On NRO, Denis Boyles provides an amusing roundup of the Europress. Excerpt:
Most of us knew a war in Syria wasn't really the plan. But if you have a big, victorious army sitting around, you might as well use it as a way of leveraging a little serious attention, no? Non! The reaction of the French, the Germans, and the Left-wing Brits shows why Europeans can't play poker, and instead prefer games of pure chance, like roulette and driving in Italy. The quintessentially American skill of turning a card and making a bluff is just lost on them. Anybody could play a busted flush and make a French poker player fold. (Insert French surrender joke here.) For Le Figaro even sending Dom de Villepin, the French minister of strangeness (a literal translation, sort of), to Syria was "playing a risky game." Fortunately, the paper says, the Americans don't seem to care any more what de Villepin does or says, while the Syrians may have not taken him very seriously, either. As the paper points out, the Syrians have to ask themselves, "If Washington leans on [us], what will France be able to do to help? Why would France be more effective in a Syrian crisis than in the Iraqi crisis?"
Even better, it appears that this will be a regular feature.
Posted by oscarjr at April 16, 2003 08:58 AM | TrackBack