ChoJin’s Quarter

When it comes to American people speaking about the French or French people speaking about Americans, it usually ends up being just caricatures or plain opinions said as facts. While some of them are remotely true, most are just stupid and insulting.

I don’t quite understand why the French-American relationship is always so passionate. Probably because both of them are very opinionated people, who think their values are the best ones and should be brought to the rest of the world without fear of being compared to the old time of the crusades. For example, take any story on Digg slighly related to the French or France, and look at the comments. Or just talk to any French people about the USA… And you’ll see what I mean.

I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, are they stupid, mean…both? Do they really believe what they say, or are they just having some fun? Usually I give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are smart people who are just being sarcastic or like provoking others for the sake of argument. But it seems to be so recurrent, I’m starting to really wonder.

I’m French, but you know what? Today I’m not going to bash these Americans who are so easily manipulated by the media and who have no clue about the rest of the world or even where France is on a map (but to their credit, most of them know that Italy looks like a boot. Man… what happened to teaching Geography at school? ).

No, today I’m going to bash the French too.

I regularly get comments from French people along the line of, “By working in the USA, you sold your soul and your morality for a few extra $$$”. In other words, I am arbitrarily closing my eyes to current international politics and the (bad) influence of the USA abroad, for the sake of my bank account. In doing so, I directly support, what they consider, a really, really bad country…

Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to argue that the USA is behaving like a Disney movie, after all, they clearly have an imperialistic policy. But do you really believe that France is not, or that France is any better? You have to be blind or suffer from short-term memory loss… I must admit that France is more sneaky about it, well… at least when they don’t completely screw up publicly (such as with the sinking of the rainbow warrior from the French’s secret service). But although it is now quite known, among other examples, that the CIA trained and funded Osama Ben Laden to fight against communist-Russian occupation of Afghanistan and that it got, to say the least, slightly out of control… isn’t it also well known that France has a long history of supporting dictators across Africa for their own benefit?

Let me refresh your memory a little bit; let’s start with the dead ones ([1] and [3]), for example with Jean Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, or with Joseph Mobutu in Congo, and what about Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo ([2] and [3])? And I’m not going to talk about the responsibility of France in the Rwanda massacres, that would be too obvious. Or even about Algeria (still a very heated subject in France; recently the government tried to pass a law to force schoolteachers to teach our children how “beneficial” the French’s colonial politics were; of course those whose families were tortured and massacred in Algeria are not quite happy about it). We could also talk about Zimbabwe too.

But no, let’s talk about the present. I don’t want people to be under the wrong impression that all of that is in the past.
On one hand I hear my compatriots complaining about the Iraq war, and how wrong it is, how inadmissible it was for the USA to ignore the U.N., that they went there just for the oil and so on and so on… And I must agree with all of that. This is despicable. But on the other hand, I don’t hear you complaining all day long about what France is doing in Chad ([4] and [5]). For those of you who can’t read French, let me summarize the french sources:

