Eilon, July 17, 2004

Hello friends

Some of you may have already read Roger Cohen's article that appeared in the June 6 edition of the New York Times. The essay reflected on American and French [mis]perceptions on the eve of the D-Day observances. I think the article worth forwarding for your delectation. -Barry

France Says, Love the U.S., Hate Its Chief by Roger Cohen

Paris
An intriguing idea has been gaining ground in France on the eve of President Bush's visit. It is that the much disliked president does not represent the true America, that the United States is a shining being or entity or thing to behonored on the D-Day beaches and distinguished from President George W. Bush himself.

Politicians speak of saying yes to America but no to Mr Bush. The newspaper Liberation warns Mr. Bush that he should not take President Jacques Chirac's expected expressions of gratitude as directed at him, but rather at America. Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, says Mr. Bush is viewed "as the exact opposite of the values that make us love America."

The idea is very French. .It is conceptual. It is subtle. It is intellectually pleasing. It projects the notion that France knows better than Ameirca what America really is or really should be. It harks back to the idea France shares with America: that the countries embody some eternal values and hve a mission to export them to all mankind.

The view of America as separate from its leader also has a familiar ring. For decades after World War II, the argument that "La France" was distinct from its quisling, Jew-deporting Vichy government was a familiar one. In this view, Marshal Henri Phiippe Petain, the leader of the Vichy government, was not France, certainly not the eternal France of the Revolution, incarnated in the resistance leader Jean Moulin or in Charles de Gaulle himself.

That idea was also subtle and pleasing in its way. It enabled President Francois Mitterrand to continue placing wreaths on Petain's tomb in honor of the marshal's World War I accomplishments. Not until Mr. Chirac took office did a French president have the courage to avow fully what France did under the Nazi occupation and accept the responsibility that the nation as a whole bore.

The truth is that Vichy was not all of France, by any means, but it was France. The attempt to abstract a nation's essence or soul from its particular political incarnation at any one moment is dangerous. It may involve a flight from responsibility, whose essence is honesty.

The fact is, whether France likes it or not, Mr. Bush cannot be distinguishd from America. He has the support of roughly half the United States. His may not be the America of New York or San Francisco, the America of Michael Moore or Woody Allen, but it is a much larger America than the one portrayed by these two movie-makers.

This America believes it is doing God's will in fighting for Freedom. It equates pacifism with decline. It supports the death penalty, low taxes and the right to bear arms.

It is skeptical of subtle arguments, wondering what they really mean. It holds that action is American and that failure to support the president in wartime is unAmerican. It even believes the president when he says the war in Iraq is linked to the heroism of D-Day because today's war is also a response to an attack on America and also about "the forward march of freedom."

Of course, there is another big slice of America, the one closer to the French idea of the Aerican soul, that loathes Mr. Bush. This America is appalled by the war in Iraq, unsurprised by untruths used to justify war and worried about a leader who so regularly invokes the will of the Almighty. It is disdainful of the president's stumbling locution, angered by the detentions without counsel or trial in Guantanamo and elsewhere, aghast at the notion that the country may just face four more years with Mr. Bush.

These two camps make up America today and will face off in a fiercely contested election. At least until that day in November, Mr.Bush represents America, in all its many facets, the one that loves him and the one that loathes him. To pretend otherwise is ultimately misleading.

When Mr. Fabius refers to the "values that make us love America," he is in effect referring to the values that most comfort France in its self-image. That is to say, America as a symbol of liberty, democracy and justice; America as an embodiment of the values of the Enlightenment; America as the New World's engine of ideas borne across the European continent by Napoleon's army after the Revolution of 1789.

These ideas are inspiring. That they provoke France's love of France is understandable. The only problem with love is that it can be blind. This poblem is particularly acute at a time when both France and America feel the need to proclaim their friendship anew after a nasty falling-out. Reconciliation of any kind and however partial has to be based on each side's seeing and acknowledging the reality of the other and the differences that exist.

To separate "America" from Mr. Bush in order to welcome him merely preserves an illusion. For better or for worse, France and America also have divergent ideas on the roots of Middle East terrorism, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on Iraq, on the role of the state in an economy, on money and religion and how they are talked about in national life. France's desire to distinguish its America from Mr. Bush's has intensifed in recent months as the situation in Iraq has worsened and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib have reinforced all the darkest French views of the Bush adminstration.

The official speech on Sunday honoring America's sacrifice for France's freedom were not intended to dwell on these differences. They were meant to invoke valor and shared values and an old friendship and a bond forged in blood. But to preserve the bond, it seems essential to face facts. Bush is America, just as Chirac is France. The two nations' highest offices represent every shade of opinion that makes up their democracies. No separate national essence exists.

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