Mali is part of Francophone Africa. Les Frogs regard that remnant of their Empire as their plaything.
Ministers have confirmed that Britain is \”committed to supporting\” a European Union training mission that would put up to 500 European troops into Mali within weeks.
So this EU thing means that British lives and money must be put on the line to defend France\’s sphere of influence in its ex-Empire.
And when the Argentine hordes descend again upon Port Stanley we\’ll be able to call upon Les Grognards, won\’t we?
Will we fucking buggery.
I\’m afraid that the only solution is to nuke Paris. Fortunately this is a solution that would have the full, even ecstatic, support of every non-Parisian Frenchman.
The French won’t fight for the French, let alone us.
Tell them they are fighting on the side of the Argentines, and they might get involved in a South Atlantic conflict. They only fight properly against the perfidious Albion.
when I was a soldier, whenever there was abstract mention of ‘the enemy’ a comment from the back of the room would always be made to the effect that it was understood the reference must to the French
generally along the lines of the sentiment in your penultimate sentence
how refreshing to hear it once more
ND – clearly you weren’t in a Scottish regiment. He Auld Alliance dies hard.
Al-Qaeda has a base in Stanley?
To be fair the French were pretty helpful to us during the Falklands. Read Thatcher’s and Nott’s memoirs on the subject.
And I’m not sure we actually wanted French troops helping us take Goose Green or Mt Tumbledown.
The logistics alone of having to plan military actions around their need for 5 course dinners would have been insurmountable.
@Shinsei67: it was more “a tous azimuths”. They supplied Mirages for some dissimilar air combat training and details of the missiles they had supplied Argentina…but also had an Aerospatiale team in Argentina integrating the AM39’s onto the Super Etendards. Trusting them is a fools errand 🙁
I’m afraid that the only solution is to nuke Paris. Fortunately this is a solution that would have the full, even ecstatic, support of every non-Parisian Frenchman.
Well that is a bit harsh. There are things about Paris worth saving. The statue of Joan of Arc for instance. And …. Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. And …..
Well anything from before the Revolution. What we need is the inverse of a nuclear bomb. Not one that turns the centre of Paris to plasma, but one that does so to everything beyond the mediaeval walls. And if it kills all the people, well, c’est guerre.
Britain has always prospered when it has fought the French with the help of Germans. Time to remember that.
Realpolotik. Cameron is desperate to make friends in Europe just now.
John Davis:Realfoolery.
We could sacrifice the entire British army for them and the French would still look down their nose at us. It is just more confirmation, as if any were needed, of what a fool Cameron is.
France withdrew all technical support from Argentina after the invasion, and gave us full details of the kit they’d sold the Argies.
“I’m afraid that the only solution is to nuke Paris. Fortunately this is a solution that would have the full, even ecstatic, support of every non-Parisian Frenchman.”
The inhabitants of Royan, on the Atlantic coast are said to have lined the streets & cheered the arrival of the German occupiers. You have to have heard of the treatment of the Vendee by the Revolutionary Council to understand why those feelings endured for well over a century.
I, for one, applaud attempts to put together a multi-national force under the auspices of the EU in support of the legitimate government of Mali. In French, I guess we could call it the “Corps d’Afrique”. I wonder what that is in German.
“I’m afraid that the only solution is to nuke Paris.”
Overkill. As I’ve been saying for ages, the solution to this, as to all of the EU’s woes, is to abolish France. Return the French Occupied Territories (FrOTs) to the various neighbours they were stolen from – it’s about time we got Aquitaine back – and by that time there’s little enough left that ‘France’ would no longer be Europe’s albatross.
“To be fair the French were pretty helpful to us during the Falklands”
I do remember reading the French supplied them with weapons then us with the specs 🙂
A bit unfair.
French troops fought in Afghanistan, France took the lead in the intervention in Libya.
OK, they didn’t join in when the US and UK invaded Iraq. But France is an independent country with its own foreign policy, and they therefore get to do that. And – whatever Chirac’s motivations – in hindsight was that decision so clearly wrong?
We need a bit more Gaullisme in our own foreign policy, I reckon.
Many years ago I remember someone describing France as the country that the neutron bomb was invented for.