• Born in Fada in 1952, Idriss Déby went to the Officers’ School in N’Djamena and was sent to France for his training where he obtained a professional pilot license in 1976.
• 1985: he is sent back in France at the “École de Guerre” (War School). When he returns he becomes the military advisor for the Presidency.
• 1989: he is accused of trying to prepare a “coup d’état”. His cousin Hassan Djamous is killed, but Idriss Déby manages to escape to Libya and then moves to Sudan where he forms an army force called “Mouvement patriotique de Salut (MPS)” (Patriotic Salvation Movement).
• 1990, December 1st: the current “President”, Hissène Habré, who was until this date the France’s protégé, and who was later indicted for crimes against humanity, torture, war crimes and other human rights violations, is deposed. With the help of the French service secret (named DGSE), the current Chad dictator Idriss Déby takes power. Officially, France helped to depose Hissène Habré because he didn’t want to install a multi political party system. Unofficially they did it because he wanted to renegociate the cooperation accords with France and wanted to close all the French army bases in his country.
• 1991: Idriss Déby is officially invited to visit France.
• 1992: France gives 220 million of Francs and its military help. France then manages to involve the French oil company, Elf-Aquitaine, in the oil consortium lead by the USA to exploit the oil in south of Chad.
• 1992-1996: hundreds, if not thousands, of people are killed. Mainly for political reasons (from the political oppositions, human right associations…)
• 1996: France sends Jérôme Grand d’Esnon, someone very close to the “Gauliste” party and who played a major role during Jacques Chirac’s president camplain in 1996, to help Idriss Déby for his campain. Idriss Déby is elected with 69% of the vote. The association “Survie et Agir” reported that France played a major role in stealing this election to make sure the current president/dictator was not overthrown.
• Political tortures, assassinations… continue
• 1997: Both Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister, and Jacques Chirac, the French President, invite Idriss Déby for an official visit.
• Some more political massacres…
• 2000: a 665 mile pipeline construction, lead by the USA, is approved. Some French companies (Bolloré, Bouygues, Alcatel-Alstom, Spie-Trindel) are supposed to get some of the contracts.
• 2001: Idriss Déby is re-elected.
• 2003: M. Déby is hospitalized in an “American Hospital”, in France, at Neuilly-sur-seine.
• 2003: he comes back in France for an official visit to the French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, and the French President, Jacques Chirac.
• 2004: M. Déby, who cannot run for presidency in 2006 because of the constitution, calls for an open vote (by raising hands) to modify the constitution. 123 for it, 0 against, and 1 absentee. The opposition refused to vote and left. I personally find this way of forcing a law quite brilliant…, don’t you?
• 2006: Idriss Déby is re-elected.(Chadian presidential election, 2006).

As you probably noted, of course France had some interests there. And you guessed what it is. Yeah… You bet. Oil… So, it’s not ok to go to Iraq for oil, but putting a dictator in place, letting him torture and massacre people, making sure he stays in power… all of that for oil and geopolitical power, is ok? That’s either ignorance or hypocrisy. But ignorance is not acceptable if you want to earn the right to criticize other countries. And again, don’t get me wrong, it’s good to criticize and comment on what the USA is currently doing, and I’d be the first one to jump in, but it’s not ok to do so and ignoring what our country is doing too.

To be fair, I have to mention that if you read some of the links or sources, you’ll realize that the USA is sometimes in the game too, especially in the countries with oil interests (hey what do you expect? ).

Anyway, I’m tired of French people telling me I sold my soul and I am supporting an evil country, while clearly, they seem to have no clue about what our country, France, is doing too. Doing so is not being smarter than these intellectually-limited Americans with a smirk on their faces saying, “Hey, did you try to look for ‘French victories’ on Google? Hehe…”. Ok, first when you’re talking about a country which actually has some history and buildings which look older than the ones from Disney World, you’re not calling that a victory, but an empire. So, next time you’re on Google, be smart and look for “French empire”, or you can even directly go to wikipedia French colonial empires, which will be the first Google answer.

I’m tired of people thinking they know why I am in the USA, of people who think they can read my mind and even know better what I think than I do myself, and of people criticizing others without criticizing themselves first. I’m tired of defending the French when I am in the USA, and having to defend Americans when I am in France. Aren’t we supposed to be friends? When things get bad, and a friend does awful stuff, aren’t you suppose to stick with him and try to help him get out of the bad situation? Don’t you think that you can’t help without being involved? That people are not going to listen to you if you’re just sitting outside criticizing? I could go on forever on this matter, but I think it’s pointless, people already set their minds and won’t change anyway. I’m even wondering why I wrote all of that. It lets me vent I guess

References

[1] Vers un divorce entre Paris et le continent africain ?
[2] The welcome death of Togo’s dictator Gnassingbe Eyadema
[3] France-Afrique
[4] Ingérence à l’ancienne au Tchad
[5] Idriss Déby, un criminel contre l’humanité soutenu par la France : Repères.
[6] The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
[7] Osama Ben Laden
[8] Jean Bédel Bokassa
[9] Joseph Mobutu
[10] Gnassingbé Eyadéma
[11] Zimbabwe
[12] Tchad
[13] DGSE
[14] French colonial empires
[15] Idriss Déby
[16] Hissène Habré
[17] Chadian presidential election, 2006