April
15, 2003, 10:20 a.m.
Dealing for Dinars
Seeing Iraq
and raising Syria.
By Denis Boyles
or
a couple of days there, the European press nearly succumbed to the epidemic
of chronic systemic apoplexy which swept the continent after Rummy asked
the Syrians to please refrain from making chemical weapons and to stop
offering tourist visas to wayward Iraqi generals. Things are better in
England and Germany, now that the Valium has kicked in.
But in the French
press, everything about Washington's unkind words is just too horrible.
The pain and suffering the Bush administration has caused the Baathist regime
in Damascus is seen as inexcusable. Le Monde, in an outraged
editorial
today, asks why the Americans act so American. After all, both Syria and
Iraq are Baathist fascists, so, according to the paper, it's only "logical
that Iraqi Baathists took refuge" next door with Syrian Baathists.
And it's not like Syria has done anything wrong: "Having refused to
sign anything, Syria, unlike Iraq…is free to develop weapons of mass
destruction…. So why now the threats?" There are two explanations
for this, says Le Monde. Either it's part of a regional American
plan to "destabilize the most radical regimes" by putting them
on notice that WMDs and harboring terrorists are no longer acceptable policies.
Or — and I think this may be the explanation Le Monde is favoring
— "the White House is drunk on military strength." However,
Le Monde saves its most scathing criticism for the part where it
accuses the U.S. of putting its interests ahead of the interests of others
— and therefore behaving like the French.
Most of us knew a
war in Syria wasn't really the plan. But if you have a big, victorious
army sitting around, you might as well use it as a way of leveraging a
little serious attention, no? Non! The reaction of the French,
the Germans, and the Left-wing Brits shows why Europeans can't play poker,
and instead prefer games of pure chance, like roulette and driving in
Italy. The quintessentially American skill of turning a card and making
a bluff is just lost on them. Anybody could play a busted flush and make
a French poker player fold. (Insert French surrender joke here.) For Le
Figaro even sending Dom de Villepin, the French minister of strangeness
(a literal translation, sort of), to Syria was "playing a risky game."
Fortunately, the paper says,
the Americans don't seem to care any more what de Villepin does or says,
while the Syrians may have not taken him very seriously, either. As the
paper points out, the Syrians have to ask themselves, "If Washington
leans on [us], what will France be able to do to help? Why would France
be more effective in a Syrian crisis than in the Iraqi crisis?"
The Timesexplains
how the game is played to calmer readers: "The Assad regime will
try to give the minimum to ensure its survival, as it has always done.
But, unlike Saddam's, it also knows when not to believe its own slogans.
Using diplomatic, political and economic pressure while keeping the military
option open, the US-led coalition should ask for the maximum. That includes
support for the growing reform movement in Syria itself, a movement that
many say is secretly endorsed by President Assad against the old guard."
Aside from wars on
Syrians, the other preoccupation of the French press today is determining
how much their anti-Americanism is going to cost them. Liberation
offers a trio of pieces reporting the effects of the American boycott
of all things made in France. In a main piece,
the paper reports that poll numbers show Americans are starting to feel
about the French the way the French have always felt about Americans —
and, more importantly, how that translates to a serious decline in, among
other things, wine exports to the U.S., said to be worth some $1 billion
a year. There's also an amusing
Q&A with American economist and boycott-backer Irwin Stelzer of
the Hudson Institute. Judging by the questions, the paper clearly thinks
Dr. Stelzer is a lunatic: "You have written that 'English cheeses
are good substitutes for French cheeses.' Are you serious?" A third
piece looks at the limits of the boycott, noting a deal made by Rupert
Murdoch with Thomson, a French company — despite the fact that Murdoch's
Fox News employs "motormouths" ("animateurs vedettes"!)
like Bill O'Reilly, who has said nasty things about the denizens of Fromageville.
The war in Iraq is
over. That's semi-official, I think. The media here will continue to cover
events there, and elsewhere, with relish, especially when what happens
next reflects poorly on America. Mercifully, these daily reports will
cease, but I will continue to provide a weekly digest of the European
press until the management decides to take back this soapbox they have
so kindly lent me.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
or
a couple of days there, the European press nearly succumbed to the epidemic
of chronic systemic apoplexy which swept the continent after Rummy asked
the Syrians to please refrain from making chemical weapons and to stop
offering tourist visas to wayward Iraqi generals. Things are better in
England and Germany, now that the Valium has kicked in.
