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[quote=bana2166]FRENCH TWISTED: Washington - DON'T HELP PARIS RAPE AFRICA

By RALPH PETERS

June 19, 2006 -- THIS spring, I visited French-speaking West Africa. Wherever I went, two things remained consistent: The French government was hated, and Africans looked to Washington for a square deal.

How naive of the Africans! Please say it ain't so!

President Jacques Chirac and his racist minions know it, and they don't like it, and they're trying to do something about it: Sucker America into showing "solidarity with an ally in the War on Terror." The French want our military and diplomatic cooperation - but not our economic presence, of course. Let me translate what the parasites of Paris really mean: "Support our brutality and exploitation of West Africa, stiff-arm tens of millions of Africans yearning to be free of French neo-imperialism - and just maybe we clever Frenchmen will toss you stupid Americans a little bone now and then."

And we're in danger of falling for it.

[I]As if we Americans have a choice when dealing with Africans: The French have been there longer. They know the AFrican systems like the back of their hands. We are so slow openeing up to other cultures not present on our soil, so slow learning other languages, so bad at embracing the world, we have no choice but to go through the French if we really want to get involved in African affairs. [/i]

In the half-century since France thrust a phony independence on colonies such as Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali, the French government and French business interests have looted everything they possibly could. To Paris, African "independence" meant business as usual, except that Paris would no longer accept any responsibility for the welfare of the local populations.

It was a free ride for the Frogs, guaranteed by a French military that had failed everywhere else, but remained sufficiently competent to bully unarmed Africans.

Reminds me of the 94-95 invasion of Haiti. What did the American soldiers do but stand by, watch and call it "Haitian on Haitian crime" while the goons of CIA-trained Raoul Cedras led by CIA asset Toto Constant went on rampages with weapons provided by the Washington-based International Republican Institute leading to more than 5000 documented deaths?

One French government after another supported pro-Paris strongmen, from the relatively benign Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, who merely bankrupted his country with nutty construction projects, to Jean Bedell-Bokassa, a literal cannibal who frequently played host to then-President Valery Giscard-D'Estaing.

The Africans should talk to the Latin Americans first before they naively jump on the band wagon of Washington as purveyor of freedom: they should first learn about the sick strongmen that we have propped up, men like Somoza, Stroessner, D'Aubuisson in Salvador, canibals like Francois Duvalier and all their clicks of thieves and murderers who have ruled Latin America until very recently

At least Houphouet-Boigny tried to build something in his country. What do Latin Americans have to show, but misery, for the untold billions we have helped steal from their countries?

But the winds of freedom have been blowing, often in unexpected places. The era of African "Big Men" is over, even if a few linger on. And Africans want real freedom this time, not French colonization in disguise.

In Ivory Coast, the French utterly mismanaged a 2002 rebellion they thought they could manipulate. Their efforts at playing the factions off against each other exploded, shattering a country that had been a source of pride and great profit to Paris. Muslim or Christian, northerner or southerner, the one commonality I found among the people of Ivory Coast was that they all now hate the French.

Even in Senegal, the country that has had the most benign relationship with France, the people are tired of French bullying and condescension. Throughout the region, animosity toward Paris - especially the ham-handed government of Jacques Chirac - has reached a tipping point past which legitimate anger threatens to turn into irrational fury.

In Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, I even found myself in the unusual position of defending the French, arguing that nobody could be as omnipresent and cagey as my local friend believed French agents to be.

We hear a great deal about global anti-Americanism, but, as this column has noted, much of it is superficial or concentrated among the usual suspects, while a tremendous reservoir of goodwill toward us is still overflowing in much of the world. Even those who reflexively complain about American power long for a green card.

In West Africa, everyone has a friend or relative, or the friend of a relative, in one of New York's boroughs or in Chicago. Their vision of America is of hardworking immigrants building prosperous lives impossible elsewhere. The American dream is alive and well - in Dakar or Abidjan.

Ask the African street vendors in NYC what kind of dream they're living.

In contrast, West Africans know that their relatives imprisoned in the suburban slums of Paris or Lyon have no hope of getting ahead, but suffer relentless discrimination.

As a result, street-level Africans consistently express tremendous good will toward Americans (although they're mystified by African-American heritage tourists who complain about their lot - Africans would gladly swap places).

How is this argument any less racist? So African-Americans should be happy. Eventhough every stat should that they're faring worse than anyone else in the country they helped build for free.

Either George Bush or Bill Clinton could win an election by a landslide in any West African country I visited.

Meanwhile, the French know they're in trouble. They know that their African victims are sick and tired of being robbed and treated as inferiors. They want the French out of their economies, out of their elections and out of their countries.

The French response is to offer "cooperation" with the United States. Implying none too subtly that "white powers should stick together, after all," they misread the times and they wildly misread America. For our part, we can only lose prestige, influence and goodwill by being associated with the French in West Africa.

This is the kind of argument the French so eloquently call "la fuite en avant". You take a perfect valid, true-and-tested idea, you state it first and then you begin to tear it apart. Which does not diminish the idea in any way.

Indeed white powers have been sticking together on the backs of non-whites ever since Cro Magnon crawled out of his cave. And it's been good for business. Why would that change now? Any nation who thinks it can play one white power against another is naive and doomed to fail. There's nothing new under the sun.

At least the historically hypocritical French were being honest for once: "White Interests" is a formula that has worked for white powers again and again: it worked in 1697 when the French "convinced" Spain to split Ayiti/Hispaniola with them. It worked in 1791-1804 when the USA and Europe agreed to keep quiet about the successful slave revolt that led to Haiti's independence. The US were protecting white interests when for 60 years they refused to recognize Haiti's independence and existence as a free Nation. "White Interests" as a formula worked again in 1885 when the Europeans carved up Africa. It worked in 2004 when France and the US conspired to overthrow the popularly elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to keep him from taking the lid off the REPARATIONcan of worms (all the while giving Canada its first true try at colonial enterprising)

But that's the point, as far as Paris is concerned: The Chirac government wants to present a united Western front to Africans yearning for real freedom, to show them that Washington isn't an alternative because America's on France's side.

This duplicity is especially dangerous, given that many French-speaking African countries have majority-Muslim populations - Muslims who are not anti-American. On the contrary, they practice tolerant, local forms of Islam and resent Wahhabi extremist efforts to "purify" their religion.

Islam is deathly sick in its Middle Eastern heartland, but it's vibrant and healthy on its frontiers, from Jakarta through Dakar to Detroit. The struggle for the future of Islam is cruel and discouraging in the Middle East, but elsewhere the good guys are winning.

Again the French know the "Muslim question" better than we can ever hope to. That's why they stayed away when Bush no naively plunged ahead. The French have too much at stake. Not because they're cowards, as we so stereotypically like to portrait them, but because Islam is by the sheer number of adherents to the faith the second most popular religion in France: they could not afford to alienate such an important segemnt of their fellow countrymen by joining an extremely unpopular war.

By accepting the proffered French embrace in Africa, we risk needlessly alienating tens of millions of Muslims who are our natural allies in the war against Arab fanaticism.

Certainly, we should cooperate with France when it's genuinely in our interests. But, in West Africa, the cooperation Paris wants is a sham that would benefit only French neo-colonialists, while doing America's image and cause great harm.

If we really believe in freedom and democracy, we should stand up for the striving people of Africa, not for the crumpled imperialists on the Seine.

When we get involved in Africa, we'll be standing up for our own self-interests. Just as the French have done. The Africans only need to look every else we have been involved for proof.

Ralph Peters' new book, "Never Quit the Fight: BS works," will be released on July 10