Mr Chirac is at it again, complaining that someone else missed an opportunity to keep quiet. This time, he pointed his anger at Dubya.
Stung by Mr Bush’s call for the EU to give Turkey a firm date for accession, Mr Chirac responded: “He not only went too far but he has gone into a domain which is not his own.
“He has nothing to say on this subject. It is as if I were to tell the United States how it should conduct its relations with Mexico.”
Well, it’s not quite the same thing. Turkey is a member of NATO, and more of an ally than France. And the occasion of Bush’s remarks was a meeting with Turkish leaders where he offered his hope that Turkey’s membership in the EU would be looked at soon.
France is not our ally. Even in the 1960s when I lived there, only a decade after we liberated them from the Nazis, there was substantial animosity toward America. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were told to stay home and avoid contact with the French out of concern they would take sides with the Soviet Union on the issue, and we would be in danger.
De Gaulle pulled the French military out of NATO years ago, which means (in my mind) they really aren’t a member nation at all. NATO is a defense organization. Why be a member if your military isn’t involved?
A summit communique declared that in response to the Iraqi interim government’s appeal for help, “we have decided today to offer NATO’s assistance to the government of Iraq with the training of its security forces”.
NATO officials said they could not say what numbers would be involved but, while US officials evoked “a huge undertaking”, French officials insisted there would be “no NATO flag” in Iraq.
I guess Chirac feels his UN veto power extends to NATO as well.
Turkey is also a region which has recently seen bombings by radicals, another tie with the US and not the french.
Comment by John — June 29, 2004 @ 12:10 pm