Reuters: See, Obama Built A Coalition Whereas Bush Decided to "Go It Alone"

Can I repeat, again, all they mean is France joined this time?

And can I say further again that France didn't "join" the coalition, they created it (along with co-founder Britain) and induced the hesitant ditherer Obama to join?

Jeffrey Goldberg:

[Quoting "news" organization Reuters:] Obama is committed to partnering with other countries rather than going it alone as did his predecessor George W. Bush, which both broadens and complicates the decision-making process.

This, of course, is wildly inaccurate and misleading. Say what you will about the second Iraq war, but George W. Bush made partnerships with many nations in advance of the invasion, including and especially America's most valuable ally, Great Britain, as well as Australia, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, South Korea, the Czech Republic, and a couple of dozen others.

But apparently when we speak about international coalitions we're only speaking of France. No one else matters, it seems. The coalition put together by Bush and Blair is pretty much the same coalition put together now by Britain and France except France is now part of it, which again sort of makes sense, given that they created it in the first place.

So we're talking about France and that's all we're talking about.

I'd like the media to explain this unexamined assumption of theirs that only France matters and only France, alone, can confer "international community" respectability.

Oh, I know why France should believe that to be true. France has spent fifty years attempting to leverage themselves more sway on the world stage than their second-rate military and third-rate economy would recommend by always positioning itself as the hard-to-get swing vote that courts both sides equally and deliberately takes positions contrary to the US for the sake of being contrary in order to accrue credibility with the US's enemies.

They've been positioning themselves as the swing vote vis a vis NATO and the Warsaw Bloc and the West and the Muslim world for years.

It's a strategy that pays dividends for France, and plays to their national arrogance, and, despite disliking the strategy, I understand why a three-bit country with fantasies of national greatness would always play this game of the reluctant, sometimes backstabbing, "friend" who always needs special convincing and special deference.

Here's what I don't understand: Why any American or non-Frenchmen would be eager to puff up France's self-declared rule of permanent swing vote and veto-if-not-properly-appeased.

The liberals in America all rush to proclaim quietly assume the proposition that France is the Indispensable Country.

Again, let me restate the contrast of my feelings as regard's France's posture as the Indispensable Country: I understand why they do it, and even will concede to them a sort of grudging hate-respect for so skillfully parlaying a second-tier status into a first-tier influence.

But let me ask again: Why should a British or American or German national be so eager to agree that a country which is far, far less important than Brazil or Japan or South Korea be elevated to not only the top five of important powers, but in fact the top of the top five?

Why are so many Americans -- liberals, of course, like Barack Hussein Obama -- so in love with the idea of France As Foremost?

The answer is simple: Because they hate America, and so go casting about for a country that purports to be a wise check on American action, and as France has been positioning itself as the first-to-market first-in-sales distributor of such a product for a half century of course they have the greatest brand recognition and market saturation for their wares.

But for anyone who doesn't hate America (or his own country, if another): Why champion the wisdom and authority of France over your own nation's?

I'd like Reuters to explain the assumption packed into its statement that Bush "went it alone" when really they mean only "Bush went without France."

What makes France so special? Again, I don't want to hear from the French on this point; I know their answer.

Britain's got a better military and Germany's got a hell of a lot more money. Norway's got a more heroic tradition (that is to say, they didn't roll over for Hitler).

Australia's a better friend.

I'm looking for any measure, really, in which France tops any other European or Western-oriented power. I don't think they're even second in anything (even excluding America); I think they'd struggle for third or fourth.

I want to hear from the non-French who are so self-loathing they eagerly subcontract their nations' foreign policies to an aloof, arrogant, self-interested foreign power.

posted by Ace at 02:28 PM

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