"No Respect" and "Total Inhumanity" Displayed by American Troops During "the Days of Terror" in Louisiana

Listening to France Inter a couple of days ago, a friend told me that he heard an attack on America that was so vitriolic that somebody as anti-American as renowned America-basher Serge Moati (his leftist interlocutor) felt the need to defend the Yanks. It's hard to believe that it could be worse than what comes below.

We are reaching the limits of surrealism [with] this "gem" of smugness and anti-Americanism

writes Julien Regnard as he points to the editorial in the September 8 issue of Paris Match.

Un hélicoptère de l’armée américaine se pose au milieu de la cour de récréation [de la Louisiane]. Le vacarme est assourdissant. La caméra montre les visages effrayés, les femmes serrant leurs enfants dans les bras. Des soldats jaillissent de l’hélicoptère, fusil d’assaut à l’épaule. Prennent position. Comme en Irak. … Une scène d’une inhumanité totale. … Même [si les Noirs] souffrent, s’ils meurent, comme ces jours d’épouvante en Louisiane, la première réponse n’est pas humanitaire. Mais militaire. L’Amérique de Bush reproduit, par réflexe, sur son propre sol, ce qu’elle entend faire partout dans le monde, en Irak, ailleurs : sécuriser de force un territoire sans respect pour les peuples. Y compris le sien, quand il est de couleur. Elle ne sait pas aimer, aider les plus pauvres, leur tendre la main. Elle parle sans cesse de la Bible et du Bien mais « évangélise » avec ses soldats qui patrouillent pour rassurer les « bons citoyens », contre les autres.

If we continue down that road [comments Julien], the countries of Eastern Europe will have no choice but to create a Radio Free Europe to send information to the West to fight against the official propaganda. With the difference being that the peoples of Western Europe are willing to believe in that propaganda blindly.

What may be the most disgusting about this is that during the Iraq war, Paris Match was one of the few to support the war against a dictator like Saddam Hussein, and the editor minced no words about it.

But, as I have said before, the pressure to conform in this, the land of debate and dialog and openness and tolerance and rationality, is so relentless that in order to survive, you must not only prove yourself "plus royaliste que le roi", you must become "plus royaliste que le roi".

(Another sad example is a French writer, who admitted (as I will show tomorrow) that he finally turned against the war he had defended publicly throughout 2003 because of unceasing pressure from friends (sic) and family…)