What are the French up to? and why?

And, I'm sure they are wondering - What are the Americans up to? and why?

This question was also asked, I believe, when Charles DeGaulle ran France way back when. He just wouldn't do what the US wanted, and it was terribly frustrating. Sort of how it is now...

Hmmmm, they just won't fall into lock step when the jack boot heels are clicking - how dare they!

There is one huge difference. Now nobody wants to do what the US wants. Unless the US bribes them with lots of dollars(Turkey) or with protection against evil Russia (Eastern Europe Countries) or with ????(GB, Holland, Spain, Italy, Denmark)

Apparently a few people missed the point that it's the French who are demanding that everyone else fall in line with their view...

Chirac lashes out at 'new Europe'
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 Posted: 10:06 AM EST (1506 GMT)

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- French President Jacques Chirac has attacked eastern European countries hoping to join the EU, saying they missed a great opportunity to "shut up" when they signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq.

France has been a leading voice against Washington's press for war in Iraq to disarm President Saddam Hussein and is insisting weapons inspectors in the country be given more time.

But 13 countries either set to join the EU or in membership talks have signed letters supporting the United States.

Chirac said: "These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position."

"It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."

"I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others," Chirac said.

Chirac called the letters "infantile" and "dangerous," adding: "They missed a great opportunity to shut up."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/02/18/sprj.irq.chirac/index.html

There's some of that fine French diplomacy at work.

Gee, someone else acting like Bush and Rumpsfelt! No one ever said the French were arrogant. I just don't like it when my (cough, cough) leader is more arrogant!

Well, actually I don't really understand, why explicite the question is about the French and me and co-citizens.

Knowing Germany and Germans quite well, having some knowledge of France and the French, too, well, we are just old Europeans.


Fishin'

Chirac's tone really wasn't nice. However, I always think, not the candidates give the rules but the members.

Iraquis....what they are up to

http://www.nationalphilistine.com/baghdad/index2.html

French are dreaming of restoring their imperial glory, that irreversibly disappeared in 1870. Now they have a hope to do this in framework of EU. For this purpose they find it necessary to accentuate their "independence" from the USA.

Any prove for that?

All their behavior in the post-war period: their "specific" position in the NATO military alliance, their attempts to establish closer ties with the USSR as a counterbalance to the U.S. influence in Europe, the war they use to wage against the words borrowed from English, etc.

When I spoke some time ago with some members of Jewish community in Strasbourg, they really seem to want those times back.

However, in talks with other French from all 'classes' and 'ehtnic origin', I never heard such.

I did not imply French as an ethnic group; I referred to the policies of the French governments.
IMHO (you are free not to agree with me, of course), it was French approach in course of signing the Versailles peace treaty that created conditions intolerable to Germany, and indirectly brought Hitler to power and caused the WWII.
BTW, failed to understand, which times are missing the Jews from Strassburg?

Those pre-1870.

You mean, they had some problems in the period when Elsas was a part of Germany? I thought that authorities of the German Empire did not discriminate ethnic minorities; all this came with Hitler and Nazis.

"During the period of German sovereignty between the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the end of World War I, many Alsatian Jews emigrated to France proper, having little interest in becoming part of Germany." from 'The World Jewish Congress'

Well, this sounds strange. When I was a teenager, I was acquainted with some elderly Jews that survived the German occupation in 1915-18 in the Western Russia; their memories regarding German soldiers were the most favorable. More, the German Army (not Wehrmacht, but Reichswehr) defended the civil population, mainly Jewish, against looting and killing by the Ukrainian nationalists' gangs.

The French need to know that anything that happens on the International Stage was initiated by them. M. Chirac is a unreformed Gaullist but with even greater ideas of grandeur.

Anyway most French won't go to war without a Band and Brothel.

I recall that it took for the Wehrmacht more time to make to surrender the Brest Fortress in the Western Belorussia, than to defeat the French Republic, the European superpower of these times. It is good to be a pacifist when you have no capable army...