Latest News: "Because Iran Isn't Weak Enough, Bush Doesn't Dare Attack"

Another self-serving editorial from Le Figaro. As the Iraq war broke out, the French were predicting that the American foot-soldier, "that spoiled child of modern war", reared "with cereal at breakfast and deoderant" in the comfortable homes of suburbia, would not put up much of a fight. When he did, the French turned to calling him a blood-thirsty scoundrel. (Who cares what the accusation is, right? As long as it makes the American a caricature, one to be mocked, pitied, or castigated.)

Now that George W. Bush hasn't acted against Tehran, Le Figaro is suggesting that… the Americans are cowardly again.

when, even for the United States, the designated adversary is not weak enough … Bush doesn't dare attack

writes Charles Lambroschini, totally oblivious to the fact that a nation's, or an administration's, or a man's, timetable may not be the same as his own (or his own nation's), and that in matters of war (as in peace, for that matter), one does not necessarily go around announcing one's intentions and plans… (I suppose that prior to June 1944, the editor would have opined that if the Allies fought the Italian army in Sicily and the Germans in North Africa, they would never dare cross swords with the armed forces of the Third Reich on the continent.)

With its 70 million inhabitants … that country [Iran] is too big a bite to swallow. … Because the GIs deployed in the South [of the Korean peninsula] run the risk of vitrification, that country [North Korea] has [also] become untouchable.

The entire tone, needless to say, is replete with condescending phrases about America:

Three years after the fall of New York's towers under the blows of Ben Laden's kamikazes, international politics seems to obey only two rules: the law of the strongest and the law of the richest.

here are quite a number of Iraqis, Monsieur Lambroschini, who would tell you that was exactly how life was for people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. (Oh, and regarding international politics, that was also how life was under the UN's oil-for-food program.) But you never did pay much attention to those people, did you?

Faced with the axis of evil, George W. Bush is thus the only judge. He is the one who condemns and he is the one who pardons.

Mon Dieu!