Constitution Club

For years I have listened to the endless mantra about how Bush had caused us to lose our allies throughout the world. There was hand-wringing, wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left that our dear and beloved allies (read the French and Germans) did not approve of our Middle East policy and the tough line that the US had taken against Islamic terrorism the world over. This was a staple talking point parroted by both those in the blogosphere and the inhabitants of the political world. It was endlessly trotted out as proof positive that our foreign policy was a failure because the French and the Germans were now ‘anti-American’.

The recent elections in both Germany and France have now left those nations with elected officials that might not be necessarily branded as ‘pro-American’ but certainly cannot branded as ‘anti-American’ like their predecessors. Sarkozy especially has shown himself to be both ‘anti-socialist’ and intolerant of the Islamists who have managed to launch what has become a campaign of civil insurrection against French authorities.

So will the hand-wringing now stop? Will the tired carping about how we have to change so the French will once again ‘be our friends’ come to an end? We can only hope.

An interesting side note to all this is that even as the Germans and the French are beginning to reject socialism and their appeasement of Islamists while becoming more pro-US, the Democratic party in the US is moving decidedly in the other direction. What strange times we live in.

Come, dear Americans, let us be friends again….

“Certainly, Mr. Sarkozy has promised never to behave in the “arrogant” way he said that the current French government did in making threats against the United States in the prelude to the Iraq war. ‘You must have loathed us then,’ he said in a speech in Washington last September.”

Publius Pundit has a good rundown and some pics on the Sarkozy victory, including what I take to be his specialty, happy French  babes.

Vive la France!

Tolerance and tyranny

I want to issue a call to everyone in the world who believes in the values of tolerance, freedom, democracy, humanism, to all those who are persecuted by tyranny, by dictatorships. I want to tell all of the children throughout the world, all of the ill-treated women throughout the world - I want to tell them that it will be France’s pride and its duty to be at their side.

France will be at the side of the Libyan nurses [Bulgarian nurses imprisoned in Libya], imprisoned for eight years. France will not abandon Ingrid Betancourt [held by Farc rebels in Colombia]. France will not abandon the women condemned to wear the burqa. France will not abandon the women who do not have freedom. France will be on the side of the oppressed of the world. This is France’s message, it is France’s identity, it is France’s history.  - From Sarkozy’s victory speech