Not even France, Best Friend to Islam, is immune to abductions. France is so anti-semetic that Ariel Sharon warned Jews in France to flee. France stood in the way of shutting down Sadaam. France has done all in it's power to placate Islam to make sure they would never ever hurt them.
However, France passed a law some time ago banning Crosses, Yarmulkes(sp) and Headscarves in public schools. And, well, you know the Islamists CAN'T have that!
Will France rescend their law and surrender their sovereignty to terrorists? I wonder what the Vegas odds are...
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One of your two basic premises -- that France is a friend to terrorists -- is so erroneous that it unfortunately makes the "irony" on which you comment sadly irrelevant.
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Point is Tom, they do all they can to placate Terrorism. You can't even blame it on their support for Israel (like so many on the left do when terror strikes America) because France condems Israel every chance they get.
France has rolled over and played dead enough that the terrorists feel free to try to chance insignificant laws in France via Terror. Weakness only encourages them.
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quote: France, Best Friend to Islam, (...) banning Crosses, Yarmulkes(sp) and Headscarves
Well, that was really Islam-friendly, wasn't it?
quote: France is so anti-semetic (sic) that Ariel Sharon warned Jews in France to flee.
A man well known for his balanced and reasoned responses to all possible issues. Chirac should count himself lucky he hasn't been missiled.
quote: France stood in the way of shutting down Sadaam (sic).
Which worked out really, really well, to be sure.
quote: France has done all in it's (sic) power to placate Islam to make sure they would never ever hurt them.
Such as insisting that international law be observed? Incidentally, your pronouns are muddled.
Why is it that, given two journalists facing a moderately horrible death, you instantly go off on a France-bashing rant? How about some sympathy for the victims? Perhaps you could even give France the benefit of the doubt? They haven't rescinded their law yet, and I see no reason for you to assume that they will. Unless you count sheer knee-jerk (or perhaps that should be American jerk?) xenophobia.
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What's scary is that I agree with the terrorists when they describe the law as "an injustice and an attack on the Islamic religion and individual freedoms." I also think it amounts to an attack on all religions that wear any type of clothing banned by the law. I'm a major proponent of the separation of church and state but I don't think that that means the state should set out to destroy the church. Of course I don't think terrorism and murder is possibly a just way to bring about such changes and I hope the terrorists fail.
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I wouldn't agree that France is a friend of terrorists. But they do bend over... forwards to be neutral. That is why they had that law to begin with. So I find it ironic for that reason.
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Comrade Pixie, I will have you know that I am not a grammar Nazi. I am a grammar Communist. In addition to having much cooler hats, the Communists won the war. I also note that you, apparently, think that pointing out someone's grammar-nazi-ness is a rebuttal. Therefore, by Godwin's Law, your position is in error. I await your self-criticism and voluntary exile to Siberia.
Failing that, you might at least respond to my actual points. You'll note that my post does contain some arguments, in addition to pointing out your failings as a writer of English.
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Comrade Pooka : Only to Americans who have difficulty with three-syllable words. I concede that 'Grammar member-of-the-Nazional-Sozialistisches-Deutsche-Arbeiterpartei' is a bit of a mouthful.
Comrade Pixie : The feeling is entirely mutual. Are you going to post anything sensible, or just bad ad punimem attacks?
[ August 28, 2004, 08:54 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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Point 1> You pointed out banning headscarves (and other religious apparel) wasn't islamofriendly, completely missing my point that France did ONE thing to invoke their wrath.
Point 2> You don't like Sharon. Can't say much about that. You have your opinion on his credibility. I hold him in significantly higher regard than Chirac.
Point 3> You made a snarky remark about the war in Iraq going badly. Concidering most of the casualties have happened in the year since the war ended battling terrorists piped in from neighboring countries, I'd say it's going rather well. We've still lost less than a third that we lost in one day in 2001.
Point 4> You misstate Frances position. They were not interested in international law, they were busy skimming off the Oil for Food program. Further they agreed to resolutions threatening dire consqueneces. The law was followed. The war happened. France whined about it.
