Iraq-friendly Foreign Minister closes lid on Chirac era (Related) (Jim Nolan, 31 May 2007, Online Opinion)
The contrast spoke volumes. Last week I mentioned the name Bernard Kouchner to a friend. This well-connected university academic was puzzled and asked who he was. Two days later I asked Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari his thoughts on the appointment by new French President Nicholas Sarkozy of Kouchner as his Foreign Minister, the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières having been a minister in the Mitterrand socialist government, the UN governor of Kosovo from 1999 to 2001 and still one of France's most popular politicians.
Zebari, a Kurd and a genuine resistance fighter against Saddam Hussein, greeted the name warmly because he well knew what a local sophisticate had no idea about: that Kouchner was a true friend of all Iraqis. Visits to Iraqi Kurdistan were early examples of the heartburn which Kouchner regularly created for those who are now under him.
Richard Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the UN, told The New York Times: "It's an amazing appointment, a stunning event in French foreign policy ... He's motivated by an anti-totalitarian drive whether he sees injustice from the Left or the Right."
He added: "It will be very positive for US-French relations, because he does not come with a visceral anger towards the American 'hyperpower'."
Should Hilary Benn become deputy Labour leader and Britain's deputy prime minister, as seems likely, it is hard to imagine Britain and French will not continue to support the democratically elected Iraqis. What has been a pathetic deference to Jacques Chirac's "realism" in the "liberal" West will no longer be a convenient fig leaf. The "sophisticated" Europeans (read France) have just left the building.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 30, 2007 8:22 PMSpeaking of the anti-French, in case you missed this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117943367678106606.html?mod=most_viewed_leisure24 (Related)
Excerpt: "Why does Tintin appeal so much? Why do the adventures of a peripatetic reporter with a tuft of blown ginger hair continue to fascinate more than 75 years after they were first published? Says Mr. Goddin: "Even Hergé didn't know the answer. 'I am amazed with his success and it surprises me when a child from Africa or India writes in to say Tintin is his hero,' he'd often say." But Mr. Goddin credits the Tintin books' universal theme of good versus evil, along with the impressive graphic detail and lively characters -- from the salty-tongued Captain Haddock to the eccentric Professor Calculus to the bowler-hatted Thompson Twins -- as key to their popularity. He calls the strip the most realistic depiction of the 20th century in comic form, whether exposing the iniquities of communism in "Land of the Soviets" (1930) or depicting colonialism in "Tintin in the Congo" (1931) and capitalism in "Tintin in America" (1932)."
Posted by: Qiao Yang at May 31, 2007 1:47 AM (Related)Main (Related)
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