Last week’s Cover Story, “What’s Up with the French? The ‘Not-American Strategy’” began, “We have arrived at a pregnant moment in history.” This past Tuesday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the General Assembly that the world body has reached “a fork in the road,” an historical juncture at which it must answer “the concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable, since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral action."  

When attempting to speak Truth to Madness, obfuscation comes in handy. “Some states” means the U.S. and Britain, the self-proclaimed liberators of Iraq, whose “logic of pre-emption…represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 50 years."  

Annan hopes to create some kind of “robust and flexible new structure” to accommodate the Americans’ all-purpose wars on terror. Unfortunately, Mr. Annan’s job description is inadequate to the task. The United Nations cannot reach a modus vivendi with Pirates bent on world hegemony, men whose fundamental objective is to obliterate the very notion of international law in order to rule by fiat. At present, however, Annan believes that there is little choice but to go through the motions.

A palpable eeriness suffused the great hall of the General Assembly when George Bush spoke, as if some strange and threatening Other had intruded. Grim silence prevailed throughout the Texan’s 22-minute speech, even as Bush proudly announced the presence of “representatives of a liberated country” – the U.S.-selected Iraqi Governing Council. The UN has learned that Bush is bad news, and so is the crowd that arrives with him. When the ordeal was over, Bush got 20 seconds of diplomatically correct, pro forma applause – by UN standards, a glacial coldness.  

Bush decreed the limits of United Nations involvement in a “transformed” Iraq (“assist in developing a constitution, in training civil servants, and conducting free and fair elections”) and rejected an early transition to Iraqi sovereignty. “This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis [as defined by the Anglo-Americans], neither hurried nor delayed by the wishes of other parties,” said Bush, dismissing the French timetable, out of hand. With boorish transparency, Bush inflected his scorn for the French, hectoring that terrorists “should have no friend in this chamber.”  

President Jacque Chirac then laid out the French position, one that conforms to international law as it has evolved among nations:  

“In Iraq, the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, who must have sole responsibility for their destiny, is essential for stability and reconstruction. It is up to the United Nations to lend its legitimacy to that process. It is also up to the United Nations to assist with the gradual transfer of administrative and economic responsibilities to the Iraqi institutions, according to a realistic timetable, and to help the Iraqis draft a constitution and to hold general elections.”

Chirac rejected U.S. license to engage in pre-emptive warfare. “It is the [Security] Council that should set the bounds to the use of force. No one can claim the right to use force unilaterally or preventively.” France plans to abstain rather than veto a U.S.-submitted resolution that would effectively “grandfather” the occupation as a fait accompli.  

The Pirates, in fact, have won nothing, and they know it. Bush squints into the abyss, his project disintegrating in irresolvable contradictions in full view of the world. The elites represented at the Assembly Hall share the common realization that Washington’s mission is to extinguish the principle and fact of sovereignty among nations. The trick is to somehow ensure that the planet survives the inevitable collapse of the New American Century – to create a new world order even as the Americans slash away at the old one.  

France has positioned herself as the champion of lawful international conduct and the sovereignty of peoples. “For this overarching reason,” we wrote last week, “at this moment in history France speaks for world, not just European, opinion.” There is no need to holler, or pound shoes on tables. While Bush uses the UN podium to make Manifest Destiny speeches tailored to a delusional but increasingly despairing American audience, Paris engages in a global dialogue on the American threat. It is a role for which France has been preparing for nearly half a century:  

“One million white Frenchmen lived in Algeria in 1956 when the U.S. thwarted French-British-Israeli plans to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt. The British soon acclimated themselves to the American shadow, while the French later developed their own nuclear weapons capability and withdrew from the command structure of NATO. Believing themselves peculiarly conversant with Third World perceptions and sensibilities (based largely on the intimate Algerian experience), and determined to preserve French business interests and international stature, successive governments positioned Paris as an “alternative” Great Power. What the blustering, bulldog Americans mistook as French pretension was, in reality, a sophisticated strategy that played against crude, racist American bullying tactics in the Third World. Yes, the French are imperialists, but at least they are not Americans.”

President Chirac had the luxury to play world statesman at the UN, having earlier commissioned Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to shred the Bush men in a near-plain language Le Monde article, September 12 – the subject of our Cover Story.  De Villepin called American policy in Iraq a “failure” and urged the U.S. to redeploy to Iraq’s border regions. To encourage independence-mindedness among the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, he proposed they “be considered by the UN Security Council as the guardians of Iraqi sovereignty during the transition period. Very soon, perhaps in a month, an interim Iraqi government could be established based on these bodies with executive powers progressively transferred to it, including economic and budgetary activities.”

The principle of sovereignty reverberates among all peoples. It has become the focal point around which France seeks to rally global opinion.  

France is most keen to close the legal door to the United States creating further “facts on the ground” designed to entangle the Iraqi nation in an American corporate embrace – forever. The international drama is not about a few French, German or Russian oil contracts here and there, no more than the U.S. invasion was launched for the sole benefit of Halliburton and Bechtel. France is challenging U.S. claims to a super-national right to manipulate or erase the sovereignty of nations – the legal basis for world order and the only way that civilized nations know how to do business. In this, France speaks for the world, no matter how selfish her motives might be.