Will the French fight for us ? Probably not but then why should they, they are an independent nation with their own interests to look after which they do pretty effectively. If only we had leaders with the balls to do the same. As for fighting them on the same side side as the Hun, no thanks and I’m very glad that we weren’t daft enough to do that on the last two occasions it all kicked off in Euro land. I have now revealed myself as that dreadful thing, a non Francophobe Englishman, I shall turn myself in immediately.
Thornavis>
“Will the French fight for us ?”
Well, now you mention it, it’s more likely that they’ll surrender than fight, whoever they’re doing it for.
“As for fighting them on the same side side as the Hun, no thanks and I’m very glad that we weren’t daft enough to do that on the last two occasions it all kicked off in Euro land.”
The two World Wars were (admittedly rather large) anomalies. The historic balance in Europe has been an Anglo-German alliance opposed to French hegemony.
There were Germans fighting alongside the English at any battle you care to mention, from the Battle of Hastings, Agincourt, Blenheim, Waterloo, and the rest.
Dave
Germans but not Germany, there’s a difference you know. Actually I hadn’t heard there were any Germans at Agincourt, do you have a link ? As for Hastings can we use terms such as German or even English that far back and don’t forget the Normans were Vikings.
This business of the Froggies being serial surrenderers, how true is it ? Not very I’d say, they’ve had their share of defeats and their record against the Hun is about as good as ours at Wembley but if anything I’d say the claim that they are always ready to give in is the reverse of the truth, Merde even.
Thornavis. – “As for fighting them on the same side side as the Hun, no thanks and I’m very glad that we weren’t daft enough to do that on the last two occasions it all kicked off in Euro land.”
Well the last time, there really was no choice – although if we had fought with the Nazis against the Soviets it would have been no worse than fighting with the Soviets against the Nazis.
However the time before that, certainly, as it turned out, we made a bad call. We worked with the French to keep a large and powerful Germany out of a position that its wealth, technology and numbers entitled it to. We should have managed that, and France’s decline, better.
After all, they buried Otto von Hapsburg the other day. A pleasant enough chap. All the Cafe Radicals wanted his family out of power. And they got it. So instead of Franz Josef they got Adolf and Uncle Josef. How did that work out for Europe? It is impossible to know how things would have worked out if Germany had won in 1914, but it is also impossible not to look at Europe after 1919 and think half of it would have been better off under Otto than what they got.
18 Dave – “There were Germans fighting alongside the English at any battle you care to mention, from the Battle of Hastings, Agincourt, Blenheim, Waterloo, and the rest.”
I think the Germans tend to claim that at Waterloo British soldiers fought along side German ones. But Hastings and Agincourt? Isn’t that a stretch? Admittedly Germans tended to serve everyone. Take the First Duke of Schomberg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Schomberg,_1st_Duke_of_Schomberg
Born in Germany with an English mother, he started out fighting for the Dutch, switched to serve the Swedes, went to fight for the French, retired, went back to fight for the Dutch, then rejoined the French Army, where he was sent to command the Portuguese Army, then he returned to rejoin the French Army once more, but as a Protestant, had to flee where he joined the Prussian Army, before rejoining William of Orange to invade Britain in 1688, when he was appointed to command the Ordinance before joining the Army in Ireland and dying at the Battle of the Boyne.
19 Thornavis. – “This business of the Froggies being serial surrenderers, how true is it ? Not very I’d say”
I suspect it is due to the Revolution. Once soldiers are deprived of officers of good family background, character and, you know, the lack of common sense God gave a sheep that only comes through years of interbreeding, their officers won’t stay and die, so the soldiers won’t either. France has a glorious military history pre-Napoleon, the Army lived off that capital for a little while, and then a pretty much unbroken record of losses since.
Britain has been exceptionally fortunate in its upper class.
” if we had fought with the Nazis against the Soviets it would have been no worse than fighting with the Soviets against the Nazis.”
You really are a piece of work…
Nuke Paris?
Timmy, you Philistine. Haven’t you ever heard of nerve gas?
Dave – “You really are a piece of work…”
Explain to me how one would have been more moral than the other.
