Triaed said:
Wow, it was a real mixed bag. I enjoyed it.
France, let's not forget that with a big help from France the US obtained their independence. Yeah, France was acting in self interest to put a dent in the British Empire crown, but still... I don't get the bad rap they get in the US
Highschool was awesome for me, I partied like a monkey on speed and drank like a fish... then again I was not constrained by that silly rule in the States that says that you are mature enough at 18 to put a bullet in an enemy soldier's head, but you cannot drink a beer in a hot-summer day
Also "mumorpuger"
France is viewed as a group of backstabbers and with good reason. What the generation after mine is not learning due to historical revisionism is that during World War II France mostly sided with the Nazis. There were French resistance fighters and such, but nothing like the popular fiction perpetuated after the fact. Today history is taught in a politically correct fashion where somehow a small group of Germans somehow managed to simultaneously conquer and hold most of Europe as omnipresent fascist occupiers with heroic resistance fighters everywhere, when really that isn't the case. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Germany was behind Hitler, and a lot of the nations that he conquered more or less wound up siding with him willingly, the guy was highly charismatic and an international man of the year, and not quite as crazy as people like to let on after the fact. If the way things are presented in today's media and even educational centers were true, he could never have held this together due to a simple lack of manpower, as opposed to coming two milimeters away from conquering the entire world. It's just today we want to present the Germans as our friends so we play up the resistance in germany, we overlook the role nations like Italy and Romania played, and we pretty much hold to a diplomatic agreement with France.
See, what happened with France is that after some relatively token resistance it decided to surrender to Hitler and more or less welcomed the Germans. It wound up providing both troops and logistical support for other areas he was campaigning in. When the tide of the war began to turn France realized that whether Germany won or lost it was going to get decimated, so it pretty much switched sides. This saved the allies a lot of time, trouble, and manpower and in return the war department more or less agreed to present France as a straightforward ally from that point onward to present historical backlash, and what you learn now is more or less part of that. Basically France played both sides and did whatever benefitted France at the moment. This is where the "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" comes from, France having arguably surrendered TWICE in World War II, first to germany, and then to the allies. The stereotype kind of being of the fat Frenchman telling people whatever they want to hear
while he munches his cheese and just lets everything go to hell around him.
I learned this while in school since I'm just old enough to have had history teachers who were veterans of World War II, and really they had some interesting things to say about it. I think a lot of Franco-American relations comes from the perceptions of "The Greatest Generation", and to a lesser extent from some of the younger Baby Boomers raised by them and closer to those events. Things change as the changes to the educational system and history become the truth te younger generation learns... and really that's the point of historical reinventionism.
Franco-American relations are not helped by things like the "Oil For Food Scandal" (look it up, I've posted links before, and it's fairly complicated). In short France was one of the few nations that opposed the "War On Terror" going into Iraq, and did so on grounds of being "peace loving". Later we found after going into Iraq that France had been exploiting the "Oil For Food" program to engage in general trade with an otherwise embargoed country. The point of the program being to prevent the people from starving while otherwise trying to hammer it's economy since Iraq was dependant on food imports. The whole "we will not use food as a weapon" schtick which is something I could say a lot about on it's own. Basically for all of it's pretensions of other reasons, France was not supporting the effort because it (this does not go for everyone, but I believe Germany was involved to an extent as well) was making money in violation of treaties, and feared an invasion would out this (which it did) and put an end to that trade at the very least. France being concerned over the new Iraqi goverment acknowleging debts owed to France didn't help matters much either.
Now, before anyone argues with me, I'm just explaining why a lot of people think what they do. If you happen to disagree or have learned things differantly that's fine, I'm just saying I understand the mentality and a lot of the history behind it. The bottom line is that France is viewed as largely being fair weather friends, who tend to only act in their own immediate best interests and don't really care about what happens to anyone else. A bunch of guys who will be your buddy one second, but then slide a knife into your back if they see a better deal from somewhere else.
Is this reputation fairly deserved, with the stories being entirely accurate? That goes beyond the scope of the point I'm making. All I'll say is that while I don't consider the French enemies, I am very wary of trusting them as a nation.
Before anyone gets into US Bashing, I will say that with the US our issue in counterpoint is mostly that we're a group of meddlers who tend to work through proxies by empowering groups of people we think woll change things more to our interests or what we consider to be the greater good, oftentimes with unforseen consequences. We also are viewed as having a sort of "Cowboy" mentality where we're willing to do whatever we think is right, regardless of
the existing social order or reasons for events. We can however be trusted, and oddly as much as a lot of people dislike us for it, things like our support of Isreal (when it would be much easier to just throw it to the dogs, which a lot of people want us to do) shows that we generally honor our agreements even when it becomes incredibly inconveinent to do so. There are good points and bad points to this. However when you consider the US tendencies you can see why having a reputation for nearly complete self interest doesn't always sit well.
All of this also plays to a lot of stereotypes you see like the French temptresses and schemers and such throughout the media, and it's very rare to see a French hero, and if you do see one (in a supporting role if nothing else) it's usually still in the role of a cunning schemer. In comparison while we have our massive disagreements with the UK for example, you'll notice that British heroes are portrayed somewhat differantly and accross a wider gamut due to better relations with that nation. As odd as it might sound that we get along better with the culture we rebelled against, it's still our parent culture, and again everything was still pretty straightforward between us. The French, the guys who helped us, arguably did that entirely out of self interest and that helps mitigate a lot of the gratitude.
