French atrocities/why the French have behaved as they do regarding the United States/April 29/worldnetdaily

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32276

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

French atrocities

Posted: April 29, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Tom Marzullo

2003ﾝWorldNetDaily.com

Like many of you, I have been struggling to understand why the French have behaved as they do regarding the United States. As this is one subject fraught with opinion but very little fact, a bit of digging seemed to be in order.

Some of the trail led to Africa, where France has continued its century-long, "sphere of influence" (read as "assumed ownership") of parts of that continent. France has regularly behaved in a such a well-documented, murderous manner that, were it the United States, it would prompt an unheard-of level of universal international condemnation.

You should know that today's actions simply follow the well-established pattern of government actions under DeGaulle's Jacques "Papa" Foccard, who was infamous for his Machiavellian intrigues in formerly French Africa.

The United Nations debate over Iraq has been a most welcome diversion, as France has long managed to support and direct bloody dictatorships, genocide and at-will military interventions across the map of Africa with self-assured impunity.

Take for instance, the latest French military intervention, Operation Unicorn, in the Ivory Coast beginning in late 2002.

A former colony, Cote d' Ivoire was given nominal independence in 1958 while France artfully maintained the lion's share of governmental functions and ownership of businesses. French businesses routinely returned just a quarter of the market value of Ivorian exports to the country, while maintaining French dominance in imported goods.

In a shift of policy from his predecessors, Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo ruled in the French manner by segregating and allocating power within the country's population along ethnic and religious lines with the immigrant workers and Muslim north forcibly kept in thrall to the Christian south.

A failed coup this past September that was outwardly instigated by ousted Ivorian leader, Gen. Robert Guei (killed early in the ensuing ethnic fighting) endangered French business interests and French President Chirac responded in typically Gallic fashion by sending in increasing numbers of the French Foreign Legion's famed Paras. Initially touted as a "peace-keeping" force, the troops were soon authorized to shoot anyone who might obstruct them. These orders are a very far cry from those given to American peacekeepers, but their issuance drew no significant international notice.

The Ivorian government then quickly began to field French-made light armor and Russian-made heavy attack helicopters provided through the good offices of the Belgians, while significant quantities of Russian-made small arms and some armored vehicles came in via the Angolans.

According to reports, the forces of the French-backed government then embarked on a series of murders of immigrants in areas under their control, whilst the French troops kept rebel forces at bay. This is not to say the rebels did not perpetrate the same horrors as well, for the literal eye-for-an-eye is a particularly African custom.

If not for the debate over Iraq, President Chirac might have suffered some embarrassing publicity over such actions. Not that he would deign to take notice.

Another example still waiting to be prosecuted is France's Rwandan Operation Turquoise and its predecessor actions. For those who missed that one, Turquoise was their 1994 military action that assisted in the fully armed escape of the French-backed and equipped perpetrators who initiated the Hutu-Tutsi genocide that eventually claimed 800,000 lives. The French government also provided transport and de facto sanctuary for Agathe Kanziga (wife of the Rwandan dictator) and her entourage that were fully involved in the governmentally instigated genocide.

On Dec. 15, 1998, the French parliamentary committee appointed to examine their own country's culpability in the genocide pronounced themselves wholly innocent it was the U.N. that did it but of course. The Rwandans disagreed and, in August of 2002, quoted a 1994 telephone conversation from a top French official to a Rwandan military official discussing the shipment of weapons and who then asked him to stop killing Tutsi people on camera. "Kill them, but do it off camera." Imagine the uproar if an American official had uttered that one.

While briefly reported in America, these French-empowered mass murders have not drawn the ire of our liberal media as they seem to be truly possessed of the ethnic and racial stereotyping they so raucously accuse others of with such strident speechifying. Think on the case of Rodney King for just a moment.

As for the French, their studied policy is to simply ignore the outcry.

This brings us back to just why the French behave toward America in the way that they do.

Gallic hauteur and pride is so universally accepted as part of their national character that its display goes almost without any notice, except for a shrug even by the French themselves. It is this untoward pride of place along with their own self-awareness of their habitual, almost casual misdeeds that prompt them to malign America. It is because they truthfully cannot tolerate the notion of a country with standards of ethical conduct better than their own well-documented, venerable thuggish, murderously thieving and oppressive behavior.

While we are far less than perfect, pray we never sink to the level of the French.

Tom Marzullo is a former Special Forces soldier and a veteran of submarine special operations. He resides in Colorado.