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Latest News Undermines MSM Narrative on Bush’s Foreign Policy

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In May, I noted how the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France helped debunk myths about the President’s foreign policy. While many on the left (& in the MSM) claim that his policies antagonized our allies and lowered our standing in the world, recent news indicate “dramatically” improved relations between the United States and Europe.

Our problems with “Old Europe” were not so much the actions of George W. Bush, but the determination of former French President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (and, to some extent, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) to undermine the American president’s foreign policy initiatives.

Now, with leaders more favorably disposed to the United States in power in each of those nations, we no longer see the transatlantic tension we saw earlier in the decade. While acknowledging that there will be disagreements from time to time, the President of France, the nation once most overtly opposed to the president, said on the eve of his departure from his American vacation: “France is back, there are no problems between France and the United States, or between the French people and the American people.”

Now he’s working to “‘correct’ foreign policy ‘mistakes’ made by his predecessor Jacques Chirac.” And the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Socialist Bernard Kouchner travels to Iraq where he says that “we have to face the reality, including the American view.” (Via Instapundit.)

By sending his foreign minister to Baghdad and making clear his nation’s willingness to work with the United States, “Sarkozy has already repaired part of the damage done by Chirac and his entourage.” The very actions and words of Sarkozy–and his Administration–make clear that they, the leaders of France, recognize that it was not the current President of the United States who was largely responsible for the damage done to Franco-American relations, but the immediate past President of France (and members of his Administration).

As that the American media begin to take note of that, they undermine one of their principle mantras of the past five years.

Comments

  1. The Financial Times gives French President Sarkozy generally good reviews, damning him with faint praise a bit.

    Amir Taheri in the Gulf News is much more positive towards Sarkozy and takes a backhand slap at Chirac:

    Kouchner’s visit, full of symbolism, shatters one of the key points in Al Qaida’s analysis: that the Western powers will never find enough unity to develop a common strategy against terror.

    At one point, when Chirac invited German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin to a gathering to forge an anti-American triple alliance, Al Qaida’s analysis appeared to have some basis in reality.

    Now, however, both Chancellor Angela Merkel and Sarkozy understand the stark fact that the perception of Western disunity may be one of the factors that prolongs the conflict in Iraq.

    Taheri also refers to one of the worst kept secrets in Europe, that Chirac was in the tank with Saddam Hussein, who paid him handsomely for Chirac’s backstabbing the US policy through Saddam’s half-brother who was Iraq’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva:

    One of the key promises that Nicolas Sarkozy had made during his presidential election campaign last spring was to “correct” foreign policy “mistakes” made by his predecessor Jacques Chirac.

    Chief among these was Chirac’s desperate efforts to prevent the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussain’s regime of terror.
    Chirac failed to save his friend’s regime but managed to do serious damage to relations with the US, Great Britain and more than 40 other nations that joined the coalition of the willing to liberate Iraq in 2003.

    Sarkozy’s moves to correct the mistake started even before his election when he met President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006 and described Chirac’s policy as “arrogant”.

    The surprise visit paid to Iraq by France’s new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner this week is another move by Sarkozy to shed Chirac’s disastrous legacy.

    No better man than Kouchner could have been chosen to signal France’s change of policy. For Kouchner is one of a handful of people in the West who recognised the murderous nature of Saddam’s regime and called for its overthrow as early as the 1980s.

    It will be interesting if Chirac’s peculations and behind-the-scenes treachery will ever be revealed by the US foreign policy community, dominated by the Bush-hating CFR and Carnegie Soros-oriented rags like Foreign Policy. Gold Napoleons d’or buys a lot from Chirac who first hooked up with Saddam during his first and only trip to Europe, when Chirac was a young nuclear affairs minister. It was Chirac who was behind Osirak, the Iraqi reactor that the Israelis bombed in ’81, thus preventing Iraq from eventually building a nuclear device.

    Supposedly the bags of gold French coins came to Chirac via the diplomatic pouch from Geneva’s Iraqi UN mission.

    Who says the UN doesn’t play a role in Middle East diplomacy?

  2. Caller on the Laura Ingraham Show just made an excellent point.

    The surge in Iraq must be working, because the Democrats are now using the formulation “We are making progress in Iraq.” (e.g. Hillary “We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it’s working.”)

    When things weren’t going well, it was always “The Bush Administration’s failed policies in Iraq.”

    What’s this “we” kemosabe? You guys voted to surrender.

  3. Re Chirac being on Saddam’s payrole: Another quiet secret is that had Chirac taken a moral stance vice one based upon profit and self-interest, Saddam might have buckled under and the entire invasion been avoided, since Saddam’s incalcitrance was largely predecated upon the assumption that the vetos of France and Russia were sufficient to prevent any real military action against Iraq.

  4. Yeah – When you think of it that way, then Chirac, taking a stance for evil (Saddam) and doing entirely the wrong thing, has cost thousands of American lives.

  5. Reading about the positive press on Sarkozy and his relations with the Bush Administration, I can’t help but chuckle as I recall Kerry’s 2004 campaign where he “promised to restore relations with our allies.”

    Imagine if you will (after lots of alcohol or sedation) a Pres. JF Kerry and First Lady Teresa Heinz “Shove It” Kerry trying to entertain new French Pres. Sarkozy after his first visit to the USA. Methinks the consequences would be too horrid to imagine.

    Somehow, I doubt that Sarkozy would have been elected without a Bush reelection. Just sayin’.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  6. ….”Our problems with “Old Europe” were not so much the actions of George W. Bush, but the determination of former French President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (and, to some extent, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) to undermine the American president’s foreign policy initiatives.”….

    The operative word in the above-quoted paragraph is “former”. Now, perhaps some progress can be crafted….

  7. I still want to know why liberals claim that we need better relations with our allies, but are perfectly willing to give Peru, Colombia and SoKo the finger on trade agreements? Libs want to be friends with everybody, but when it comes to trade that would benefit our countries, they’re perfectly willing to tell them to shove it up left.

    Good for America, bad for liberals.

  13. Why are libtards so turned on by dictators?

    Because dictators get to force their utopian schemes on whole nations without any of that inconvenient democratic opposition or constitutional restrictions to stop them. They get to have their enemies killed or put into re-education camps (which John Kerry said weren’t so bad*), and silence any opposition voices.

    All of which is what the left would love to do in the United States, too. Activist judges writing law from the bench, state-run health care, abuse of eminent domain, hate speech codes and the Fairness Doctrines are just watered-down left-wing versions of Chavez and Castro.

    *”Everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There was not a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps, and they weren’t pretty, and nobody likes that kind of outcome, but on the other hand, I’ve met a lot of people today who were in those education camps who are thriving in the Vietnam of today.” – John F. Kerry