opposition to an immediate military campaign for the good reason that, except for a couple of tiny countries in the “New Europe” the whole world opposes it not out of genetic pacifism, cowardice or anti Americanism, as stated daily in your newspaper but just because it makes no sense to the logical mind.

At this point I would rather focus on what I perceive as being the old US mass media habit of rewriting History into a Hollywood fantasy where US defeats such as Vietnam become victories and foreign victories become USwar exploits.

To this effect The US press is very good at displaying pictures of white crosses in Normandy or jokes about French men with their arms up in the air at the slightest danger. The whole US media lives with the fantasy that the French merely “helped” George Washington defeat Britain and thereafter were constantly bailed out by the US. My goal here is not to smear the crucial help that the US provided France in the last 7 months of WW1 or ignore that the US, UK and Russia gave back France its freedom in 1945, but just to shed light on historical facts totally twisted, distorted or at best ignored by your reporters.

France “helped” George Washington: Although way more accurate than the alleged events reported in the movie "The Patriot" (where a lonely French Officer, in lieu of 10s of thousands of Frenchmen charge the British)one should mention that at the crucial battle of Yorktown there were 7,000 highly trained French troops assisted by ahuge French Navalforce under Admiral de Grasse with 10,000 men on board. This considerable deployment of French might assisted by 4,000 poorly equipped Americans defeated the English for goodgiving birth to a new nation who did not have a fighting chance without the French. This is the reason why “Cornwallis' second-in-command, Charles O'Hara, attempted to deliver Cornwallis's sword to French general, Comte de Rochambeau. But Rochambeau directed O'Hara to American General George Washington, who coolly steered the British officer to Washington's own second in command, Major General Benjamin LincolnÓ See: http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/chronicle/episode5.html I only wished that in their dealings towards the French, the US media took a hint of the chivalrousness and gallantry of the French towards the US.

Also, the US did not save France during World War 1, which is mostly a "French against German "senseless massacre. The facts are that after 976 days of official neutralitythe US declared war to Germany on April 2nd 1917 after the German sunk the Lusitania where 123 Americans perished. According to most non US written history books, American mobilization was so bungled, that the first sketchily trained draftees did not arrive in France until April 1918, a full year after the declaration of war andonly 7 months before Germany's unconditional surrender (November 11 1918)--and most had traveled in British bottoms because American shipbuilding was so pathetically disorganized. Meanwhile the troops were equipped with mostly French weapons (75 mm guns) and ammunitions. The inexperienced US troops behaved bravely and were a huge boost of confidence to the exhausted French who had bled to death and perished by the millions to stop and roll back the Germans. I cannot help but wonder what would the US have done if, like France between 1914-18, after 5 years of facing a twice more numerous enemy in a trench war just 100 miles away from the country’s heart, with a line of death stretching for thousands of miles, where each assault yielded 60% casualties and where 50% of able men had already perished…my answer is “white flag” unlike the French who fought to the end and won but paid a horrendous price. For thislate US help, the French should be very grateful but the fact is that France got the major job done on its own.

World War 2 is also aslightly different story although here, the US for a change played the biggest role with Russia and the UK. Germany declared war on the US on Dec 11 1941 and not the other way around (the US declaring war!). Please note that a depopulated and convalescent Francehad already been at war since Sept 3rd 1939 or 2 years and 3 months before the USwas finally forced to realize that Hitler was a threat! Although totally unprepared (as all the other democracies were in 1939) France alone faced the German to honor her commitment to defend Poland. Even the average biased newspaper would acknowledge the fact that the US had no army to speak of in 1939 and that given a land connection with the French battle fields, would have been crushed in 20 days; this not out of cowardice or lack of fighting ability, but because of the absence of military build up inherent to all democracies when suddenly faced with a totalitarian state who unlike them has been preparing for a while.

The English gave the French lots of moral support andsome troops which were quickly vanquished and fled at Dunkirk while the US only offered lots of sympathy. Only after 1943 did the US become a major factor after wisely observing the great job already started by the Russians (August 42 to Feb 43 Battle of Stalingrad) and with the luxury of hindsight and two years of safe military buildup far away from the war zones.

