[A-List] US news media: France

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Americans give France a piece of their mind

ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
The Scotsman, 12 February 2003

THE French embassy in Washington counted the cost of its country's break
with US policy this week. Angry Americans flooded its telephone lines to
send a message to France's diplomatic emissaries that could be summed up in
two words: you suck. On the day after Colin Powell's speech to the United
Nations, that verdict was delivered 1,124 times.

By the end of it French diplomats felt as though they were under siege. "It
never stopped. It was crazy. Unbelievable," said one French diplomat.

Officials on both sides are keen to stress that the current dispute between
the US and some of its traditional allies is temporary, but there is no
disguising the animosity felt in Washington towards the French in
particular.

When Charles de Gaulle called for the United States to withdraw its troops
from Europe, the then US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, famously responded
with the withering question, "Does that include the dead Americans in
military cemeteries too?"

That was in 1966: today, right-wing talk radio shows and tabloid newspapers,
openly call for repatriation of America's war dead. The message of "if it
weren't for us you'd be speaking German" has become a favourite refrain.

"It's very curious," says Corentin Seznec, cultural co-ordinator at the
Washington Alliance Française. "However I think this animosity only exists
at a political level, not amongst ordinary people. It will blow over."

Anger at French and German opposition to the administration's Iraq policy is
not confined to the Republican dogs of war, however.

The Washington Post argued in a trenchant editorial yesterday that France
and Germany now "behave as if they share the same over-riding goal as the
Iraqi dictator: thwarting US action even when it is supported by most other
NATO and European nations."

Even the leading satirical television show Saturday Night Live, a product of
the 1960s counter-culture more used to ridiculing the foibles of US
presidents, has joined the fray.

In last weekend's programme one extended sketch showed Germany's foreign
minister responding to Mr Powell's UN address, saying: "Thank you for your
interesting presentation. I propose that we do absolutely nothing." The
French then suggested adjourning for an "extremely expensive" lunch with the
UN "picking up the tab". The UN itself was, the show suggested, irredeemably
corrupt, pointless and venal.

These attacks, if crude, reflect a growing impatience amongst the American
public over what is seen as German gutlessness and French duplicity.

"The French attitude is self-defeating," says Gary Schmitt of the right-wing
think tank, the Project for a New American Century. " They are undermining
the credibility of the UN and now throwing NATO into disarray. I don't know
if they realise how they're also causing a split in Europe. If you total up
all the things they are interested in, you find that they're making a hash
of all of them."