Point 5> Sympathy for France and their citizens? Yes for the citizens, but not for France. If the world had stood together FROM THE START with the US and Israel before us, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. Strength is what the terrorists fear. Backbiting and weakeness makes them stronger.
Now, nitpick my grammar some more.
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Your grammar is not actually that bad, though your spelling deserves five years in the camps.
To return to the real argument, France annoys the Islamicist fanatics just by existing as a secular state, (of which the headscarf thing is just the most recent example) and they know it perfectly well. They just don't think that bombs are the first solution to every problem.
As for Sharon, I'm inclined to agree with you : Not much to say about that.
Yes, the war is certainly going well for the Americans, insofar as they now control Iraq's oil at a fairly reasonable cost in American lives. I was thinking more about the chances of putting together a viable Iraqi state and getting some actual peace in the region.
Aw, poor Americans, not getting any Oil for Food. I guess you fixed that problem.
And finally, if you had any vestige of sympathy for those two journalists, you certainly didn't show it.
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France thinks bombs are never a solution unless it involves the Rainbow Warrior.
And if America wanted the oil we'd just take it. As it is, we pay for it just like anyone else. That's why Kerry voted for the $87 billion dollars before he voted against it. If we were taking their oil we wouldn't NEED the $87 billion. And if we took their oil AND needed the $87 billion then why would we have invaded in the first place? If the oil is just going to cost us more anyway.
The whole Blood for Oil argument falls apart on even cursory examination.
So now that you're bored of picking on my grammar, go after my spelling. It makes for classy debate.
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I was thinking the same thing. The Pixiest, you do seem gleeful that two French reporters were kidnapped.
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I'm not Gleeful. Nothing the terrorist do make me Gleeful. I'm ANGRY. And I'm especially angry at France for encouraging them by not standing with us against them.
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Actually, I was going after your spelling from the word go. It was you who wanted to change the subject to grammar. Possibly a good tactic, since - apart from your minor bobble with the pronouns - your grammar is much better than your spelling.
Certainly you are paying for the oil; it doesn't occur to you that, with Iraq's reserves now available again, the market price is going to be dropping? As soon as the American reconstruction companies get through rebuilding the oil wells, of course.
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Oh, of course. Not following every order from the Great White Father is exactly equivalent to encouraging the terrorists.
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And if you knew anything about the Oil for Food program you would know Iraq's oil was already on the market before the invasion.
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So how much would that affect oil prices considering that they're controlled by OPEC regardless by limiting the amount of oil that can be pumped regardless.
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France was looking out for its own self interest in failing to back the war. France always will look out for its own self interest. As will most countries. The fact that France was dealing under the table with Saddam doesn't sit well with us in the US because we'd finally decided he was a bad man. Up until the point where he invaded Kuwait, he was our buddy too.
So France continued to treat him like the US had been treating him a few years before.
I don't like it, but it isn't all that shocking.
The fact is that UN resolutions are basically meaningless without UN forces to back them up. The Bush Administration became convinced that the UN would never get to the point of actually enforcing its sanctions on Iraq. And that's what really precipitated this war. We weren't getting ANYTHING out of Iraq, so we had no vested interest in keeping that country safe. Two of the countries with veto power in the UN (France and Russia) were doing deals with Saddam's regime, in defiance of the UN resolutions and basically in order to get cheap oil.
The combination made it almost inevitable that a 2nd Bush Administration, populated with holdovers from the first go-round with Saddam, would adventure back into Iraq.
And so we have a war that is costing us billions that has morphed from "get the bad guy" to "save the poor Iraqis" to "oops, um, we need a plan." The sad thing is that our Executive branch did manipulate the situation. In fact, they presented a biased, worst-case scenario and used that to get Congress to go along with them. Now that the truth of the situation is becoming clear, there are plenty of representatives in Congress (not just Kerry) who are asking the questions they should've been asking before we committed to this disaster. And a few of them are coming away convinced that there are better ways to spend American money and American lives than in the pursuit of some half-baked scheme in Iraq.
The fact that the French were hesitant about the war in the first place doesn't make them right now. They were still acting out of THEIR self-interest.
Would that our own government would've acted in OUR self-interest. I daresay we might still have attacked Saddam's regime, but I suspect we might have done so with a bit more forethought and after laying much more ground work.
In the meantime, we might've concentrated some of our resources on truly working with Afghanistan to ensure that it doesn't just become a place of warlords and famine. If we were really concerned about "the poor oppressed people" don't you think we would be doing a better job there?
Heck, if we were really concerned about our silly "war on drugs" we'd at least be rounding up the gangs that are forcing farmers to grow opium poppies or be killed.
All told, if I were to grade our efforts so far in the Middle East, I'd give our progress in Afghanistan a D minus and our war in Iraq an F.
Oh, and before people start pointing out how grateful the average Iraqi should be to the US because of all the money we're spending there, you should check out some of the reports on how that money is being spent and distributed. I know we aren't really going to just hand money out on the street, but there are indications that much of the aid is being horded by folks who are basically using it to store up resources for the future of their own little clans instead of making sure the people have enough.
Same deal in Afghanistan.
In other words, we didn't plan that part of our adventure very well either.
quote:So how much would that affect oil prices considering that they're controlled by OPEC regardless by limiting the amount of oil that can be pumped regardless.
And is the new Iraq going to be a member of OPEC? Actually, that's an interesting question : Just how much of a vassal state are they going to be? Of course, keeping them out of OPEC would be fairly blatant.
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So if Iraq doesn't join OPEC (or continue to me a member of), which would of course allow them to pump all the oil they want thereby enriching themselves as well as helping us out, it must have been an American decision? There are countries that export oil that don't belong to OPEC you know.
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Well, why would a nation which is going to rely completely on oil prices for the foreseeable future not join the cartel? They should rely on tourism for their income, perhaps?
At any rate, I have to admit that the Blood-for-Oil thing is not that great an argument. Comrade Scopatz lays out the European side of things much better than me, perhaps because he's not pissed off at completely off-topic things. Why shouldn't France look after its own interests?
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Actually, in most situations where a cartel is maintaining prices through artifical scarcity, a single cheater/non-participant will do better than the cartel.
Until everyone else starts cheating or not participating, that is.
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A little tid bit about the Italian journalist who was killed:
quote:All your Italian readers have been hoping and praying for the fate of Enzo G. Baldoni. Enzo, 57, has been the Italian translator of Doonesbury for ages. He was an advertising creative, but sometimes he turned into a reporter. As such, a couple of weeks ago he went to Iraq. While sending back reports on the sufferings caused by the war he, as a veteran Red Cross volunteer, managed to contribute in securing the arrival of an Italian Red Cross convoy to Najaf. There he was kidnapped. The "usual" ritual of videotaped ultimatums followed.
All his friends were confident that the captors would have easily recognized Enzo as a man of peace, but this was not the case. Yesterday Enzo was killed. We all miss him.
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"completely missing my point that France did ONE thing to invoke their wrath"
Pix, I would argue that France has done considerably more than one thing to anger Islamic terrorists, insofar as ANY Western country has done anything to anger Islamic terrorists. Portraying them as terrorist sympathizers or pacifiers does them a gross disservice, and reflects a certain amount of bias. We should not associate support of the Iraq invasion with opposition to Islamic terrorism; the two do not correlate.
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King of Men, I really don't think you know what the Oil for Food issue is about other than what you can piece together from context clues that Iraq traded oil for food. What you don't know was that Iraq and France and some other countries were cheating the program. So what you get is by saying that France is justified at looking after their own interests then the US would be equally justified if they started stealing food from poor countries because after all they're looking after their own interests.
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I'm not clear. Is anyone actually making the argument that the kidnapping of the two journalists is warranted or understandable because of the banning of the headscarves? I see a lot of noise that looks like it, but I want to be sure before I say anything.
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Personally I just agreed with a point the terrorists made. I in no way agree with their methods and I'm sure that they don't care about the infringement upon other groups either.
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Answering a question posed earlier in this thread. I actually talked to an intell officer of the CIA today and he said that Iraq does indeed intend to become a member of OPEC in good standing.
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