These were the historical facts.

It is also a fact that the US and France are each other's oldest allies who should both be thankful for the blood they shed for each other. Before the US mediawith it’s McCarthy era current hysteria against France finish destroying this old alliance it should give the French /Europe/the World a minimum of 2 1/4 years (WW2)and all the way up to 976 days (WW1) to try to comprehend why they shouldblindly rush to join the US in a new crusade against a tinyoppressed nationled by a maniac who is only armed with some rustingshort range rockets filled with nasty liquids unfortunately not unlike most other third world nations. The bad news is that the only winnerwill be someonecalled Bin Laden. Among the 4,000 Americans and other nationals he killed in the WTC is a friend of mine .I luckily escaped the same fate by moving out of the WTC two years earlier. Thanks to your reporting the French have now taken Bin Laden’s place as the designated enemy in US newspapers. Great service to the USA, truth and what is right. Bin Laden and hisreligious fanaticsare sure to gain million of new recruits once the US alone start its Don Quixote crusade against the wrong windmill while real foes are having a great day.

Thank you for your attention and dedication to restore sometruth in the reporting of historical facts.

A French friend forwarded me this list of countries supposedly bombed by the United States since circa 1946:

Chine 1945-46
Coree 1950-53
Chine 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesie 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Perou 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodge 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenade 1983
Lybie 1986
El Salvador annees 1980
Nicaragua annees 1980
Panama 1989
Irak 1991-99
Soudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yougoslavie 1999

And here is my response.

So much is said, in so many ways, by this list, gleefully forwarded, one imagines, to and fro among the beautiful people of Brussels and Berlin.

Yugoslavia, for example. It somehow morphs into another bomb-happy venture by the US, omitting some slightly relevant background like the following:

• 1. Genocide was occurring.
• 2. The US dragged its feet and tried to stay out.
• 3. The Europeans couldn't muster the wherewithal to solve it themselves and begged us to get involved.

Four years later, it's another object lesson in bloodthirsty Americans vs. peace-loving Europeans. (Able to be peace-loving because they've luxuriated behind an American shield these past 50 years, one might add).

The list is taken horribly out of context to be sure, but I'm not even sure of its factual accuracy. "China (1945-46)" didn't ring a bell, for example, and it appears that even the most virulently anti-US sites listing all American adventures mention only a Marine-assisted evacuation of Americans from China in 1948-49 as the Communists were taking over. Who incidentally went on to kill over 20 million of their own citizens. But let's stay focused on important things, like U.S. sins? The only ones that count?

That the author picked 1946 as the starting date for his list shows that some few neurons of intellectual honesty and moral decency were still alive in his cranium, albeit coughing and wheezing on life support.

Those three neurons have about five more years to live, at which point I expect we will see this datum added to the list:

Germany (1942-1945)

Even now the Germans are explaining their devotion to peace by saying that, unlike the U.S., they know the horrors of war first hand. As if WWII gives them a platform to lecture us on the ways of peace. Words fail at the chutzpah.

Euros say we are paranoid for thinking our cities might be nuked and trying to do anything about it, and on the other hand if any are nuked, they will say we brought it on ourselves. Their logic is perfectly cruel, and perfectly no-win for the U.S. And this list is a perfect expression of that logic.

You have Germans likening the U.S. to mad dogs, to Nazis, to arrogant cowboys, at the same time they will be highly distressed if we remove 70,000 American troops billeted in their country. That is the quintessence of Europe, circa 2003.

Initial Thoughts on Kaplan's "Coming Anarchy"

[written to a friend who gave me the book]

I've been finally able to face reading the book, which so far I do not find wholly convincing.

When I read an analysis of sweatshops in Indonesia (not by Kaplan), and this analysis hits on the fact that as horrible as we might find those conditions, they are still superior to the workers' other options in the countryside, and it lays out how gradually over time things will improve...well, I feel like I've gotten to the bottom of the thing. It explains why workers still work there, and how countries historically have naturally evolved out of sweatshops into higher-value pursuits, etc. And it gives coherent policy prescriptions, like "cutting off trade to countries with sweatshops hurts precisely the people you're trying to help."

