Not as Reassuring as They Might Think

Countdown to Invasion: 9 Days.

So the two European states that attempted to conquer Europe three times between them in the last 200 years have teamed up. They celebrate forty years of their treaty of friendship this year. Oh, this is good for peace. Of course, since the Germans are taking their instructions from the French, we are all safe from actual defeat, if not from war. Lord, now the Germans get squeamish about invading another country. Under our tutelage, in a generation the Iraqis will recoil at the mere thought of fighting anybody. And the French preen about their wisdom for dealing with the Arab world after a history of actually being Crusaders, being the imperial masters of Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (where they seriously colonized the country with settlers), fought a brutal war against Algerians seeking independence, invaded Egypt, fought the Libyans over Chad, and even sent their special forces to assault the Grand Mosque when fanatics occupied it! Let's not even go into how the French helped Israel get nuclear weapons and armed them with conventional weapons when nobody else would. Yet they fear that if we invade that whack job Saddam, the Arab world will rise up against us? Excuse me if I file their wisdom and advice on our current crisis in an appropriate bin. If the Arab world can forgive the French for their history, on top of just being French, I think our place in the Arab world is secure. After all, bin Laden said people like backing the strong horse, not the dead one and certainly not the really annoying one.