I wonder why people continue to dislike the French...

The French people are OK but their nation is not and never has been our friend.

Twelve years later, at the height of the Cold War, the French withdrew from the NATO military alliance and summarily kicked all NATO. forces out of France.

maybe a lot of people find the french to be arrogant ass holes...just like they find americans..

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

maybe a lot of people find the french to be arrogant ass holes...just like they find americans..

In Germany there are little tour boats which go along the Rhine and other rivers, and occasionally a group of French teenagers will get on one of those. When that happens the other passengers usually get off and demand their money back and get it.

Not true. We fought a naval war with the French over free use of the seas under President Jefferson in 1805. Moreover the American colonists fought a war with the French and their Huron allies in the Ohio river valley in the so-called French and Indian War of 1755-1760. Finally we were effectively at war with the Vichy government of France during the latter part of WWII.

Not true. We fought a naval war with the French over free use of the seas under President Jefferson in 1805. Moreover the American colonists fought a war with the French and their Huron allies in the Ohio river valley in the so-called French and Indian War of 1755-1760. Finally we were effectively at war with the Vichy government of France during the latter part of WWII.

Quasi-War with France

Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert realized that the navy possessed too few warships to protect a far-flung merchant marine by using convoys or by patrolling the North American coast. Rather, he concluded that the best way to defeat the French campaign against American shipping was by offensive operations in the Carribean, where most of the French cruisers were based. Thus at the very outset of the conflict, the Department of the Navy adopted a policy of going to the source of the enemy's strength. Nevertheless, by 1799, in response to teh merchant's insistent demands for protection, naval vessels were convoying merchant ships in the Caribbean in addition to cruising against the enemy.


When Stoddert became secretary in June 1798, only one American naval vessel was deployed. By the end of the year a force of twenty ships was planned for the Caribbean. Before the war ended, the force available to the navy approached thirty vessels, with some 700 officers and 5,000 seamen.


The highlight of the first year of the undeclared war was the capture by Thomas Truxtun's Constellation of the French frigate l'Insurgente in February 1799. In addition, American naval vessels seized nineteen French privateers during the winter of 1798-99. The French challenge to American naval forces increased late in 1799 as six French warships arrived in the Antilles with instructions to intensify the commercial war. The American squadrons responded aggressively. Constellation fought to a draw the more powerful la Vengeance on 1 February 1800. Silas Talbot engineered an expedition in the Puerto Plata harbor in St. Domingo, a possession of France's ally Spain, on 11 May 1800 in which a naval force under Lieutenant Isaac Hull cut out the French privateer Sandwich from the harbor and spiked the guns in the Spanish fort. By the end of the war American ships had made prizes of approximately eighty-five French vessels. American successes resulted from a combination of Stoddert's administrative skill in deploying effectively his limited forces and the initiative of his seagoing officers.


Although they were fighting the same enemy, the Royal Navy and the United States Navy did not cooperate operationally, nor did they share operational plans or come to mutual understandings about deployment of their forces. The British did sell the American government naval stores and munitions. And the two navies shared a system of signals by which to recognize each other's warships at sea and allowed merchantmen of their respective nations to join their convoys.13


By October 1800, aggressiveness of the cruisers of the United States Navy, as well as those of the Royal Navy, combined with a more conciliatory diplomatic stance by the French toward America, produced a reduction in the activity of the French privateers and warships. In mid-December 1800 news reached Washington that a peace treaty with France (Convention of Mortefontaine, 30 September 1800) ended the Quasi-War.

When American troops were about to land in Morocco in 43, we told the French to aim their searchlights skyward as a sign of agreement and friendship. The Vichy French did that, AND THEN began shelling the American forces, so that all French ships in the harbor had to be destroyed.

Yeah, the Nobel peace prize. What a joke that was. He received it for working on the Oslo peace accord which Arafat later used to wipe his butt. He was real deserving of that honor...

FreeDuck wrote:

McG was illustrating my point when he wrote:

They should stop being such obvious targets.

Or you could stop being so eager to villify them.

You may agree that it's ok to remember and revere a terrorist as a national hero

If this so then how come french tourism has suffered in the last several years?

When American troops were about to land in Morocco in 43, we told the French to aim their searchlights skyward as a sign of agreement and friendship. The Vichy French did that, AND THEN began shelling the American forces, so that all French ships in the harbor had to be destroyed.

There was the "Quasi-War" against France 1798-1800:


What was this 1805 war about?

georgeob1 wrote:

Twelve years later, at the height of the Cold War, the French withdrew from the NATO military alliance and summarily kicked all NATO. forces out of France.

That's not true:

In 1965, President Charles de Gaulle of France announced that France would withdraw from the integrated military structure of NATO. The decision was made official in March 1966 and meant that, while France was part of the decision making, French forces would not be under the operational control of NATO commanders. France also announced that it would pursue its own nuclear deterrent against any possible aggression.

More sour grapes from Chirac

Times and the Independent were both granted an audience with Jacques Chirac in Paris yesterday. To the Independent, the French president was at his most charming. But the Times and the Sun report that he delivered a "sneering" verdict on Tony Blair's attempts to reconcile the US and the EU.

Otherwise, he said, France planned to continue to argue its own case on the Iraqi conflict, without responding to the "insults" from the Anglo-Saxon world. "We had our own analysis of what the problem was and how to respond to it. Tony Blair respected that. Elsewhere we were bombarded with insults, but we did not respond and we will not respond. There was no whisky poured down the gutters in Paris."