On this eighth anniversary of one of America’s great tragedies, it’s a good chance to look back and see what we have learned. I sincerely hope that one of them is the mistake of going to war against the known wrong enemy, Iraq, and a second is the folly of antagonizing allies who urged us against it. We endured 18 months of frustrating blind alleys, searching for Osama bin Laden somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A full year and a half of attacking sites in the former country and a bounty of $25 million could not produce the mastermind of that day’s horror.
One ally in particular has been such a longstanding friend that we still thank them for their help in throwing off British control of us in our revolutionary period: France. In early 2003, when the war fever was escalating against Iraq, with unverified claims of weapons of mass destruction and with no evidence of a Saddam-Osama connection, our government, entertainment media and journalists attacked France for opposing our war plans in the Security Council. We felt compelled to rename French fries “Freedom fries.”
Did French toast get renamed, too? There was other silliness like this. No one suggested returning the Statue of Liberty to its donors, so perhaps it could have been worse.
I have had a better experience of France. During my student days in my early 20s, I got to spend a summer in Paris, ostensibly to study French, but more to study the French. I really enjoyed it. How could it be otherwise? Parisians are at least as cosmopolitan as anyone, but not unfriendly, as I had been cautioned. At the time Charles de Gaulle was still smarting over the slight of the Allies entering Paris without having included him in the victorious rejoicing, only some 27 years before. I found that we Americans were certainly welcome, although it helped if you could speak French with the Parisian accent.
France is among the world’s top 10 economies. London’s Economist magazine notes that the country’s economy has not suffered the same crises as have other wealthy European nations. Its gross domestic product is expected to shrink about 3 percent this year while those of Britain will fall 4.1 percent, Italy’s 4.4 percent, and Germany’s 5.6 percent. It depends less on exports than does Germany, and consumer spending in this year’s first quarter was above the same period last year. Its government is set for a 2009 deficit of 6.2 percent while we Americans will see one more than twice that.
French household debt is proportionately half that of ours, and none of its banks have failed or been nationalized. Executive pay is reasonable there, unlike that of some places we know. France routinely uses trains speeding at 230 miles per hour, and four-fifths of its electric power is nuclear generated, with plenty more to export. Air France is the world’s most profitable airline; no French car makers are in hock. French-dominated Airbus sells more planes than Boeing, and Ariane controls the commercial space market.
Columnist William Pfaff in a recent Commonweal essay details how France is flourishing despite some U.S. claims that socialized medicine and socially conscious policy agenda are grievously in error. They must be doing something right. They have large military outlays, yet they do not seem to want to spend the 60 percent of disposable federal income on their forces that we have done every year since General Eisenhower rode down the Champs Elysees.
If more Americans traveled, they would see firsthand that other civilized people have high standards of living and very intelligent ways of doing things. However we Americans travel very little compared to most other nations, whose main source of national income is tourism, all throughout Europe and most other parts of the developed world. Traveling is a broadening experience, even seeing to it that we appreciate our country more when we return. We have much to teach them just as they do us.
Not that I heard them ask for it, but a gracious apology to France and to French Americans would be in order after our above unfairness to them. Right and left would agree that we need good relations with dependable allies.
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