We were delighted to hear from a French reader. J. Paul Godon lives on the outskirts of Paris.

As a French citizen you can imagine that I rather like your cover story. Actually it is one of the very few published commentaries that I have come across in the English language press where, in my view, an honest attempt is made at discussing the French position on Iraq on its merits rather than from some sort of bigoted standpoint.

A modest comment: the French, government and public opinion alike, have a problem with the Bush administration's policies, and previous US government policies of the same orientation, but rest assured that we have no problem with you the People.

Leutisha Stills’ window on the world is Oakland, California.

The French are a people that revere their history, and as a result, they've learned from it, which is why they were urging the U. S. not to rush into this war.  What was the rush, anyway? It wasn't like the oil was going to take off and visit Jed Clampett in Beverly Hills before Bush could get to it, was it?  This is what De Villepin is trying to tell Bush - "those who forget their past are condemned to repeat it." It seems no one learned from Vietnam, did they?

As Malcolm X would say, "The chickens have come home to roost."  And I'm not surprised that after basically telling France to "go to hell" before this war started, Bush has to admit he needs help and has to attempt to mend those bridges he burned with France and Germany, but he still wants to be in charge.  Now it's time for France to tell Bush, diplomatically, to "go to hell" with his proposal.  You can tell that crow is a dish that's best not served to the resident in the White House, as evidenced by that September 7th speech he choked on.  Oh, well, better for Bush to choke on his pride, rather than a pretzel.

As always, well done, .

From Dearborn, Michigan, Larry Christensen writes:

It's so rare to see any analysis of what these top servants of the elites mean, when they speak. Thanks for taking us "behind the scenes" so well.

What struck us about the de Villepin "article" was that it spoke so loudly. Normally, elites converse through discreet signals, somewhat like the bidding in a very upscale auction.  

Every once and a while, Carol Christen gets that disconnected feeling. We try to help.

I must tell you that the story about France’s position is wonderful.  I have found nothing else as complete, no one else even mentioned France’s opinion.  Our local newspaper barely keeps up with much of anything (The Oregonian, Portland, OR) or is three days late with current news from the world if we get such news at all.  I live in a tiny county outside of the Portland area; people here refuse to think about any of it.  I am just happy that I can get news of the actual world from somewhere.  Again, thank you for the intelligent, well-researched article.

Tamzin Jans, on the other hand, is wired into all kinds of networks.

This is a great article!  I will forward it to all the French group.

So what's wrong with them? Maybe they like sitting on their terraces with a nice bottle of Chablis and a baguette with salad and home-made French dressing and some Brie or Camembert to add a little more pleasure to the occasion of enjoying life and not worrying about 'liberating' Iraqis with guns, weapons, bombs, DU ammunition.

Frankly, who would not prefer the former to the latter?  I know the pleasure I have in enjoying life rather than being a soldier for Uncle Sam's army.

Kurt Kiebler also weighs in on the gastronomic implications of the international drama.

After [Republican Congressman] Bob Ney changed the Congressional cafeteria so that Congress would be eating "freedom fries", Ney was just as responsible as the US for making us look stupid with the French boycott.

Perhaps by accident, Ney has introduced me to the fine flavors of French wine and French cheese that I would not have eaten if it were not for his boycott. Now Bush wants $87 billion and France, about the fries, just kidding. What idiots!

Christa Hupp writes from Congressman Ney’s state, Ohio.

Thank you for the cover story on French diplomatic objectives in the current debacle in the UN and Iraq. I found the analysis of M. De Villepin's article in Le Monde very helpful.

I am more pleased by the day that I found your sight on the web.

Moses R., in Bethesda, Maryland, got a charge from our Cover Story.

I just wanted to tell you that I got chills when I got to the end of your analysis of the French position, and you revisited your words of the "Pirates" article. I remember that article, and remember thinking at the time that there was no way that you were wrong about your strong statements.

The writer was referring to our recycling of passages we published on March 20, the day the American tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border bound for Baghdad.

War is the great and terrible engine of history. Bush and his Pirates hope to employ that engine to harness Time and cheat the laws of political economy, to leapfrog over the contradictions of their parasitical existence into a new epoch of their own imagining.

Instead, they have lunged into the abyss, from which no one will extricate them, for they will be hated much more than feared.

In attempting to break humanity's will to resist, the Bush Pirates have reached too far.

Deirdre Lovell’s note was short and very sweet:

Outstanding journalism and extremely well timed!!!!

Finally, meet John Morales, a man whose judgment we trust, implicitly.

I am in total agreement with you and your thoughts.  I am Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Mexican Indian.  Normal American.

We thank Mr. Morales and each of his constituent selves.  

Keep writing.  

gratefully acknowledges the following organizations for sending visitors our way during the past week.  

Democratic Underground  

Black Planet  

UN Observer and International Report

Information Clearing House

Take Back The Media  

Counterpunch

September 25, 2003
Issue 57

is published every Thursday.