Continental Europe....

Continental Europe has proved to be possibly even worse than useless when it comes to the world's security and impotent intervening in world crises. A wonderful piece by former UK Defense Minister, Michael Portillo, can be read here on bloviating French silliness and how their feckless intervention is impacting the rest of us. This quote really drives the point home...

But what exactly has the distinctive French alternative produced for the world or France? The softer European approach to Iran over its nuclear programme was decisively rebuffed, and Europe has had to join America in calling for sanctions. When France was invited to provide leadership over Lebanon, it vacillated. Its offer of 2,000 soldiers remains underwhelming. Chirac's pro-Arab policies have not even bought off Muslim discontent at home, as the urban riots showed.

Last week a former junior member of the Bush administration, Jeff Babbin, likened undertaking a military operation without the French to going on a deer shoot without an accordion - you just leave behind the noisy useless baggage. For France to have split so decisively with the globe's most powerful nation without having established a successful alternative approach to the resolution of crises is a major policy failure for Chirac. Whatever criticisms he may have of George W Bush, the American does not fail to put his troops where his mouth is.

The highlighting is mine, since I find this line so amusing. Who are the French trying to fool? Maybe they are trying to fool themselves into thinking that they matter. Its a kind of Kerryesque approach to life, lots of nuance and no substance.