Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Co-operation between the governments is extraordinarily close and greatly institutionalized due to the Elysée Treaty and its amendment of 1988. To name just a few examples:
• half-yearly government consultations (summits), which, since 1999, have focused on current topics of society in both countries and therefore go beyond simple co-operation between governments,
• the German-French Security and Defense Council,
• the Councils for Economic, Financial and Environmental Affairs and
• the coordinators for German-French co-operation, which devote most of their attention today to the field of civil society.

In addition, since the beginning of 2001, heads of state and government and the foreign ministers of both countries have been holding informal meetings every 6-8 weeks for open and intense discussion on current topics of European and international interest (Blaesheim talks).

George

I don't think at all, we are France's poodle, but we are only (and I think, a lot more still has to come!) fulfilling French-German Friendship Treaty of 1963:

U.S. troops use new tactics to hunt down a resurgent Taliban

By Mark McDonald

Knight Ridder Newspapers

PARLE, Afghanistan - The loudspeakers atop the Humvee crackled to life: "The Taliban are women! They're bitches! If they were real men, they'd stop hiding under their burkas and they'd come out and fight!"

The Taliban were driven from power nearly three years ago, but they've staged a ruthless comeback throughout southern Afghanistan. They're recruiting fighters, slitting the throats of local officials and terrorizing rural villagers who have dared to register to vote in Afghanistan's first presidential election.

Lessee. America was attacked on 9/11. Bush announced the War on Terrorism. The terrorists were in Afghanistan, shielded by the Taliban.

Fast forward and here we are, Bush touting his prestige as The Uncontested and Generally Recognized Strong Man in the War on Terror right as those very same Taliban slip back into power again, benefiting from most of America's soldiers being caught up way over in Iraq (no relation with 9/11).

Odd world, isn't it?

Friday September 10, 2004

What could inspire a smart human being to vote for George Bush? Andrew Brown on what makes the American world view so very different from the European one


My friend Matt Hoffman may become the first Independent contributor to be burnt in effigy by its readers. He announced last week that he might be voting for George Bush.
He actually has a vote in the American elections, unlike most suppliers of opinion (wholesale or retail) to the British public. And, though he has lived her for a very long time, he retains a knowledge of the gut hatreds of American politics which foreigners cannot acquire without living there a very long time.

You might expect these feelings to diminish with distance; in fact, it seems to amplify them in moments of crisis. The most pacifist and Thatcher-hating British expatriate could be surprised by a storm of patriotism in the Falklands War. You never feel more strongly 'My country right or wrong' than when all around you think it must be wrong.

But it's still a surprise. Hoffman is the kind of American who adds lustre to any country he chooses to live. He's optimistic, energetic, cultured and smart. He is a life-long Democrat; by the standards of mainstream American political debate, a crazed socialist, which means he probably voted for Tony Blair (he holds dual citizenship). For him even to consider voting for Bush suggests something very strange and important is happening that we just don't understand.

A poll last week showed that if the whole world had a vote in the election, Bush would be beaten 4-1. The only countries he would carry are Nigeria, Kenya, and the Philippines, none of which are actually supplying troops for the Iraqi war. In this country, he would poll 16%, rather less than Robert Kilroy-Silk got in the last election - a figure that seems to me about right. Mr Bush couldn't run a daytime television show, and neither he nor Kilroy-Silk could run the country. So why are sane, smart Americans prepared to vote for him?

The answer is that they don't share an assumption so obvious to the rest of the world that it's almost invisible: that the world would be better and safer if America were less powerful. We assume that nice, sane, liberal Americans must agree with us. But we're wrong.

If you look at the pictures and read the speeches, both candidates are running on a message repulsive to the outside world: that we can all be saved only by a strong and powerful America, and they will save it by making America still stronger. This is true of John Kerry as much as George Bush.

I know there is a minority which thinks differently. In November 2001, I went to a peace rally with Patti Smith and others in Boston. Those people certainly didn't want war in Afghanistan. They wanted justice in Palestine, and a whole lot of other policies self-evident to Europeans.

They could have sung along in chorus to most Guardian leaders. And in one of the most liberal cities in America, there were no more than a couple of hundred of them.

And even this tiny minority reaches its 'European' conclusions from very American premises. They believe just as much as the neocons that America has a mission to transform the world. They just disagree about how it should.

The unnerving consensus in the presidential campaign is that America must save the world and itself through war. Outside the USA, the proportion of people who believe that is probably the same as those who would vote for Bush.

A further disagreement is that Americans think the war has already started. We don't. The war in Iraq certainly doesn't feel, in this country, like one in which we are actively engaged. British casualties are very low, and more or less nothing appears in the papers about the activities of British troops. Even the Daily Telegraph complains that there is no access to the army's operations in Basra. Other European countries, of course, have no troops there at all, or very few.

No matter how the Pentagon plays things down, no American can feel that Iraq is someone else's problem. They don't have the option of pretending that it's not happening. Their options are simpler: to win, lose, or settle with the enemy. Since they have defined an enemy - 'terror' - that doesn't exist, it is going to be difficult to negotiate a settlement.

So the question becomes who will best prosecute the war. Even here, Kerry, with his experience and competence, would seem to be the natural choice. But wars aren't fought on rational grounds. The one thing we can be certain of is that however much the rest of the world may dislike an incompetent warmonger like George Bush, we wouldn't like a really competent and energetic American war leader very much better.

* Andrew Brown is the author of The Darwin Wars: The Scientific War for the Soul of Man and In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite. He also maintains a weblog, the Helmintholog.

COLMAR, Pa., Sept. 9 -- Secret Service agents are famous for their willingness to take a bullet for the president. Less famous is their willingness to take out a heckler for the president.

Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room -- some by their hair, one by her bra straps -- and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.

After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.

One uniformed Secret Service agent complained to a colleague that 'the press is having a field day' with the disruption -- and the agents quickly clamped down. Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site -- even though their colleagues were free to come and go.

An agent, who did not give his name, told one journalist who was blocked from returning to the speech that this was punishment for approaching the demonstrators and that there was a 'different set of rules' for reporters who did not seek out the activists.

With the assistance of party staff, Hitler drafted a party program consisting of twenty-five points. This platform was presented at a public meeting on February 24, 1920, with over 2,000 eager participants. After hecklers were forcibly removed by Hitler supporters armed with rubber truncheons and whips, Hitler electrified the audience with his masterful demagoguery.