So far I fear Kaplan is not really getting to the bottom of anything. It's like a travelogue of horrible things he saw out his car window in African countries. He talks about how entire countries are becoming shantytowns, and yet the shantytowns that do exist keep being torn down by the government periodically. Which to me implies a more prosperous middle upset by the shantytowns, not universal anarchy and shantydom. But Kaplan gives us no insight into what forces are driving the periodic destruction: it's just one more horrible thing in his travelogue.

One thought that keeps running through my mind as I read the book is: how can the civilized world allow this to exist? I suppose it's the western intellectual (date of birth circa 1920), at it again. Who turns away in silent dismay from black on black violence, but never lets Europe forget its dark colonial past. South Africa was the epitome of evil to such a person, though blacks there had the highest standard of living in all of Africa, weren't enduring genocide, etc. There are titanic costs on humanity traceable to this 1920 model, which continues to be so irresistibly attractive to a certain type of person.

We all have a dim sense that good and evil are real and grandly present in the world, that introspection and self-mortification take one to a higher spiritual plane, that humanity deserves a peaceful and brilliant future of universal brotherhood, and that we could somehow achieve it if only we could overcome ourselves. These yearnings and intimations are explained in one way by Christianity, and in quite a different way by Western Intellectualism.

Western Intellectualism came together circa 1920 in the aftermath of WWI, with an assist from Lenin and the various socialists who felt they'd diagnosed in capitalism something intrinsically exploitative, imperialist, and expansionist.

Original sin is transferred into European capitalists, who sully a working class and a third world who'd otherwise be peaceful and decent--who in a sense aren't subject to original sin.

The specifics of why the downtrodden are victims and what should be done about it don't matter much, and have continually changed from generation to generation as the last great cause is discredited. Communism and socialism...now we're now onto environmentalism, anti-globalization, and anti-Americanism.

What endures is the instinctive posture: Western intellectuals are always in a position of criticism against the mass of their own society. They're always more sophisticated, humane, enlightened, and able to see past the prejudices of their more neanderthal countrymen.

That's the formula. It's a potent combination to PhD's in the liberal arts, for example, or to loser coffee clerks at Starbuck's. The linguistic trick of saying we're "criticizing ourselves" or "criticizing our own society" is one key part; it resonates with that deep instinct we have that such self-criticism is necessary and enlightening.

As a Christian I'd say an almost satanic substitution has taken place: under guise of self-criticism, they are actually venting all the emotions of exultant moral self-righteousness. As if they had any emotional stake in Middle America! As if it pained them to criticize it!

Another part of the formula, the pattern, is the curious inertia when it comes to action. Because they posture against benign targets that tend not to put them in prison camps, and because deep down maybe the intellectuals realize the target is not so evil...they do curiously little *about* anything. They might have called Britain a reactionary power earlier in the century, they might say Bush is a Nazi...yet they do curiously little about it. They may not mind US troops stationed in their country either. The key thing is to "take the position", then go back to living your life. That you have such positions somehow "on the table", gives you each day little psychic rewards.

That such people are largely in control in Brussels and Washington, and in the media and academia, explains much of the suffering in Africa today. They simply have nothing to *say* if a suitable target to posture against (like Israel or South Africa) can't be found. So they let a whole continent rot, and concentrate on Palestine instead. To say "maybe we should go in and run these governments" would overturn so many basic 1920 assumptions: that third worlders aren't inherently sinless and suffer from the same sins and power lust we all do...that colonialism wasn't necessarily an unmitigated evil... that we should never impose "our" way on others who have equally good ways of their own, that "we're" the problem and they're the victims. It's just too much of a mental revolution.

I think this has great explanatory power of our past policies. We can throw money at it, as long as it's motivated by guilt at how much of the world's resources we use. If the aid gets appropriated by dictators, well...that's unfortunate but not a lot to say or do there.

We're trapped in a cunningly contrived mental box that is 80 years old. The "self" criticism is one of the clever little bits that funnel the fly back in. Another is the fact we hate to criticize anyone suffering or down on their luck, in favor of someone more powerful. Bush is the latest villain puppet necessary to make the whole thing run, Iraq is the latest sad cause celebre.