The French left and Afghanistan
by Scoop Shachtman, 2 April 2008
French Socialists are isolationist fools, far more interested in their anti-American credentials. Here they are again talking about Vietnam:
But the Socialists warned France risked becoming mired in a “new Vietnam”.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, the opposition’s leader in the National Assembly, suggested Mr Sarkozy’s “Atlantic obsession” of closer ties with the US was behind the plan.
Thankfully, Sarkozy has put one socialist in his cabinet who “gets it”:
“There have been specific requests, notably from the Netherlands and Canada. It is impossible to shy away from our responsibilities. This commitment honours France,” Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the National Assembly in Paris.
Kouchner’s comments come in the wake of media leaks indicating President Nicolas Sarkozy comes to Bucharest poised to announce the deployment of some 1,000 French soldiers to eastern Afghanistan, rather than the south, where Canada’s needs are all too clear.
Wednesday 2 April 2008 at 23:57
‘But the Socialists warned France risked becoming mired in a “new Vietnam”.’
As if they had nothing to do with the ‘old’ Vietnam.
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 0:09
To be fair ‘Basher — that wasn’t the French left’s doing. It was the French imperialist, bourgeoisie, capitalist expansionist mofo’s fault. Not forgetting Cambodia of course.
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 0:14
Quite right Will, but I’m sure that the French left would say it was “them”, as in “We have no right to do anything in Afghanistan because of our record in Vietnam”.
Still, shouldn’t knock the French left too much, they did give us Camus, Blum, and Koucher.
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 0:14
Anyway — I am busy reading, for the second time, Terry’s long essay here at the moment …
http://z-word.com/z-word-essays/the-cairo-clique%253A-anti-zionism-and-the-canadian-left.html
I believe he will be having a post up here in the not too distant future on it…
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 1:46
Leon Blum may have been of the French left, but was the French left any more supportive of Blum and the Jews of France against Hitler than they seem to be of the Afghan people against this era’s version of Nazis in sheik’s clothing?
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 2:21
i don’t rightly know Lynne — why don’t you tell us all now?
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 3:33
Lynne is a looney toone by the way.
Completely beyond hope.
I despise these types…my side or not your side… ignorant types — making fun of banality is my job so it is — it-doesn’t-matter-ism and idealism — Also called bullshit. You madam is/are full of crap.
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 11:24
Will, if I may correct you, the French Socialist and Communist Parties did initially back the reoccupation of Indochina in 1945-1946. So they were as culpable as the Gaullists.
Thursday 3 April 2008 at 18:39
Will:
Maybe if you found some time to read [note the formulation here — beginning as it does with an ill-informed assumption based on nothing, designed to impugn intellectual degeneracy on the addressee] as you do dishing insults and obscenities [again - note here the one-sidedness of the non-critique] (in a most unHitchens like manner) [note here the attempt to occlude all things said in a possible response by claiming the moral high-ground through usurpation of another unrelated subject’s authority — there is a term for this but I forget it just now], you’d know what support the French left gave Leon Blum when he raised the alarm about the Nazis [note here how this has zero to do with anything I said above — the ironic - thus unsaid - substance of which has completely passed the attention of the idiot in question].
What’s Left, N. Cohen, P. 249:
The leader of the French socialists was Leon Blum, and he knew that the Nazis had to be fought. But a large socialist faction supported by trade unionists and many left-wing intellectuals refused to follow him. The standard motives lay behind their pacifism: a justifiable horror at a conflict that would be worse than the First World War; and a well-founded suspicion of the military-industrial complex and the coroporate media. But [Paul] Berman spotted something more important in that time and in ours: the deadly consequences of the liberal belief of reason.
[ends with a quote from a journalist’s book — which by the way isn’t really very good at all]