In Defense of France

Sunday, Sep. 21, 2003 By MICHAEL ELLIOTT
AFTER YOU: Dominique de Villepin rubs some Americans the wrong way
DENIS BALIBOUSE — EPA/REUTERS
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First, a confession. Last winter, during the interminable debates at the United Nations before the invasion of Iraq, I thought — and wrote — that if the U.S. and Britain went to war against Saddam Hussein, France would join them. That was a triumph of cynicism over judgment — a cynicism shared, though this is no excuse, by top officials in the U.S. State Department — and it was, obviously, dead wrong. France stayed out of the war. For a few months, this seemed like a catastrophic error on France's part, as Saddam was toppled and the Bush Administration puffed out its chest like a rooster that had just enjoyed half the henhouse. But now the U.S. needs help in Iraq, and France — in American eyes — is being awkward again. That has acted as a cue for a new burst of Francophobia in the American commentariat, with suggestions even that France is becoming an enemy of the U.S.

This is nonsense on stilts. You can make any argument you like about whether France's policy on Iraq makes sense, but it is hard to claim that it has been either inconsistent or motivated by a desire to see the U.S. fail. In a long interview with Time in February, President Jacques Chirac laid out his policy with admirable clarity. France, he said, had no difference with the U.S. "over the goal of eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." The point of distinction was simply that Chirac thought that war — which he believed would outrage Arab and Islamic public opinion and "create a large number of little bin Ladens" — should be a last resort. His prediction was better than mine.

France's view on the current situation — that the Islamic world will more easily accept the new reality in Iraq if political authority is vested in the U.N., and then rapidly handed over to Iraqis themselves — is entirely in line with the country's long-held principles. That position may be mistaken, for conventional wisdom holds that nation building can't be hurried, but it is not self-evidently absurd or anti-American. So why the new round of Paris bashing?