Apparently France is still evil. And Greenberg assumes in his latest article that the foreign leaders that Senator Kerry was commenting on last week (when he said, "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly but, boy, they look at you and say, 'You gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that.") were from France. He suggests, as I did, that Kerry's use of the term leader may not mean the same thing as the head of the state.
Unlike me, however, Greenberg broadens the definition of the term leader to include newspaper editors. "Of course it doesn't have to be a government leader who's been whispering into John Kerry's ear. How about an insufferably smug editor like Jean-Marie Colombani of Le Monde, France's snootiest journal?" Hmmmmm. That doesn't make a lot of sense actually.
Greenberg then offers this touching (and by touching I mean stomach churning) historical analogy.
"Suppose, for example, that John Kerry hadn't been born in the United States but in Paris a generation or two earlier. What with all those Czech Jews in his family tree, would he have been rounded up with the other Jewish children and handed over to the Gestapo for transport to Buchenwald?
And today, would John Kerry's name and memory be as forgotten as the rest of France's collaborationist past? Instead of France's favorite candidate for president of the United States, would he be just one more part of a forgotten era? And one the French are only too happy to forget."
Well, we can suppose all sorts of things, can't we? Suppose Mr. Greenberg had been a pilot in World War II and had been stranded in France. And suppose he became one of the many pilots aided by the French Resistance to find safe escape back to England. Would he still be as critical of France as he is? Yes, of course he would. Past actions are really irrevelant; what matters is a nations ability to do whatever America (and by America I mean George W. Bush) says. If the French would just follow our lead blindly we'd let up on them. As long as they insist on acting like an independent nation that thinks for itself, well, they won't be on our Christmas Card List.
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