Freedom Fries Aren’t Going To Cut It

13 Mar, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Freedom Fries Aren’t Going To Cut It: France has spent the last few months vigorously thrusting their knives into our backs at every opportunity. Yet, they’re already laying the groundwork to try to get back into our good graces. Here’s French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte…

“”We don’t see participation in Iraq’s reconstruction as a privilege,” said Mr. Levitte. “We see it as a moral duty.”

The bill “will be huge,” he said. “We consider it would be done better under a United Nations umbrella, as is being done in Afghanistan now.”

In Germany, Schröder ran a campaign entrenched in anti-Americanism and then joined with the French in betraying us in the war on terrorism. Yet, they think they can just “fix” that after they’ve gotten the maximum benefit out of screwing us over…

“In the last week or so, German officials, including Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, have tried to send messages that when the war with Iraq is over, and even during the war, Germany – since the late 1940’s traditionally America’s closest ally on the Continent – will show its loyalty and that good relations will be restored.

It seems that German officials, clearly worried about the anger in Washington, are saying, Let’s not exaggerate the importance of this one issue.”

South Korea has been playing these same little games. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun ran an anti-American campaign while his country held anti-American rallies and put up signs in their restaurants saying that Americans weren’t welcome.

Disagreement between “allies” is just a fact of life and you have to allow for it. But, when you have nations like France, Germany, and South Korea playing up anti-Americanism and putting American lives at risk, it means that our country is being taken for granted and we need do something about it other than coming up with new names for food in the Congressional cafeteria.

While I don’t think we should make any big changes until we’ve dealt with North Korea’s nuclear program, I do want to see us move our troops out of South Korea and I wouldn’t have a problem with actually ending our military alliance with them. There is absolutely no reason that South Korea shouldn’t be fully capable of defending itself against North Korea without our help and I see no reason to continue defending a nation that obviously doesn’t have an appropriate level of gratitude for our help.

With Germany, we should move all of our troops to bases in “New Europe.” If Germany loses a few billion dollars in trade because of it and has to spend more money to defend their borders (which is something that may alarm some of Germany’s neighbors by the way), so be it.

As far as France goes, let’s kick them out of NATO (and yes, we can make that happen) and then start looking for ways to harm their economy. You’d be surprised at how many Frenchmen we could put out of work by blocking French companies from getting government related projects, with a few tariffs on French products, and by letting governments friendly to us know that we’d be very pleased to see their dollars go somewhere other than France.

When other countries take us for granted, put our nation at risk, or try to fan the flames of anti-Americanism, they should have to pay a big price for it. Otherwise, they’re going to keep doing it over and over and other nations will follow their example.