"Not Unusual" for French Citizens (and Reporters!) to Agree Wholeheartedly with Their Government's Foreign Policy

In his second International Herald Tribune article on Monday, Roger Cohen interviews Georges Malbrunot, recently released after four months in the hands of Islamic militants in Iraq.

Captured on Aug. 20 on the road from Baghdad to Najaf, held in five different locations, tried by a self-styled Islamic court, Malbrunot and his Arabic-speaking colleague, Christian Chesnot, 38, of Radio France Internationale, came away with an impression of a well-organized movement that had a clear strategy. A militant who said he had trained in Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps listed the objectives as: the overthrow of the Egyptian and Saudi regimes; the defeat of American forces in Iraq; the driving of a wedge between Europe and the United States; the re-creation of the Arab caliphate; and the prosecution on a wide front of a war against the West, depicted as one of self-defense.

…From the outset, Malbrunot and Chesnot made much of France's opposition to the war and said they identified with their government's position.

"I think we are alive today because we are French," Malbrunot said.

The article gives a lot of information about the men who kidnapped Malbrunot, a former actor, and Chesnot, but the point of this post is that, unfortunately, it gives more information about the mainstream media, both abroad and in the United States. Just read the introductory paragraph:

[The French reporter] gives a blunt assessment of where America's Iraqi war is headed: "Straight into a wall."

Not an unusual view for a Frenchman, given the country's opposition to the war.

Can you ever imagine a journalist, American or foreign, saying that an American citizen's support for the Iraq war is "not unusual", given the Bush administration's support for same?! And that citizen, to boot, is (supposed to be) an objective, fact-finding journalist?

There are so many things to write about in what is supposed to be an uncontroversial sentence that I hardly know where to start… Let's try anyway:

• People outside the United States, or Frenchmen, at least, think it entirely normal for the country's citizens to support their government's foreign policy (at least in its general direction);
• When a given country's reporters and national media (and citizens) echo their governments' (self-serving opinions), that testimony is not put into doubt at all;
• What is worst is that members of America's mainstream media — who are so ready (and rightly so) to question a domestic opinion-maker — accept this without blinking, without even thinking twice.