Americans are fed up with French disdain

WASHINGTON — It might surprise a great many Americans that the French actually think Saddam Hussein is "a bloody dictator" who deserves to be disarmed. How astonishing, given France's extraordinary efforts to keep him in power.

According to France's ambassador to the United States, Jean David Levitte, the only difference between his government and the United States' is how to go about disarmament. Oh yes, and whether Saddam should be removed from power. Levitte expresses hope that Americans will understand the differences and stop all their "French-bashing" for the good of relations that go back a couple of hundred years.

Excuse me?

Well, it seems appropriate to ask that if Saddam is such a bad guy, why, Mr. Ambassador, is your country working so hard to thwart American efforts to have him removed? Why not support U.S. efforts to end his reign about the only way he has shown it will ever be terminated, with extreme prejudice, as the CIA puts it? Could it be that he is your bad guy, that French interests are tied to his rule and that it is important to France's declining role in the world theater to have a hit show?

Trying to put the best face on the deepening rift between the United States and France over Iraq, Levitte warns that American hard feelings would only intensify the animosity of the French people toward this country.

So what's new, pal?

Is it possible that "french fries" becoming "freedom fries" in the U.S. House of Representatives and reports that Euro Disney had to quit setting off fireworks outside Paris because the French kept surrendering finally have penetrated the Gaulish shell of indifference to anything American? Levitte, a former ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters recently that he witnessed this spectacle with "great sadness."

What apparently hasn't penetrated is that American resentment about France's obvious disdain, culturally and otherwise, for the United States has been building for a great many decades and that France's lead in undercutting our position on Iraq is just the capper.

More importantly, the damage caused by this latest episode will not be easy to repair despite his seeming optimism. Even Americans opposed to President Bush's war plans are angry over the fact that once again it is the French who are leading the opposition to American interests.