November 19, 2004, 8:47 a.m.
Jacques’s Cracks
Sam Spade had it right: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

We are approaching Thanksgiving. For an American, no matter where you are on the planet, that means it's time to stop and take stock of all we have for which we should all be grateful. For John Kerry, there's Boston. For Boston, there's the Red Sox. For the Reds, there's the election. For Britney Spears and Outkast, there's the gullibility of Euro-youth. And for me, there's Jacques Chirac.

And I am in fact thankful for Chirac. Specifically, I am grateful for what Chirac says. Think how boring Jospin would be, for example. But Chirac is special. And like all the special things in life, he could disappear without warning — as soon as 2007, the date of the next French election, for example. If Chirac is defeated by either the Socialists (not likely) or by his former protégé Nicholas Sarkozy (more likely) he will face prosecution for the same sort of low-level scams that have already brought down some of his gang, including his sidekick, Alain Juppé, who, according to Le Monde, was in Boston this week, acting as a French ambassador, meaning he was irritating. Far too late, BU president John Silber told him that he hoped anti-Americanism would not become the prevailing ideology of Europe. Juppé complained about France-bashing in the U.S. Nobody made much out of the fact that he's a crook.

If what the U.N.'s own investigators are saying is true, however, petty fraud and the like may be the least of Chirac's crimes. In a recent Washington Times piece, Jacques has been fingered as the guy on the receiving end of a con's work in Iraq as part of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food scandal. If it pans out, this will not be news, of course: There are so many bagmen surrounding Chirac and his cronies that the Elysée now resembles a left luggage office.

So when Chirac spoke on the eve of his visit to Tony Blair to celebrate, more than six months late, the centenary of the Entente Cordiale (a French term meaning "you may not shoot us while we sabotage you"), it was with typical Gallic arrogance. In a widely publicized interview with the Times, Chirac ridiculed Blair's support of the war in Iraq:

I said then to Tony Blair: 'You absolutely have to obtain something in exchange for your support.' Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in return. I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically.

That, of course, is exactly what we should by now expect from Chirac — the notion that if it's not a bribe, it's not a deal. It would never occur to Chirac that what Blair got in exchange for liberating Iraq had nothing to do with the U.S. What Blair got was what he thought he'd get — the knowledge that he had done the right thing for his own country and for others.

What an unsophisticated way to see the world, non? A French leader would never say, "Either you are with us, or you're against us." In French, it translates like this: "Either you give us something, or we are against you." Chirac's remark explains a great deal about the deep, permanent animosity between the U.S. and France. And thanks in part to Jacques' cracks, it's now an antagonism George W. Bush overlooks at his peril.

This isn't Title IX or affirmative action or any of the other goofy things that Bush can shrug off because he knows his base isn't going anywhere. This is about who we are — and who Chirac is. When Bush said, "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," he said something that most Americans, Red and Blue, felt was absolutely true. And because it's true, it's immutable. The more nuance you add to that simple statement, the more false it becomes.

In making the choice clear, Bush gave Chirac and Schroeder and their ilk the opportunity to do the right thing for their own countries and for others. But the French refused not only because they believe there's nothing in it for them, but also because they really are against us — as Le Figaro reports (and, in case that link disappears into an archive, as this BBC dispatch summarizes). Besides, as the vast U.N. scandal shows, France was already getting a great deal in exchange for its support of Saddam.

Being the sole superpower is like being the only rich guy in a town full of paupers: You can't walk down the street without getting hassled by somebody who wants something for nothing. It hasn't escaped Chirac's understanding that every demand he and Schroeder make comes at the expense of America's national interests. Chirac and the other anti-American Europeans seem to think national interests are something we should surrender in exchange for — what? Being liked? In a speech in London on Thursday, noted here by the BBC, Chirac once again called for a world order in which "no state could act independently," meaning, in practice, no state except France, of course.

Trying to insult the U.S. into acquiescing to some grand, egomaniacal French ambition is a fool's errand. Chirac is definitely the man for the job. According to the Guardian, Chirac told Blair, "Who is right or wrong, history will tell." Jacques, Petain couldn't have said it better, thank you very much.

ITEMS

Talk about tomorrow: France has long sought to have greater influence in Brussels, and if this report in the Daily Telegraph is accurate, they're getting their way: Apparently, very few euro-cents pass through the hands of EU bureaucrats without something going amiss. Nevertheless, according to Robin Cook, writing in the Guardian, a European entanglement is the road to a much better future for the U.K. If this poll in the Independent is accurate, most Britons agree. Of course, what do they know? Among the fashionable people, the EU is seen as an antidote to all that Atlanticist nonsense (unless, that is, somebody in New York is hiring); even mildly criticizing the EU is non-P.C. in Labour circles, according to the paper. However, criticizing the EU in Brussels is another story. Before Cook and his lot hang their hopes on Europe, they might want to read a major report issued earlier this month — and summarized nicely in the International Herald Tribune — by former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok. Kok's commission examined the progress of the 2000 Lisbon "strategy" to make the EU competitive with the U.S. by 2010. The effort is doomed. Says the IHT:

The chief point of the report, which is beginning to resonate in Brussels, is that while Europe's stumbling economies may be doing poorly now, they are likely to fare far worse in the future, mainly due to the Continent's deteriorating demographics. The "pure impact of aging populations will be to reduce the potential growth rate of the EU from the present rate of 2 percent to 2.25 percent to around 1.25 percent by 2040," the report warned. "Already from 2015, potential economic growth will fall to around 1.5 percent," it cautioned.

Kok's conclusion is that you really can't do much to help people who are too dumb to reproduce. Europhiles are explaining it all away by saying that money isn't everything and that the citizens of the EU are trading financial success for social success — a neat way of restating Rousseau's myth of the "noble savage." Social superiority unfortunately is not legal tender for the payment of pensions and other debts. Like other reports before it, the Kok report leaves only one long-term solution available to Europeans: Give the whole place to Algerians and Moroccans and retire somewhere on the wide and sunny strand of north Africa.

But not, perhaps, in Ivory Coast, where the French-led U.N. peacekeeping mission has become a deadly cartoon, according to this BBC report, among many others.

Parlez-vous anglais? I suppose by now, everybody has seen French foreign minister Michel Barnier's annoying "Letter to America" (subscribers only) in the Wall Street Journal. I am a connoisseur of French gaseousness, and this particular line nearly choked me with pleasure: "When I think of your great nation, the words 'peace,' 'freedom' and 'prosperity' come to mind." Funny, when I read that sentence, the words "you're full of it, Barnier" come to mind, since, as far as I know, the French foreign minister doesn't write, read, or speak a word of English.

Last cup. Back in the day, owing to my extreme sensitivity, I used to have a job in Dublin exploiting American college students who wanted to come to Ireland and study poetry. There was a classroom for this sort of thing, but by far the preferred venue was Bewley's on Grafton Street, a kind of proto-Starbucks, where you could have a coffee served with a plate of some of the stickiest buns known to mankind. According to RTE, by the time you read this, Bewley's Oriential Cafes — both of them; the other's on Westmoreland — will only have hours to live. By next month, they'll be shuttered or filled with computer companies. The New Ireland. No smoking, no caffeine, no bulk carbs, no chewing gum on the pavement, but lots of angry feminists on the TV. Pretty soon, the only entertaining thing a man will be able to do in Dublin is drink. In fact, you could actually skip the Dublin part altogether.

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