Tainted Bill McCabe pointed me to this rather pointed Ralph Peters column I missed on Monday. If you think I’m harsh on the French, read this:
We must accept the world’s jealousy as a given and must not become distracted by attempts to placate European racists who refuse to set high standards for governance in developing states. Indeed, nothing so abets tyranny and oppression today as French and German condescension toward black, brown or yellow populations – and their unspoken conviction that nonwhites remain inferior.
When Robert Mugabe, the Stalin of Zimbabwe, is welcome in Paris, while the French government takes pains to insult Colin Powell, you have a very clear illustration of the ethics of French diplomacy. The current wave of jokes about the French are ill-judged only in the sense that the French impulse toward racial totalitarianism is no laughing matter. Ask the populations of Ivory Coast or Rwanda. Or Algeria. Or of the brown and black suburbs of Paris.
Tres harsh. And true.
NOTE: One regular reader here wonders why so much of the blogosphere holds Peters in such high esteem. It’s true that many of his newspaper columns, especially the ones he writes for the New York Post are long on invective and short on detail. But that’s true of most any newspaper column, especially those written for a tabloid like the Post. Speaking for myself, I respect Peters because he was one of the first, along with Robert Kaplan, to accurately and humanely predict the danger coming to us from Central Asia.
While Peters’s remedies might not always be sensible, he deserves a hard-won respect as a Cassandra of great literary skills.
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