Various Topics on Internet News

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Here is an interesting take, at least to me, on some of the events
which took place to commemorate D-Day and the subsequent G-8 meetings.

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D-Day, Chirac Style
From the June 21, 2004 issue: How France and its allies liberated
Germany, and other E.U. fantasies.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
06/21/2004, Volume 009, Issue 39

RONALD REAGAN would be proud of George W. Bush. The president so many
Americans are now so fondly remembering had to face down a
contemptuous foreign policy establishment for years, when the received
wisdom was that his policies were a failure. Reagan didn't win the
Cold War without setbacks; Bush is now going through a similar rough
period with his Middle East policy.

Early on, Ronald Reagan was told by the foreign policy establishment
not to upset the status quo in Europe, but to stick to the established
policy of containment. He declined, choosing to upset the
long-standing policies of his predecessors and go for victory, rather
than a standoff in the Cold War. George W. Bush was told by the
foreign policy establishment not to upset the status quo in the Middle
East, but to stick to the policy of containing Saddam and dealing
amicably with the corrupt dictators of the oil-rich region. He
declined, choosing instead to go to war to unseat Saddam, and to
launch a program to destabilize the region by introducing democratic
and economic reforms. Reagan won his bet that the Cold War could be
won, and it now looks as if Bush could win his bet that a reformed
Iraq can serve as a model for other countries in the Middle East.

But Bush's tenacity, even including his ability to wring from the
Security Council a resolution endorsing his Iraq policy, will in the
end do little to bring back what are misremembered as the good old
days of multilateral cooperation. The president may have taken to
calling German chancellor Gerhard Schröder by his first name, and to
giving joint press conferences with Chirac, but those moves are
designed in part to make nonsense of John Kerry's charge that America
is isolated in the world. Franco-American relations remain just about
where they were before the June 6 celebrations of the anniversary of
the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy.

<There is more>


Taken from:
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/220plxeh.asp>
or
<http://tinyurl.com/2krd9>

--
cg