Jules Crittendon, writing in the Boston Herald has a stinging indictment of the French and their behavior over Lebanon. Frankly, as harsh as it is, it probably isn't hard enough on them.
French is the traditional language of diplomacy. Diplomacy is the art of saying one thing while doing another. I
n recent weeks, France stepped forward to act as a broker of peace in Lebanon. “Act” is the key verb in that last sentence, as it now would seem that the only other verifiable part of the sentence is “in recent weeks.”
To correctly parse that sentence, one must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or “peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is true when France further suggested it wanted to “lead” a “strong” “multinational” “force” there.
I don’t speak French, so I have no idea what the actual French words are for those concepts or what possible nuances there may be. I’ve been relying on news reports in English, which now inform me that the French do not intend to send any significant number of troops to what is supposed to be a force of 15,000 in Lebanon, like everyone thought they said they would.
The heady moment of peace brokering having passed, upon sober reflection, the French now say they already have a general and some staff in south Lebanon ordering about UNIFIL, the U.N. monitoring entity there. That’s plenty of leadership, the French suggested: All France needs to contribute now is another 200 combat engineers.
In tactical terms, when it comes to securing a Middle East conflict zone, that can be referred to as “squat.”
The United Nations, which is trying to salvage what is left of its own self-respect after the utter failure of UNIFIL in Lebanon, is now publicly begging European nations to contribute troops.
To find the last plain-speaking French leader, it is necessary to go back to Napoleon Bonaparte. He said he was going to take over Europe, and proceeded to do so. No, scratch that. He said he was going to bring French liberty and equality to Europe, then crowned himself emperor. Subsequent French history offers us a sordid string of third world colonizations followed by bloody wars to hang on long after the time to relinquish colonies had passed, setting the stage for corrupt government and prolonged conflict in places like Vietnam.
As a couple of commenters have pointed out on earlier posts, this is not to cast aspersions on the French troops themselves, but rather on the pathetic leadership that directs them. The words France and dishonor have virtually become synonymous because of the political leadership it has.
I checked the troops we sent to NATO and UN missions.
I found that there are some 170-200 troops in Iraq, a few hundred in Bosnia and Kosovo – well, neighbouring countries, it’s sure they are important missions for us – and now, if we got a request from the UN, we will send troops to Libanon too.
That’s about 1000 troops on different mission in all, which is not much, but we got a small army, so I think we do well.
Comparing the size of the French army to the Hungarian, that 200 soldiers they want to send is not too much.
Ok, now that I shared this useless and uninteresting piece of information, I go back to work