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CounterPunch
February
15, 2003
A Little Help from Our Friends
French Kisses
from the Citizens of France
By NORMAN MADARASZ
The present government of France is nothing worth
jubilating. President Jacques Chirac gathered less than 20 percent
of the popular vote in the first round of last year's elections.
Through the luck of a draw, his main opponent, Socialist Party
candidate, Lionel Jospin, was eliminated or abandoned in protest
voting by two-thirds of his traditional voting base. What the
majority of French citizens sought to declare at that time was
their unstymied support for broader and deeper socialist policies.
The resulting runoff election had Chirac
face the far-right contender, Jean-Marie LePen. Waves of panic
gripped the French voting public in the unpredictable prospect
of being ruled by a Nazi sound-alike. When the curtain fell,
Chirac had not only managed to contain LePen to his usual 15
percent tally. He did much more. Benefiting from the near totality
of the Socialist default vote, Chirac just as soon acted as though
the votes were meant for him, and him alone. The press blindly
proclaimed his landslide victory a historical event. In hindsight
it was barely a hysterical outcry.
The prime minister Chirac then named,
and the government the latter has formed, aim at profoundly changing
the democratic structure of la cinquieme Republique francaise.
With concentration of wealth falling behind even that of the
USA, France's haute-bourgeoisie want a bigger slice of the cake
than Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, not to mention the common
Frenchperson, will afford. As a traditional conservative party,
it has unsurprisingly moved to reinforce a law and order State.
The ultra-conservative, Nicolas Sarkozy,
was mayor of the affluent Parisian suburb of Neuilly prior to
becoming Minister of the Interior. With frenetic haste, he has
scurried to pass the laws able to achieve his vision of France
as a harbor of peace and security. Low-income "zones de
banlieux" have seen increased police presence. Summary arrests
have been increased and sentences lengthened. When he hasn't
been forcing unification of France's Muslim community under tutelage
based on Roman Catholic Episcopal control, he has been wrecking
France's techno/rave youth subculture.
Repression has had Sarkozy playing as
a master for lack of having learnt the complexities of prevention.
Economic disparity has gnawed at the fabric of French society
for decades. To prevent such "minority" issues for
gaining center political stage, his latest "projet de loi"
aims at abolishing public funding for France's smaller political
parties. One of them, an environmentalist group, had been part
of the previous "gauche plurielle" ruling coalition.
No national French government, however,
has managed to pass harsh domestic reform without facing popular
revolt. Merely ruffling the public service and education sectors
has led to France's conservatives losing not only one past election.
So when a government understands its legitimacy rests on a structural
fluke, it has got to respond to popular will somewhere. That's
why Chirac has ridden upon the overwhelming opposition to the
American aggression on Iraq.
It is true that France is on the losing
side for commercial interests in Iraqi oil. Thanks to CNN's spots
on sophisticated American weaponry, France's arms industry will
doubtless suffer. And agents remain non grata in Israel in their
attempts at managing the Fertile Crescent fresh-water supply
booty. All of these reasons also stand further to the point of
why the French elite has failed to join the warmongering.
Regardless of Hitchens' rant, whether
Chirac is a rat is irrelevant. France's opposition is primarily
that of its citizens.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the French
public led the world in mass protests. Few were convinced of
the transparency of the pretexts used to assemble the most daunting
military force in history. Did Saddam invade out of his own will?
Or, as a would-be American ally, was he framed by the National
Security Council in a green light to his wish of deposing the
Kuwaiti sheikdom?
These questions lay only at the tip of
the iceberg. One need only recall the Palme d'Or-winning performance
given by a daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA. "Nayirah",
a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, shocked the Congressional Human Rights
Caucus on Oct. 10, 1990, when she tearfully claimed to have watched
15 infants being taken from incubators in Al-Adan Hospital in
Kuwait City by Iraqi soldiers who "left the babies on the
cold floor to die." For months her identity and whereabouts
were unknown, until it was discovered that Hill and Knowlton,
the public relations firm, had coached her performance. Allegedly
footing the bill was Citizens for a Free Kuwait. While many in
France may have missed the deconstruction of her performance,
few fell for the American claim of bringing democracy to Kuwait.
Fewer still have expected to see it realized.
In 1990, France had far more invested
in Iraq than its American detractors claim it does today. Under
the principles of international law upholding a country's right
to defend itself in case its sovereignty is smashed, France's
Socialist government joined the UN force. At the onset of war,
Francois Mitterand confronted hundreds of thousands of protestors
on the streets of Paris. He allowed the infamous CRS anti-riot
police to give one of their most impressive shows since 1968.
