Wampum

Thirteen months ago I wrote in Reading and writing:

There was another casualty from the Madrid bombings that hasn't made the US press yet. In ten days there will be a summit in Bruxelles, and this time Spain will be "in", leaving only Poland "out". It wasn't that the US didn't join Europe in carefully observing the 3 minutes of silence for the victims of M-11, it was the that Europe did. Constitutional ink will hit constitutional parchment in the Commune of Bruxelles in 10 days time. It won't be the same kind of ink supplied for staged cerimonies in Iraq either.

You've got to hand it to the Bush gang, to their enduring credit they've managed a foreign policy accomplishment bigger than anything since the late '40s, except perhaps the deconstruction of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.

Ever since then I've been curious how Le Monde would eventually weigh in on the issue(s), and I revisited the issue last June when 25 member states of the European Union met in the Commune of Bruxelles, and not surprisingly left Mr. Bush's "Xtian roots of Europe" text , made via Poland, on the cutting room floor.

Le Monde weighed in yesterday.

The lead: 8 mai 1945-9 mai 1950 : deux journées décisives

Pour protester contre le projet d'armée européenne, des étudiants déposent des gerbes devant la plaque commémorative des morts des deux guerres dans la cour de la Sorbonne.

That really is enough, but in case the signifigance is not self-evident, there were quotes too:

"Je garantis que l'armée européenne ne se fera pas. Je ferai tout ce qui sera en mon pouvoir d'entreprendre contre elle. Je travaillerai avec les communistes pour lui barrer la route. Je déclencherai une révolution contre elle. Je préférerais encore m'associer aux Russes pour la stopper. Elle ne passera pas. Je le répète : je ferai une révolution pour l'empêcher."

de Gaulle, le 21 janvier 1954, à "Cye" Sulzberger, du New York Times

The real issue was German re-armament. The Americans and the British were manipulating the post-War diplomatic field to get the Wehrmacht back in uniform, armed, and again, facing East, mostly. That was the CED, la Communauté européenne de défense. It isn't an accident that the article also refers to a wire from Churchill to Truman on 12 May 1945 (declasssified in 1988 and published by the Daily Telegraph), that envisioned attacking the Soviet Army with 47 divisons of Anglo-American infantry and armor, and 10 divisions of re-armed Wehrmacht. The Blair - Bush scheme to fabricate a casus belli for a war against Iraq has precedent.

The article poignantly ends with this:

"Il a détruit la CED, écrivit le soir même à son amie Simone Dear, Paul-Henri Spaak, (writing about Pierre Mendès France) qui avait repris la direction de la diplomatie belge, et s'apprête, j'en ai le sentiment, à détruire l'Alliance atlantique... Quand on pense qu'un homme comme cela s'appelle France, on est d'abord surpris puis indigné."

On l'aurait bien surpris en lui répondant que c'est cet homme-là qui, quelques semaines plus tard, allait faire approuver par la France l'entrée de l'Allemagne fédérale dans le Pacte atlantique et son réarmement, au terme d'une négociation menée de main de maître qui lui vaudra d'être qualifié par Dulles de "superman" et d'être reçu triomphalement aux Etats-Unis.

There it is. All of Europe was taken in by the Americans and lied to about German Rearmament, all but France. No one in France needs to be reminded that de Gaulle took France out of le Pacte atlantique (NATO). The best guarantor of Europe is ... not Europe ... but France.

If John Foster Dulles wasn't scary enough, try George W. Bush.

This is news. Le Monde has reminded diplo-France that its putting it's lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in the hands of ... George Bush if it joins a Europe that is joined to a modern Atlantic Alliance. Your milage may vary.