Thoughts for my Parisian friend...

Antoine wrote me one of his usual thought-provoking emails this morning. He expresses gratitude for the "Americans, British, Canadians and even Poles," involved in liberating his country from the Nazis in 1944-5. "But," he writes, "I also know what a war of liberation means."



Antoine wrote of the damage France suffered in the process, inflicted by the friendly bombs of "the RAF and the US 8th Air Force. The objectives were plants or railway stations, but 'collateral damages' were already known. When the invasion began, cities like St Lo, Carentan, Caen or Brest were almost entirely destroyed; civilians had no time to evacuate their homes. The estimation of civilians killed during the Liberation rises to about 200 000." Clearly not all of these were from collateral damage, but it makes you understand that liberation won't be a bloodless process for Iraq. Is this part of France's reticence? Antoine thinks so. And yet, he makes the point that his country was and is still grateful. "The British and American soldiers could see union jacks and star spangled banners floating in the ruins of our liberated cities...So what's [my] point? In this period of glorious French bashing, I think it's good to remember that even a war considered as "justified" or "legal" wages a lot of horrors, even for the people that are to be liberated."



Here's what I said in response:

"...I think where the French-bashing comes from in America is a feeling that "an ally should ALWAYS agree with us; if not, you're not an ally." Americans don't yet understand--they may not, until our country really gets its foot stuck in a bucket--the value of allies who temper the excesses of the US. Confidence is good; over-confidence is not. Patriotism is good; blind nationalism is not. Not being afraid to go to war when necessary is good; being eager to go to war is not.



When you get angry at Americans, think of the following. We are not demons, and we are not dumb. We are distracted. France is one of the few countries not to be inundated (and to some small or large degree transformed) by the endless tidal wave of American media and pop culture. Nearly every other place, has. Well, we're right in the middle of it, all the time, every day. You think it overwhelms foreign countries? It overwhelms us even more--there is no time to read. There is no time to think. Every inch of mental space is grappled over by advertisers and TV shows and Hollywood.



And so the public debate over here--the basis of any democracy--is malnourished and cartoonish. There's only space for the simplest of ideas, expressed in the media-driven forms we all understand. That's why "Saddam=Hitler!" or "France=ungrateful for WWII!" and on and on and on. World War Two has become history as movie, and we are constantly referred to that simplified story. The American people are the monkeys this stuff is tested on first, and as a result, we suffer its effects most. Everything is a movie, where the villain is 100% evil (of course) and the hero is 100% lilywhite (of course). And we've all seen enough movies to know that there HAS to be a showdown at the end. Don't talk to us about funding Saddam, or being in it for the oil, or that North Korea may be a bigger threat--shhh! you're spoiling the movie!"