SMfS
” We worked with the French to keep a large and powerful Germany out of a position that its wealth, technology and numbers entitled it to. We should have managed that, and France’s decline, better. ”
Leaving aside the highly dubious claim that a nation is ‘entitled’ to anything I can’t see that your assertion stands up to scrutiny. Britain at one point actively encouraged Germany to follow a colonialist path and indeed sought an alliance with Germany. Thanks to the Kaiser and hard line nationalists the alliance idea was eventually rejected and colonialism never really took off other than to try and goad the French. Apart from South West Africa where proto = genocide was practised. Imperial Germany was an aggressive expansionist power seeking to dominate entirely through military force and despite Britain’s best efforts to placate it and reluctance to get involved in formal alliances, Germany was bent on displacing Britain, they made enemies out of us, not us out of them.
As for your point about the alliance with the Soviet Union. Morally there may have been nothing much to choose between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but there is no real doubt as to which was the greater immediate threat to Britain. What exactly would have been the purpose of Britain allying itself with Germany against the Soviets ? How could that possibly have been in our interest ? The only reason we found ourselves on the same side as Stalin was because the Nazis double crossed him, they would most certainly have been willing to do the same to us. I really do find it quite amazing that some people’s Francophobia leads them into these unhistorical contortions.
Thornavis. – “Leaving aside the highly dubious claim that a nation is ‘entitled’ to anything I can’t see that your assertion stands up to scrutiny.”
Well if you don’t like the word, you don’t like the word. But you can’t go on treating China like a Third World nonentity when it is now the second largest economy in the world. In the same way, at that time, we could not pretend Britain and France were powers of the first rank while Germany had to do what it was told when in fact it was as powerful as it was. Foreign policy has to be realistic and realistically German Unification meant Germany was not going to be side lined anymore.
“Britain at one point actively encouraged Germany to follow a colonialist path and indeed sought an alliance with Germany.”
At one point perhaps. The Germans did go down that route. The problem was the world was running out of places to colonise – and in Morocco the French and the British worked to make sure Germany got nothing. That was the problem. No more Third World countries to take over. This policy wasn’t going to last long.
“Apart from South West Africa where proto = genocide was practised.”
Allegedly. Germany had some other colonies in Africa too. Plus some islands in the Pacific. They simply came too late to the colonial game. The only way they were going to get more was by taking them from France.
“Imperial Germany was an aggressive expansionist power seeking to dominate entirely through military force and despite Britain’s best efforts to placate it and reluctance to get involved in formal alliances, Germany was bent on displacing Britain, they made enemies out of us, not us out of them.”
I don’t see much evidence of this aggression myself. I see a country powerful enough to sit at the top table, being denied a place. Britain stopped making any effort whatsoever to placate it very early on. They then sided with France which was a thoroughly dissatisfied non-status-quo power which wanted to over turn the existing political arrangement – if ever there was an expansionist power it was France in 1914.
“Morally there may have been nothing much to choose between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but there is no real doubt as to which was the greater immediate threat to Britain.”
I am not sure I even agree with that. But it may be so. The only reason Nazi Germany was a greater threat was that they were closer and we insisted on picking a fight with them. Their aims were to the East.
“What exactly would have been the purpose of Britain allying itself with Germany against the Soviets ? How could that possibly have been in our interest ?”
Because it would have balanced the power of Germany, it would have weakened the threat of Soviet invasion, and with luck they would have bled each other dry.
“The only reason we found ourselves on the same side as Stalin was because the Nazis double crossed him”
Well no. The only reason we found ourselves on the same side as Stalin was Stalin double crossed Hitler – he was supposed to have invaded Poland on the same day. We couldn’t have declared war on both countries. But he didn’t so we only declared war on Germany.
“they would most certainly have been willing to do the same to us.”
I am sure. But how?
“I really do find it quite amazing that some people’s Francophobia leads them into these unhistorical contortions.”
What unhistorical contortions? In 1914 France wanted to over turn the borders of Europe. Germany did not. A weak France wanted to do so and so they sought alliances with everyone against Germany so that they could do so. That upset the balance of power in Europe. They got their way. The result was that thousands of years of history were swept away and the extremists were allowed in. That was not in anyone interests. We were lucky that we did not get either Fascism or Communism but luck was all it was. It isn’t Francophobia.