…in trying to transmute the fog of [France's] runup to the war into glory, the book may provide more clarity than intended: L'Inconnu de l'Élysée, the country's top nonfiction best seller, while idealizing Chirac's role, brings unexpected new support to a thesis that France's government was not so much struggling to save humanity as looking out for Numéro Un.
Innumerable Frenchmen, -women, pundits, journalists lionized Jacques Chirac for "having the balls" to stand up to George W. Bush in the Iraq crisis (not least in our comments section), but as
John Vinocur points out, the French government was flip-flopping all the way. As he says, "France's lurching pursuit of the best yield for itself in the runup left it totally short of what its leaders hoped their opposition would bring."
[The book] credits the idea that France maneuvered for months while considering whether to participate in an American-led invasion of Iraq. And it suggests that Villepin, after summoning the United Nations Security Council to rise in opposition against America, actually thought that France could not sustain its position and would "link up with the United States" before the war began in March 2003.
John Vinocur asked
Pierre Péan about
Villepin's wobbling. He replied, "It's an ultra-sensitive subject, an essential subject, but one I didn't sort out. No one wants to talk about it today. It's a place where there was a problem."
No wonder; it's easier (including for
Péan himself) to talk (and to crow) about principles, standards, and glorious times.
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