The Moral High Ground

1:36 pm, 11/21/04

The Moral High Ground
You may have heard that the government of Ivory Coast accuses France of some pretty icky things. Like, say, mass murder.

Ivory Coast accused French troops of killing up to 60 people during an anti-French demonstration in the commercial capital, Abidjan, last week.

Or, worse.

Cardinal Bernard Agre said last week he had seen young girls decapitated by the French army - a charge President Gbagbo said he believed to be true.

This testimony by the prelate was reported by all the people who were present at the siege of the Hotel Ivoire by the French army and all those who were in the hospitals[.]"

Of course, the French say it's not true: The Ivorians are just racist xenophobes, they explain, and the President is just trying to fuel anti-French hatred with his lies. The New York Times agrees, saying France is being unfairly "cast as the villain". (If you really want to get surreal, France even tries to blame the Jews.)

There's just one problem for France, here: People at the Hotel Ivoire had cameras, and they caught the horrific massacre, right down to the headless bodies. The short version is that these guys were singing, dancing, mooning the French, having a good ole' time, when the troops surrounding them decided to machine gun the men, women, and children for no apparent reason. I say "no apparent reason" because they certainly aren't threatened in any way by the crowd: The French troops do not move into cover, they just stand there, happily slaughtering their colonial livestock. Further, if they had a justification, there would be little reason to try to deny that the event took place. No, this is no machete-wielding mob, and the French certainly take their time about packing up and leaving.

The two video clips that are circulating are a combined 20 minutes and 200 megabytes, and I've spliced them together... replaced the old video clip I was running with a back-to-back versions of the two 10 minutes clips, that are instead only about 15 mb. So, about 10 minutes in you switch to another camera's point of view on the same event. You can see it below by clicking on "Continue Reading".

Let me just add a couple thoughts:

First: To make sure we're on the same page with the international community, we need to realize that if an American Marine shoots a terrorist who is playing possum and likely waiting for a chance to kill him, he should be tried for murder. However, if a terrorist kidnaps a western woman, tears off her arms and legs, guts her, and leaves her corpse to rot in the streets of Fallujah, her face smashed in beyond recognition, that man is a freedom fighter.

Similarly, if a small group of American prison guards make prisoners wear panties on their heads, even if all those people are already being investigated and punished when the press arrives on the scene, it still proves the Americans are a brutal army of occupation of a type not seen since the Third Reich, they have no respect for foreign cultures, and this deserves round the clock media hysterics. This just proves that a war with 40 nations behind it is still wrong, even if it's freeing millions of people. However, if French troops casually machine-gun a rather jovial group of singing men, women, and children as part of a truly unilateral invasion to topple a democratically elected government in favor of Islamic thugs, they are very talented peacekeepers, and genocide and mass murder should be overlooked by the media. After all, "the international community", which apparently so loves human rights that they wanted to keep the people of Iraq enslaved for the foreseeable future, has been screaming bloody murder about all this imperialism and usurpation and bloodshed, in Ivory Coast, right? ...Right? *crickets*


Second: Two years ago, when France was planning this monstrous venture (while hypocritically opposing the "unilateralism" of our plans for Iraq, all the while taking bribe money from Saddam), anti-French protests broke out in front of the US Embassy in Ivory Coast. One man held the sign above. "USA we need your help. Chirac is another Ben Laden. He is killing democracy in Ivory Coast." It looks like that little "another Ben Laden" prophecy came true in front of the Hotel Ivoire. Whether or not 60 people were killed (there's no way to get a handle on numbers from this), this is hardly Kent State: The French are in their vehicles, on open terrain. They clearly don't feel threatened, but I digress.

What especially repulses me about the French position on the Iraq war is not their opposition to it: It's that they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. They wanted the political benefits of opposing George Bush without the consequences of siding with Saddam Hussein. International relationships don't work that way: You either pick a side, or it's none of your business. In any bitter argument, people's friends stick up for them, but unknown third parties who try to inject their opinions unbidden do so at their own grave personal risk. That's why I strongly feel that the United States should not waffle on this: Let's side with the Ivorians, against the French, in every conceivable way. (What are they going to do? Launch their mighty neutron bombs?)

A fun thing for our new Secretary of State to do would be to summon the French ambassador to the White House and explain that they leave Ivory Coast and cut their support for the rebels, or their diplomatic staff leaves the United States and faces an Ivory Coast that will become better armed every single day with American weapons of mysterious provenance.

Of course, that's just the ideal, not something actually likely to happen. That's why I encourage you to call the French Embassy (202-944-6195) and politely explain that you don't appreciate their filth on our soil as long as their filth is on Ivorian soil. Alternately, you can pass by the nearest French consulate and spit on their front door. Consulates are located in Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Franciso, Houston, Atlanta, New York, and Boston.

Better yet, you could always organize a "French Out!" protest in front of your local consulate. You get bonus points if Jesse Jackson shows up. (Or Al Sharpton, who I'm told is now also available for bat mitzahs.) After all, if they were sophisticated Europeans, the French wouldn't likely have done that. What's important is that Our Oldest Enemy (TM) gets the message: Even if our government is diplomatically unable to react to these things, we aren't Continental peasants: We have minds of our own, and we'll remember this.

(Although, it's fairly amusing to watch the chronic Euro denial on this discussion board. "This is Ivorian propaganda! You see what they want you to see!" "It's actual video of what happened." "Africans are dangerous! They were protecting the hotel from the mob! If they got inside, they'd rape the Westerners!" "Uh, they left the hotel unguarded immediately after, so I don't think that's it..." "Well, they evacuated the Westerners in their APCs!" "No they didn't. Watch the video. Good try, though." "Uhm... Bush is stupid! So hah!")

Anyway, here's the movie. Before you watch, do realize that it gets very graphic.

Update: It's worth pointing out, just to be clear, that there are things we don't know here: You can't really tell what happened in the immediate moment leading up to the shooting, but it's clear that the French did not believe they were not in any danger. You also can't accurately guess just how many people were killed/wounded. What is quite clear, though, is that it happened. More on Ivory Coast here, also some spin on Gbagbo and conflicting media accounts of what was going on in the video.)