French are no cowards
Critics of Chirac's reticence ignore France's suffering
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
Twenty-seven percent of Mainers, and 12 million of the American people, are of French heritage. As one of these Americans, I resent the slur that all French are cowards, eager to surrender.
In particular, I resent it when comedians like Jay Leno — who never saw the inside of a uniform — and George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who all ducked out of Vietnam, call others cowards.
French President Jacques Chirac served as an officer in combat in the French Army in Algeria. George Bush skipped drills of the Air National Guard.
I do sympathize strongly with George Bush's purported goal in Iraq — to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and liberate the Iraqis. I hope he cares about the Iraqis (unlike his father, who let tyranny continue). I hope he wants more than to install a gas-pumping Iraqi strongman who will happily fill our hungry sport-utility vehicles.
Meantime, it's open season for ethnic jokes against the French. One bright fellow, no doubt a Fox Cable News addict, bluntly asked my French wife, as I was standing right there: "Do you even like Americans?"
The truth is that France has never been afraid to fight a war, but resists being ordered to do so by "chicken hawks" in our country who never waged war except against the English language.
Let's look at history. From my Latin classes I learned that the ancestors of the French, the Gauls, fought to the death against the Roman legions and Julius Caesar.
The French emperor Charlemagne subdued all of Europe in 40 years of military victories, crushing and occupying barbarian Germany and repelling vast Arab armies.
The Norman French invaded and destroyed the English army in 1066 in the Norman conquest, ruling England for 350 years. That is why 40 percent of our English words are of French origin.
Jay Leno, whose only exposure to the uniform is giggling at USO shows, should try just once to explain how these French military words came into English. Does General Jay even know the meaning of the words "marine," "soldier," "corporal," "sergeant," "officer," "lieutenant," "captain," "colonel," "general" and "marshal"? Or "court-martial," "salute," "rank," "file," "march," "flank," "trench," "attack," "force," "combat," "guard," "post," "bayonet," "grenade," "squad," "platoon," "company," "battalion," "regiment," "army," "elite," "valiant," "esprit de corps," and "courage"?
The "cowardly" French people fought and defeated the English invaders in the Hundred Years' War, led by a girl named Joan who whipped the Anglo-Saxons and whom the English later vengefully burned alive.
It was the French who largely funded the American Revolution and struck a vital blow, the coup de grace, at Yorktown that helped win the six years' war for our freedom.
It was the French of the Revolution and of Napoleon who for 23 years conquered all of Europe (except for the Russian winter). It is France that started the draft for all men in 1792 (until it dropped it a few years ago in imitation of the United States of America).
Three times in 70 years the French battled the German military machine, a state which had become an army. In World War I the people of France sent 1.8 million young men to die, fighting hand to hand in the trenches and charging the German Maschinengewehre. Today all France is covered by cemeteries from war. If France built a wall like our Vietnam Memorial for their dead in just World War I, it would have to be 32 times longer.
When this beautiful and civilized land, like many other brave countries, was crushed by the perfection of the Hitler war machine, the French began their heroic Resistance, while the British rowed back home in their tiny boats from Dunkirk. Does anyone remember that the British Army also was beaten in 1940? Britain was saved by the English Channel.
Ask any American officer who debarked at Normandy in 1944. We could never have defeated Hitler's finest troops, his SS and Tiger tanks in just nine months without the French Resistance. It sabotaged German-patrolled railroads, bridges and tunnels, assassinated German officers and Gestapo-paid informers, and smuggled out torrents of information on German air, sea and land movements, all the while risking torture and death in Himmler's dungeons in Paris and Lyons.
We hear that France has forgotten its gratitude for the Normandy invasion. First, consider it repayment for their Yorktown invasion of 1780, when France —its navy, its army and its cash —helped free us when we were nearly bankrupt and exhausted. George Washington considered the Marquis de Lafayette like his own son.
Second, the fact that America fought one just war does not mean that all its wars are just. The global consensus is that U.S. foreign policy is frequently steered by oil and war interests.
Third, even millions of Americans here at home reject George Bush, a man who could hardly carry the state of Florida, governed by his popular brother, Jeb. If Americans are divided on George Bush, how can we demand that other nations leap up and immediately scream, "Yes sir, Mr. Bush, sir!"?
As the French-American James Carville said: How inept can one be to lose a propaganda war to Saddam Hussein?
If the French are cowards, does that make the Germans, Italians, Russians, English and Canadian people cowards, too? They are all marching against President Bush. Is the United Nations cowardly, and NATO? Before George Bush came along, they used to support us. His personal style is turning off the world — and we need the world. We cannot go it alone.
I remember a visit to the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, R.I. In a document there, a factory owner was exulting that the French Americans were so wonderfully "docile."
I think it is time for that docility to end. If George Bush is sincere about liberating the people of Iraq (unlike his father), then I would support his war. But he should start by stopping the insults.
And so should Jay Leno. And why hasn't he enlisted? Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable and Ted Williams enlisted during World War II. But perhaps Leno is too vital to serve.
John de Nugent is a former Marine and National Guard noncommissioned officer, 1977-1978, and owns the voice-training business Accentia.org. He can be reached at john.denugent@verizon.net.