Editorial
Note: Columbia having freed Ingrid Betancourt gives occasion for a
repost of this column, which is also featured in The
Unabrian Manifesto.
Odds
are you don’t know of, or are only passively familiar with, John
Gibson, host of the Fox News Channel’s The Big Story.
The show occupies the 5pm to 6pm Eastern time slot; while most of
the United States is either at work or headed home from work, Gibson is
hosting and, at the conclusion of each show, running some of the best
smack on cable television.
Take this example from last Monday, 18 August: “Let’s play a
guessing game.
Guess which country recently sent a secret military mission to
Brazil and Columbia, without telling either country it was about to –
well – launch a small invasion?”
What’s
this?!
“This country also didn’t ask the UN Security Council for
permission to conduct a military operation in Brazil and Columbia.
It just went ahead on its own, in defiance of international law.
This country also botched the whole operation so badly that the
newspapers at home called it ‘The Bungle in the Jungle.’”
Okay, who was it?
“It was those cheese-eating surrender monkeys, the French –
the very same people who have trashed America for going on a year now,
saying our war in Iraq was illegal and illegitimate because we didn’t
have UN approval.”
(“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” by the way, is quite
possibly the greatest descriptive term in the history of the English
language, first spoken about French language students on The Simpsons
and later made popular in conservative circles by National Review’s
Jonah Goldberg.)
For
those who equate anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism with good policy,
and who therefore take the United Nations seriously when it comes to
international affairs, this should be of no small interest.
Last month, four French men offered a Brazilian bush pilot named
Cleilton de Abreu £3,500 to fly them from Manaus to an airstrip near
Columbia’s border.
“What de Abreu could never have guessed,” explains the UK’s
Telegraph, “… was that he was carrying French secret service
agents and a high-ranking government official.”
For what?
“They were the advance unit of an extraordinary mission to
rescue [Columbian politician] Ingrid Betancourt … who was kidnapped by
Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia [a.k.a.
Farc] … while campaigning as a candidate in a presidential election 17
months ago.”
Betancourt
has no real modern connections to France, other than she has a French
passport as “a result of her first marriage to a diplomat,” and that
her family considers French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepan, who
taught Betancourt political science in Paris 20 years ago, a “close
friend.”
(Her autobiography was also a French bestseller, in the parallel
universe where that means something.)
As
you might have imagined, things didn’t go as planned and the whole
operation failed miserably.
“France stands accused of secretly negotiating with one of the
world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations behind the backs of the
governments of Brazil and Columbia, both of which insist they were never
informed about the proposed mission…. Despite vigorous denials, the
suspicion remains that a deal with Farc to exchange Betancourt for
arms and / or millions of dollars had been on the table.”
(What?!
Arms for hostages?!
Someone get Lawrence Walsh on the phone!
The emphasis was added to reflect the Iran-Contra feel, for those
Democrats who may have otherwise failed to make the connection.)
Subsequent
denials fell apart under scrutiny and de Villepan was finally forced to
apologize to Celso Amorim (his Brazilian counterpart), who accepted the
apology, but who apparently didn’t speak for the diplomat who
suggested Brazil expel French diplomats, saying France “would do
better not to treat us like one of their African colonies.”
(Ouch, babe.)
Just
so the criteria is well established for future military debate: Authors
of Franco-bestsellers / Brazilian politicians are worth unsanctioned
invasions and negotiations with terrorist organizations so long as
someone in your administration taught them at university.
However, bringing to an abrupt end a toilet dictatorship
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, which had
WMD programs, which invaded Kuwait on its own accord without UN approval
and which ignored 17 UN resolutions is absolutely out of the question.
Well, all right.
