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The guests were 18 Europeans and 18 Americans. Just before dessert Franklin asked the guests to leave the table and stand against a wall. He wanted to measure them to see who was taller. The shortest of the Americans proved to be taller than the tallest of the Europeans.
Franklin had organized the exercise for the benefit of his guest of honor, the Abbe Reynal, who had just published a hefty tome arguing that, when transferred to America, all living creatures, including men, became diminutive. Thomas Jefferson, who later succeeded Franklin at the Paris embassy, narrates the episode as an illustration of "the irrational in the European approach" to things American. More than two centuries later that irrational approach is still present. Only this time its proponents, reversing Reynal's theory that "America makes things small," are concerned about the "bigness" of things American. This is combined with the fear that, in Baudelaire's words, "The American night shall fall over the earth." To underline America's "frightening bigness," Hubert Vedrine, France's former foreign minister, has coined the term "hyperpuissance." The peasant firebrand Jose Bove laments the fact that the U.S. is "too bulky." When it comes to the United States the favorite adjectives of much of French anti-Americans include "giant, mammoth, leviathan, and behemoth." France three former prime ministers, Michel Rocard, Laurent Fabius and Pierre Mauroy, recently published a front-page article in Le Monde to urge the European Union to stand up to "the American giant." For some, anti-Americanism plays a useful role in filling the vacuum left by the evaporation of 19th-century ideologies. Those too lazy to do their homework on any issue could still espouse an opinion simply by looking at what the U.S. says and then saying the opposite. How many of the people who are bashing the U.S. on the latest fashionable issues such as the Kyoto Protocols, and the International Criminal Court, for example, have really studied either? The arrangement is simple: Where America is, there I shall not be. In a recent television program in Paris I was astounded when retired Admiral Philippe Lacoste, a former head of the French secret service, suggested that Saddam Hussein should not be asked to disarm for as long as the U.S. did not sign a treaty banning anti-personnel land mines. Through much of the Cold War the Soviet Union enjoyed some sympathy and support among French elites simply because it was not America. Many French intellectuals loved Stalin because he was not Franklin Roosevelt. They supported Kim Il-sung in the Korean War because he was fighting the Americans. In Vietnam, they sided with the Vietcong because America was on the opposite side. They adored the Khmer Rouge for the same reason. Today they have adopted Saddam Hussein as cult figure in their latest quixotic attempt at stopping "the American giant." President Jacques Chirac has found himself a new popularity among Parisian elites by letting it be known that he would do all that he can to prevent Washington from toppling Saddam Hussein. Anti-Americanism is not only a disease of the French Left. Neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen finds himself alongside the Trotskyite Arlette Laguiller in pulling faces at "the Yankee Imperialists." Anti-Americanism has become the last refuge of the scoundrel. It blurs France's vision of the real world and undermines French national interests. It prevented France from playing its full role in the last Gulf War until the late stages. By then France had been excluded from the inner circle of decision-making. The French ended up taking part in the fighting but secured no say in shaping the post-bellum architecture of the region. More recently France had an even worse experience over the war to liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban. Having played the game of "yes — but " for too long, Paris ended up sending a few dozen troops after the Taliban had fled into their caves. The French troops had to stay in Termez, Uzbekistan, presumably playing cards, for weeks before the Americans allowed them to enter Afghanistan, and then only to Mazar Sharif. As a result France's influence in shaping the future of Afghanistan, and beyond it Central Asia as a whole, is, to put it politely, zero. Politics, as Aristotle taught over 2,000 years ago, is about making a choice, which means taking sides. The subject of ethics is the choice between right and wrong. That of aesthetics is about beauty and ugliness. In politics the choice is between friend and foe. A normal person living in an open democratic society should have little difficulty in choosing between the United States on the one hand and Stalin, Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Khomeini, and Saddam Hussein on the other. There would be room for doubt if the U.S. were to invade Canada, or even Mexico, in pursuit of imperial designs. The same normal person would understand that there are regimes that must be overthrown by force when no other option is available. Hitler had to be removed by force. The Japanese militarists would not have gone to their graves with United Nations resolutions. Had the Vietnamese army not invaded Cambodia, the Pol Pot gang might still be in power. The Tanzanian army did the world a service by invading Uganda and driving Idi Amin into exile. And Slobodan Milosevic would not be in the dock at the Hague today had it not been for the American-led campaign to drive him out of Kosovo. Last week during the NATO summit in Prague President George W Bush called on all allies to provide support in case war becomes inevitable. France responded with a "we don't know, we shall see" gimmick, hoping to play it both ways for as long as possible. But, as the moment of decision approaches over Iraq, France has to take sides. Neutrality is no option. France is not Liechtenstein. — Amir Taheri is the author of The Cauldron: The Middle East behind the Headlines and is reachable through www.benadorassociates.com. |
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— One evening in February 1778, Benjamin Franklin, the newly appointed
envoy of the United States to France, was hosting a banquet at his Parisian
residence in Passy. 
