From the website of Jacques Myard, MP in the French Parliament
War in Lebanon – Has Israel lost her mind ?
July 18th, 2006
Multiple direct testimonials from Lebanon are coming from French people residing in South Lebanon, and particularly Tyr, according to which the Israeli army is shooting at first sight on everything that moves, and notably on civilians.
These French saw a helicopter kill a whole family, including the children, by shooting at their minivan on sight and from a few meters afar, as they were fleeing the conflict zone. The church at Rachaya is said to have been destroyed while it was packed with refugees.
According to the same testimonials, the Israeli army would be using fragmentation bombs, and “vacuum packed” bombs that result in destruction by implosion. The bodies then look like totally dislocated puppets, like rag dolls.
That we shall let Israel act in such way is inadmissible. The French government must take every measure, including militarily, in accordance with international laws that allow it, to protect her nationals and put an end on these outrageous attacks against civilians.
On the same occasion, only an international intervention force that would disarm all militias according to resolution 1559 of the Security Council could stabilize the region.
France must act. She can’t simply make do with convincing her allies whose faint-heartedness with respect to this conflict is well known
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17 comments:
I would be interested to see if there is a church in Rashays, packed with refugees, targeted by those Jew Bastards. After all, the bloody kikes gave us the horrifying "massacre of Jenin", remember?
They say.
So how exactly is France gonna wage war? In the past 40 years or so, the only time she projected power was in places like Côte d'Ivoire - a rather ignominous affair. Also, the more-or-less unique aircraft carrier was retired, again rather ignominously.
that is true. unlike americans who have won wars against such formidable opponents as panama, afghanistan, a declawed iraq and grenada.
At least france has finally stopped its policy of bullying the little guys.
You're focussing on battles, so as to put down the value (and the effort) involved in those epic struggles. The wider wars -- the Cold War, the War on Terror -- were, or are, much more formidable. And the foes involved were not, and are not, "little guys". To understand all that, though, one needs to move beyond the slapstick anti-americanisme primaire evidenced by the preceding message. Not easy task, given the French weltanschauung of the past 40 years or so. One is prisoner of one's culture, what can I say.
You're focussing on battles, so as to put down the value (and the effort) involved in those epic struggles. The wider wars -- the Cold War
right but when the opponent had anything under his belt (VNam), you guys were trounced if i am not mistaken...
You must be thinking of Dien Bien Phu, and the ignominous French surrender there, after being trouced by the Vietnamese Commies. As for the United States, it beat the crap out of the VC, Khmer Rouge, and North Vietnam, every time battle was joined. FYI, there was never a surrender by the US Army like at Dien Bien Phu -- that would have been plainly absurd (only in the fevered imagination of anti-americains primaires this could have happened). Rather, there was a peace accord, signed in Paris of all places, and a cease fire. Of course, the commies never frespected the accord they signed (what do you expect from a commie?) , and the then Liberal-dominated Congress cut out funding for the US to rejoin the fight, and stop the North Vietnamese from conquering the South. But that's not a military defeat -- simply a political defeat, brought about by the Lefty allies of the commies, who, sure enough, did their best to undermine the fight against Communism.
In summary, what you are making a classic fallacy --conflating the betrayal of the Left in the fight against communism with the supposed defeat of the US Army in Vietnam. It ain't flying.
You must be thinking of Dien Bien Phu, and the ignominous French surrender there, after being trouced by the Vietnamese Commies. As for the United States, it beat the crap out of the VC, Khmer Rouge, and North Vietnam, every time battle was joined. FYI, there was never a surrender by the US Army like at Dien Bien Phu -- that would have been plainly absurd (only in the fevered imagination of anti-americains primaires this could have happened). Rather, there was a peace accord, signed in Paris of all places, and a cease fire. Of course, the commies never frespected the accord they signed (what do you expect from a commie?) , and the then Liberal-dominated Congress cut out funding for the US to rejoin the fight, and stop the North Vietnamese from conquering the South. But that's not a military defeat -- simply a political defeat, brought about by the Lefty allies of the commies, who, sure enough, did their best to undermine the fight against Communism.
In summary, what you are making is a classic fallacy -- conflating the betrayal of the Left in the epic fight between Democracy and Communism taht was the Cold war with the supposed defeat of the US Army in Vietnam. It ain't flying.
The surender of the French at DBP was one of the best things to happen to us (along with the 1962 Evian accords that ended the occupation of Algeria) as it brought a tremendous blow to our unjustifiable efforts at colonizing the planet. This all happened 50 years too late imo.
I always was under the impression that the US had failed to achieve its objective of clearing Vnam from communism (the purpose of that war) and that the peace accord was little more than an effort at saving face. (I thought i remembered some images of soldiers retreating pronto in helicopters as they were being shot at - but i could be confusing this with the Azincourt battle!).
In other words, I always thought the end of VNam was a textbook example of how battles can be won but the war lost.
