|
American in Paris |
 |
|
LIBERATION of FRANCE |
|
|
French people shocked as
USA bombs Parisian targets
By KENNETH DREYFACK
of TheColumnists.com
Paris, 7 July 2003--In what many Parisians believed to be a warm up for next Monday’s Bastille Day fireworks, local residents here were awakened during the early morning hours Monday by an unprecedented display of 21st century technology and airborne ballistics. The skies over the French capital literally exploded with bursts of red, white and blue as U.S. aircraft based on carriers in the English Channel and Mediterranean carried out more than 1,200 sorties, the first step in an open-ended US “liberation and pacification program.”
Pentagon officials said the carefully planned, perfectly coordinated action, which they described as a campaign of “astonishment and trepidation,” involved the pinpoint targeting of key objectives throughout the city. The officials, apparently unaware that red, white and blue are also the hues of the French ‘tricolor’ flag, said the targets included hidden fried potato factories, underground cellars where wine and other potentially hazardous substances were being secretly stored, and lots where obtuse, risqué propaganda art films were in production.
The overnight display of U.S. air power and high technology came in the wake of weeks of U.S. sword rattling. At first, few people here took the threat of invasion very seriously. The experts at the Quai d’Orsay dismissed last month’s sighting of a Navy submarine off the starboard side of a bateau mouche on the Seine as just another Pentagon foul-up. “Some lower level strategist confused Chirac with Iraq and then entered the computer coordinates for the wrong presidential palace. Boy, will they be embarrassed,” one senior foreign ministry official confided to me.
Then tourist ministry officials explained the stationing of the Fifth Fleet off the French Riviera as a perk for troops returning from the Middle East. Commanders were rewarding rank-and-file sailors, they said, by permitting them to use high-powered optics and night vision devices to view topless bathers and various other raucous carryings-on before their return to bases in sedate Newport News, Virginia.
 |
no coastal defenses, but I think we ought to send a recon crew to check out this beach!" |
 |
The French veterans administration said that the only reason U.S. aircraft carriers would be positioned in the English Channel would be as part of a D-Day commemoration. Others suggested that the ships were loaded with handlebars, kick stands, spare tires and Gatorade, in support of the American teams entered in this year’s edition of the month-long Tour de France bicycle race that began Saturday.
It wasn’t until Donald Rumsfeld declared that the French would have to pay the price for undermining U.S. security by embarrassing, in his words, "my dear friend 'Corky’ Powell" at the UN, that senior officials here perked up their ears. Repeated references by unnamed Pentagon experts to the ‘sensitive’ biological research conducted at the Pasteur Institute further contributed to the sense that hostile U.S. action could not be ruled out.
U.S. suspiciousness over
French loyalty dates back at least to the 1960s, when French
President Charles de Gaulle withdrew his country from NATO’s
allied military command, which was subsequently relocated from
France to now suspicious Belgium. Indeed, some administration
officials are already suggesting that once France has been pacified,
positions here could be used to support liberation campaigns
in Belgium and Germany. More recently, high-level officials in
the White House, State Department and Pentagon have been deeply
upset as groups of French intellectuals, labor leaders and other
subversives have repeatedly criticized Big Macs, Walt Disney
and SUVs.
According to one White House insider, President Bush took it
as a personal affront when French President Chirac showed no
interest in a satellite TV link which would have enabled him
to view Texas revival meetings at the Elysées Palace.
Mr. Bush is said to have cited the incident as a sign of “the
moral decay that is leading the French down the road to insecurity
and damnation.”
Asked about the justification for the action, White House officials strongly denied reports linking last night’s invasion to an altercation during the 1960s during which a waiter in a Paris restaurant is said to have intentionally spilled chocolate mousse on the lap of George Bush, the President’s father, after Bush criticized DeGaulle. The officials also rejected outright suggestions that the administration was motivated by desires to gain control of prize industrial resources, including Airbus Industrie, the aircraft manufacturer that has competed successfully against Boeing Corp., and the TGV, France’s high speed train. “Ridiculous,” commented one White House official. “The President has never even ridden in a train or a bus.”
One senior Republican who
is believed to be close to members of the staff at WHISPER, the
White House Office for Information Enhancement, Staging, and
Performance, explained confidentially that the ‘pacification’
program is aimed to win over the hearts, minds and souls of the
French population. “We’re doing this for only one reason,”
he confided. “Because it’s right.”
©2003 by Kenneth Dreyfack. The illustrations are from IMSI's
Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael,
CA, 94901-5506, USA.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Kenneth Dreyfack. To send
an email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |