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Back to the Forum Archives There are several issues involved here. I'll try to separate them. First, I can take up hating France and Frenchmen. I can identify with that a bit. I have taken off on Frenchmen and France a few times myself, though I don't think I became rabid about it. To really hate them, I would have to take them seriously. Most of the time though, the French are difficult to hate because they are so pitifully silly. No one can take them seriously. The French are strutting and pompous to an extreme. There was a time when that might have been justified. For a very long time, Paris really was the center of world culture. They produced some outstanding artists, scientists, and philosophers. However, all of that ended with World War One. They simply did not notice that their genius had dried up. They were not alone in that oversight. Even Hemingway and his entourage overlooked it. Most of the world still thought France was great. In fact Paris had degenerated into nothing more than an artsy fartsy fantasy land. It was a perfect place for expatriates of every stripe. It took the bungling of the Maginot Line and World War Two to notify the world it was over for France. The German Panzers simply flanked the obsolete French bunkers and the French army crumbled. Hitler overran France in a few days and put England under siege. If anyone should hate the French it should be the British. The French failed them miserably. Now let's take the liberation. I would like to get beyond this point where the French somehow owe us for liberating France from Germany. What nonsense. It is really a position of pomposity more suited to the French mind. The truth is, the liberation of France was an inadvertent fallout. What we were really doing in Europe was defending America and the entire civilized world from a madman. Let us never forget that. But that all happened more than fifty years ago. It ended on Monday, May 7, 1945. I was a teenage kid in Wyandotte, Michigan. Rooney was a young kid in the middle of it. Now, about France's position on Iraq. France is currently a legitimate member in good standing of the United Nations and of NATO. They have every right inherent in those positions. They have every right, in fact a solemn duty, to state their positions clearly. If they disapprove an invasion of Iraq, they must say so just as should every other nation in those bodies. Unless we take the position that the UN and NATO are just rubber stamp arms of the White House, those nations have the right and the duty to speak out. History is irrelevant to that fact. Now, I can get to the emotions of all of this. It was clear that Rooney had very strong feelings about the liberation of France. Since he was a participant that should not surprise us. We should be able to consider what he may have been feeling. I can't get into his head, so this is speculation based on my own experience. It may be somewhat similar to Rooney's. I don't know if he was a GI or a correspondent. It does not matter. He was there. At the time of World War Two, both Rooney and I were kids with our whole future ahead of us. He was old enough to be there where his future was very much at risk. I was not quite old enough. I had to wait until the Korean Conflict to come at risk. I did go to Korea and I can tell you, it changes you for life. Two bit political hacks can sit around and pick words. They can call it a conflict. I was there. I have a memory of laying with my nose in the dirt in a depression a few inches deep while artillery shells exploded around me. You may call that a conflict. For me, it was a war and I cried like a baby. So I can understand the emotions we may have invested in a piece of real estate where too many of our comrades died. Unless you were there, there is no way you can understand or even express it. Even for those of us who were there, we cannot express it. But, I came back and so did Rooney. We go on with our lives and we hate war. We are not necessarily against war, when necessary. Necessary is the key word. When we go to war, we can be sure of this. American boys are going to be terrified and some are going to die. Let us never forget that. Now there is one more thing, if you want to cling to this, France owes us notion. Let's go back to the American revolutionary war. Were it not for the intervention of France, there would be no United States of America. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hancock, and the others would have been hanged as traitors. The iron boot of the British army would have come down on the colonies and remained there, God knows how long. So, who owes who? My take is nobody owes anyone anything. History is what happened. It is never about altruism. The French did not intervene out of love for the colonies. They did it because they wanted to get England. America did not liberate France out of love for the French people. We did it because we could not afford to let Hitler dominate Europe. We knew we would be next and that madman would be more powerful than ever. Unlike the present, we went to war then because we had to. Now we don't have to and France ought to point that out, as should all thoughtful people. As to Europe, France World War Two, and Korea, it's over Andy.
Let it go.
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