Popular opposition to the war grew, as
did pressure on the government to ban further protests. The government
was concerned with the image it would leave on the coalition.
To make matters worse, France's Interior Minister, Jean-Pierre
Chevenement, resigned in opposition to the endless bombing sorties
hitting Baghdad. Demonstrations were subsequently banned for
the duration of the war. The French air force stepped up its
campaign as ordered by the American military.
There was moral weight to international
law back then. And while the US president was George the 1st,
no fool in his cabinet passed the preposterous and illegal right
to pre-emptive attacks on undesired countries, let alone to murder
its leaders. As we know now, Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney,
hadn't the slightest clue what to do with Saddam and a conquered
Iraq back then.
Citizens of the French Republic generally
mourned the victims of 9-11. They could not be duped, however,
into turning a blind eye to the way the Bush administration has
profited out of the malaise spread amidst the American population.
Nor will the French citizenry allow its government to help the
USA pay for this war, and unbendingly refuses any unilateral
moves on the part of the USA.
This is the public sentiment to which
the French leadership has responded. By threatening use of France's
veto power in the Security Council vote and refusing to send
in its military, "Chirat" has indeed proved more courageous
than his predecessor, Mitterand. Despite the billions by which
the USA has paid off Turkey, France likewise refuses to recognize
the need to defend it as if the immutable conditions for war
were already a fait accompli.
Truth be said, Chirac has had no choice
but to embody such opposition. This has less to do with business
interests, though certainly France is concerned about American
monopolistic behavior toward controlling the Iraqi oil supply.
Nor is France simply involved in some stupid, hypocritical nostalgia
for an empire long gone. If anything France, like the Arab world,
know one thing for sure: Empire's come and go like a desert sand
storm, buried deep beneath its passing. His posturing is that
of wisdom's.
Chirac's person is irrelevant faced with
his people's will. This identity shift is a move replete with
sense within the framework of the democracy his government sustains.
But with America's relationship to the presidency as a personality-cult,
its philosophy only appears metaphysically.
Without that that will, France would
never have been the cradle of modern civil society politics.
1789 sought to oppose internal absolutist rule, reaching completion
only in the king's head lying beneath the guillotine. Its revolutionary
zeal was repeated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet
the red, white and blue of its flag colors holds the memory of
its kinship with the USA.
Blooming from the Enlightenment, these
two republics grew, disintegrated, and prospered. A street in
Versailles names the Declaration of Independence drafted and
signed within its perimeters. Once, the Enlightenment seemed
to prevent progress into true egalitarian societies. Rare have
the times been when a return to its ideas and ideals has become
so urgent.
In their respective perversions of democracy,
never have France and the USA seemed so close structurally to
each its other. And yet through the population's control of government
in France, never has it seemed so far from the managerial rule
of George the 3rd. Never has one rejected the principles of international
law so unilaterally only to watch the other uphold it as if in
a chalice.
France may no longer be the country of
our idealist dreams, but it is far from that of our cynical nightmares.
It may not entirely have been the Greece to our Rome, nor is
it a spring of insuperable anti-Americanism. It may recognize
the superficial materialism of Nouveau Rich Imperial America.
But most often it fears to watch its dream of American freedom
dissipate behind fanatical christianism and secular paranoia.
Progressive Canadian, American and British
English-speakers all owe France acknowledgement and support for
the risk it has taken to oppose the grounds of this imperial
aggression. Check Hitchens and Will and their warmongering friends.
Balance them out in their inane pettiness, pathetic profligacy
and age-old militaristic opinion forming, prancing about as cultured
inferences.
When I contemplate these pundits within
different historical settings, Bonaparte comes to mind at speeds
faster than any resemblance with the France I love, admire and
respect. The issue here is not Chirac or de Villepin. The passion
that moves the smug leaders of this political people is the France
of Foucault, Godard, Bourdieu, ATTAC and, most important, the
multitudes of French citizens heading into the streets to express
its political will. That will now demands their government respond
to the people, and the people alone, and oppose the aggression.
Let's not be mistaken about the narrative
form. This is a passion play for politics "of the people,
by the people".
Norman Madarasz
is a frequent contributor to Counterpunch. He welcomes comments
at normanmadarasz2@hotmail.com.
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