Remora

First, let's note that the D.C. crowd that has told us, for months, that France wouldn't go eye to eye with the U.S. over Iraq seem to be wrong. And the LI, of course (our record is as perfect as the Wizard of Oz's) spotted this assumption for what it was: baseless confidence.

However, there is trepidation all over Europe about this. Tageszeitung, which is certainly a lefty paper, calls the way the German's casually told the press, first, about the Franco-German initiative Stuemperei -- bungling.


"And even the healthy suggestion that Washington with its power dynamic driving it to war should be braked by the massive strengthening of the inspection regime in Irak has been, almost certainly, condemned to fail through the manner in which the whole undertaking was pursued by Berlin."

The editorialist for Point could work for the Washington Post, so eager is he for this war, so repelled is he that Chirac would desert the American side for the confused pacificism of those Germans


"L'�tonnant, chez nous, est d'avoir paru �pouser d'aussi pr�s la contorsion �lectoraliste allemande d'un chancelier chancelant, encore �trill�, dimanche dernier, dans son propre fief de Basse-Saxe. Etonnant, encore, d'avoir n�glig� � ce point l'�cart des nations latines - Italie, Espagne, Portugal -, dont la solidarit� importe tant � la France dans les �quilibres europ�ens. Par quelle outrecuidance euphorique avons-nous pu ignorer la division europ�enne que nous allions ainsi fomenter ? Quant au l�galisme international invoqu� pour l'Irak, convenons que nous l'avions ailleurs, et par deux fois, �corn� : d'abord en d�cidant de recevoir � Paris le tyran zimbabw�en Mugabe ; ensuite en nous abstenant dans le vote bouffon qui allait porter la Libye � la pr�sidence de la Commission des droits de l'homme des Nations unies."

(Astonishingly, we appear to have nearly espoused the German electoral contorsions of a tottering chancellor, still injured by the results, last sunday, of the elections in his own fief, Lower Saxony. And even more astonishing, we have neglected to this point the latin nations: Italy, Spain and Portugal -- whose solidarity means so much to France in the european balance of power. By what overbroiled euphoria could we have ignored the european divisions that we are fomenting? As to the international legalism invoked for Iraq, lets agree that we have not been so tender two other times, recently: firstly, in deciding to receive Mugabe in Paris, and then in abstaining in the clownish vote that carried Libya to the post of presidency of the commisssionof the rights of man at the UN.)


Finally, the Independent columnist Donald Macintyre is most distressed at the French German proposal, too. He contrasts the U.N's finest hour (which turns out to be the Bush I coalition) with today's mess:

How different now. "It's the UN that's really on the line," says Professor Michael Mandelbaum, one of America's best foreign policy specialists.

"Transatlantic relations will be noisy and contentious. But they'll be like the workings of a democracy, where disputes ultimately are secondary to what bind the parties together.

"Iraq is now shaping up for the UN's credibility as the 1930s Manchurian crisis did for the League of Nations. The odd thing is that those who profess to love the UN the most (ie the French) are undermining it, while those that don't greatly like it (the US), are trying to give it teeth. If it fails, no one would lose more than the French."

The latter is something we doubt. It is clearly the intent of the US, under the present regime, to go it alone if it feels like it. Columnists have decided to loftily eliminate popular sentiment from the equation. But is it true that, say, in Spain, where 70% of the population opposes any war, France is losing respect? I think not. Bush is urging a course upon the nations of Europe which is directly opposed to the popular sentiment, and has been for the past year. We've already seen Schroeder get re-elected on the strength of that sentiment -- in spite of his economic record. Of course, the Spanish and the Italians prime ministers, signing love letters to the US via the Wall Street Journal, is one thing -- paying for invading Iraq is quite another thing. For that, America wants to turn to Old Europe. But Old Europe doesn't want to spring for this party.