Tsunami: Chirac Is Concerned

What about?

I mean, what is it about the horrendous tsunami disaster that the ever-wise, -lucid, -rational, -Cartesian French are concerned about, and that they can edify us retards and/or simpletons about?

What is the biggest threat facing mankind at this time? (Surely not Uncle Sam again?)

… [Jacques] Chirac was concerned that the U.S. tsunami aid operation had sidestepped traditional UN channels. This followed a U.S. decision to form a separate aid coalition with Australia, Japan and India, all key regional powers with substantial resources.

Brian Knowlton explains in the International Herald Tribune that the Tuesday meetings between the EU and the U.S. "came after France, in particular, had grumbled over a U.S. official's suggestion that France was not being particularly generous, and as President Jacques Chirac was reported to be growing increasingly concerned that U.S. aid efforts were designed to circumvent the United Nations in potentially damaging ways."

Needless to say, when France criticizes America about anything, the "comments" are always "pertinent" and said in nothing more than an oh-so-friendly manner, mais quoi. Let's read on…

The account, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported that Chirac, without openly criticizing the Bush administration, feared "that Washington is deliberately circumventing the United Nations and wants to compete with the international organization."

It said, without citing its sources, that "President Chirac wants to hinder America from using its ad hoc-organized aid operation to set a precedent that will lastingly weaken the role of the United Nations."

It quoted him as having said publicly that the tsunami had provided proof that the fate of all people "cannot be separated from that of our planet" and that global organizations like the UN must therefore be strengthened.

Not all of this is edifying

Meanwhile, Roger Cohen adds that

Jacques Chirac, the French president, sees a chance to place the United Nations, rather than the United States, at the center of an international initiative that plays to the image he seeks to cultivate of Europe as peacemaker and donor. His government has proposed the creation of a global civil protection force to intervene in such emergencies, a form of intervention that could scarcely be more distinct from that of American forces in Iraq.

The United Nations, hurt by the oil-for-food scandal, battling the image of ineffective talk-shop, sees an opportunity to demonstrate its ability to coordinate an emergency relief operation. Its bureaucrats have become loquacious, indulged by European television networks with on-air time to fill.

Not all of this is edifying. …