On that note, anyone want to bet that a similar fate awaits you in iraq - in other words that the US will bail once it has become clear to all parties that it is just sitting helplessly achieving nothing and getting its soldiers killed senselessly and that, here again, there will be a face-safing effort, possibly in the shape of a formal request from the puppet regime in place ?
Ah, the greater glory of la doulce France, if the best she could do in the past 60 years was to lose two wars (after surrendering in 1940, of course). Mais passons.
As for the Americans clinging to the helicopters while escaping the embassy in Saigon that you remember so vividly (and who doesn't?) -- they were not troops surrendering in battle, as de Lattre de Tassigny at DBP. rather, Embassy guards and personnel running away, after being abandone by Congress. Nuance.
But, to the larger point -- what constitutes victory, what constitutes defeat? It's a philosophocal question, and the answer is not always neat and clear. For one, things come and go in an endless ebb and flow, and in the long run, we are all dead, anyhow, and even the Earth will not last forever. So victory and defeat must be understood in relative terms -- relative to the timeframe one is talking about.
Having said that, certain defeats are totally obvious and complete, such those of the Axis powers at the end of WWII. The French defeat at DBP comes in close to that sense of utter military failure, but nowhere close in terms of loss to the homeland, or total break in political system (the Fourth Republic was hardly affected).
As for what the anti-americans and assorted lefties love to bask in -- the supposed American defeat in Vietnam -- I do not think it comes even close to either of the above. As I said, militarily it was not a defeat in any sense of the word -- at worst, it was a politico-military stalemate, which lead a few years down the road (after the peace accords were signed) to an invasion by the Communist North of the sovereign Republic of South Vietnam (in violation of those accords, and of international law, by the way, not that the Left ever worries about such niceties, except when it comes to the US), not opposed by the US because of political sabotage.
At any rate, to finish this brief post-mortem of teh Vietnam War: I still think in a strategic sense it was the right thing to do -- i.e, to stand firm against Communist aggression, after the French ignominously cut and run in 1954, leaving the region to the tender mercies of the commies. It was not perfect, and mistakes were made. But those 50,000+ American soldiers did not die in vain in those rice paddies. They bought 20 some years of (relative) freedom for the people there, and stopped Communist expansion long enough to give other countries in the region the opportunity to develop economically and socially, so as to be able to resist Communism. In the end, it made a difference, leading to the ultimate dismantling of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, and the fall of the Red Star from the Kremlin spire in 1991.
so, according to you, the US bailing out of VN after failing to achieve its stated objective (to root the commies out of VN) lead to the dismantling of the USSR ? i love it!
But, to the larger point -- what constitutes victory, what constitutes defeat?
i would submit that failing to achieve the stated objectives and retreating before doing so would constitute defeat. call me a narrow-minded traditionalist.
failing to achieve its stated objective (to root the commies out of VN)
Any reference for this assertion? I don't believe it is true -- in fact, it is contrary to the easily verifiable truth. The stated objective of the U.S., going over several administrations (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford) was to stop the communist aggression of North Vietnam against the Republic of South Vietnam. There was never an effort by the U.S. to roll back communism from NV -- that would have been against the containtment doctrine, which was the basic doctrine of the US in the Cold War, from 1946 to the early 80s, when Reagan finally started to rollback the commies (to the dismay of all the pinko lefties, of course).
And yes, stopping (or even delaying, if stopping was not possible at times) communist expansion was the basic goal, and it had a measure of success in Vietnam: if NV had just marched in SV once the French so valiantly cut and run in 1954, the balance of power in Asia and elsewhere would have been greatly affected. We'll never know for sure, but I think this holding action by the US, which delayed the commies from sweeping into Saigon for some 20 years, had a measurable effect in the ultimate collapse of Communism (almost everywhere except in Pyongioang and parts of Cambridge, Berkeley, and the Rive Gauche). Indeed, by the time the NV Soviet-supplied tanks rolled into Saigon, the US already had had the rapprochement with China, the economy in much of the rest of South-East was booming (thanks to Capitalism), and the geo-strategic situation was much different.
So let's keep a moment of silence, and remember the 50,000+ brave Americans who gave their lives in the rice paddies of South Vietnam, in a valiant attempt to keep the flame of freedom alive. Their sacrifice was not in vain, despite what the Left would oh-so-predictably say.
So let's keep a moment of silence, and remember the 50,000+ brave Americans who gave their lives in the rice paddies of South Vietnam, in a valiant attempt to keep the flame of freedom alive
I'll agree to that - let's keep a moment of silence for the poor politically unconnected civilian saps who were sent, many against their will, to fight another of american's senseless wars across the world. And let's thank nixon for ending the terrible practice of conscription.
in a valiant attempt to keep the flame of freedom alive
sometimes i wonder if you are for real...
Understandably, as a good Frenchman, Pepe finds the concepts of freedom and liberty to be alien and strange. In his reality, there is no need for such hypotheses.
Liberté, egalité, fraternité -- do they still exist as meaningful concepts, or are they something too quaint already?
no, no, it's not the concept - it's the cliched sap with violins in the background and tremolos in the voice i am objecting to.
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