perfidy

Do straw men fight back?

Generally speaking, no. But I don't see that I was creating a straw man argument here.

"The straw man fallacy is when you misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily, knock down that misrepresented position, then conclude that the original position has been demolished. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made."

The book is interesting, in that it details the ways that the conventional mythology of Franco-American amity and eternal friendship from the time of Lafayette down to the present is exactly that, mythology. From the French and Indian war (They were the other side, you know) through the quasi war, French meddling in the Civil War, their idiocy at the Versailles treaty, and down to de Gaulle's shenanigans in WWII and NATO - the French have not exactly been the best of allies. Anyone familiar with history is aware of most of this, although the book packages all the stories in one convenient, uh, package.

I was merely pointing out, for the amusement of our twenty or so readers, a snide remark by a fifties era US diplomat. In what way have I misrepresented an argument or position of anybody, let alone in an attempt to demolish their position?

NDR, I know you're a smart guy, and Johno has infinite good things to say about you. But in the few times that you comment on my posts, your tone is invariably condescending.

Perhaps you were making a joke of your own - if so, I apologize for my lack of humor. But when I make a crack about the French, I don't expect ad hominem in return.

Buckethead,

There is an important point. First, you are smart and you know that the arguments in this book are simplistic--there are a number of conservative critics who have made this observation. Second, the question of who are "oldest enemy" is is not useful. Only five states in 1776 were able to project enough power to be competitors of the US. There are only two left. We can reduce the question down to England versus France--why one and not the other, why chocolate and not vanilla? And yet America has had enemies who have been far greater adversaries for more extended periods of time. Even if we reframed the question as "what nation has most obstructed the growth of national power", French efforts are weak. Spain has, historically speaking, confronted the US more often and more directly ever since it tried to profit from British military efforts in the War of 1812. Even now, the withdrawal of Spanish forces have done more to weaken US efforts in Iraq than anything that the French have done.

Funny stuff aside, I think Nat's got you there, chief. Especially about that last part. French perfidy in re: Oil for Food is no real surprise; on the other hand, Spain's pull-out from Iraq sucked a ton on many many levels.

But that being said, I think the US's longest-standing enemies are the Barbary Corsairs and their descendents; viz. Qadaffi.

Look, all I was doing was pointing out a funny bit in a book. The French are irritating. It amuses me to see their pretensions poked at.

Then, I get accused of creating a straw man, which I wasn't, then NDR goes ahead and creates an imagined position of mine and jumps on it.

Got me? I wasn't making an argument that the French are now our most dire enemy! I didn't say that others weren't worse - for example, the Germans in the first half of the 20th century, the Soviets in the last, or the Japanese in the middle were all far more effective enemies than the French will ever be.

NDR, you overestimated your nations that can project power by a factor of two - aside from us, only the British can project significant military power beyond their borders.

Why not the English? Because they back us up when we need it, and vice versa. They act like allies, and have for well over a hundred years.

"what nation has most obstructed the growth of national power?" No one, really. and certainly not the French. The Spanish certainly were a big speed bump back in 1898. Germans, Japanese and Russians all fell into the ditch.

The Spanish screwed us, sure, but at least they had troops there to begin with, and didn't hamstring us in the UN like the French. French perfidy in the UN cost the US a *lot* becuase, had we not made the effort to pursue that final resolution, we wouldn't have had to stake our entire justification for the war on WMD, instead we could have pursued a French style intervention and just gone in. The result would have been far less embarrassment once the WMD weren't found.

In any event, the point of the book is that contrary to popular perception, the French have not been our long term good buddies. A simple premise, perhaps, but one easily demonstrated.

And my point was simply that, as Al Bundy said, "It is good to hate the French," and has been for a while.

Buckethead, understood. Trust me, you're reading more into NDR's post than is there. For my part, I actually love the French (people) and regard with disgust the French (government).

Your point is well taken about French obstructionism prior to the Iraq libervasion, and that's an angle I hadn't considered. On the other hand, is a French-style intervention actually better (Algeria; Ivory Coast; etc)? On the third hand, I don't seriously believe that Rumsfeld et. al. felt so pressured as to make a case they didn't think would hold up. My intuition is they came up with that all on their own. Zing!

It is good to hate the French, but it is better to hate our freedom!

J,
French-style intervention is ALWAYS better, and it's better because it's French.

Well, perhaps I took the first comment the wrong way, but it got my panties all bunched up to suddenly *be* the victim of a straw man argument just after being accused of using one.