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I recently had an enjoyable and rather lengthy discussion about the New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary with a French reporter visiting our state. She was here learning about our primary system and had a chance to catch up with some of the candidates, as well as those supporting them. Since I've been involved in protecting our lead-off status for quite a few years, our discussion lead to the history of the primary, some past races, and of course -- why New Hampshire?
Our talk gave me a chance to offer my own "apology," if it can be called that, as one American citizen to a citizen of France for our arrogance in ignoring the warnings of their government back some four and five years ago.
As we all remember, they admonished us that our so-called "intelligence" about Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq was faulty and phony. Many Americans expressed great anger at France for not joining us as allies in the attack on Iraq, with some even going to the point of renaming "French Fries" as "Freedom Fries." They were so renamed at the U. S. Capitol and even on Air Force One. After all, we knew best, right? And didn't France owe us their blind loyalty from our sacrifices in World War II? They were so letting us down.
Of course, they were indeed paying back that loyalty with a plea to America not to invade Iraq, warning us that Iraq posed no threat with WMDs, since they didn't exist. They were trying to save American lives, and the lives of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of others.
Our nation owes an apology to France, and hasn't given it yet. But our Presidential candidates -- at least the Democratic ones -- and at least those who were equally fooled by Bush, et. al. -- should stand up for right and honesty and publicly thank the people and the government of France for being correct on this one, and for having the courage to have stood up to the Bush-Cheney Administration.
Standing up to and speaking out against the Bush-Cheney Administration was something that obviously a lot of United States Senators and Congresspeople who should have known better and who should have been more cautious should have done then, but didn't.
France did. They were doing what a real friend always should do: tell us a truth we didn't want to hear.
We should not have attacked Iraq, even when some 70% of Americans who were blinded by Bush's non-intelligence thought we should. France had the courage and foresight to tell us not to. Now we should thank them for their vision, and apologize for "Freedom Fries."
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