Vive l"France!!

 

Oui Oui M"suer!!

“It was the only decision.” 

And it is one that has forced a sharp reappraisal of France’s international position, especially in America. No more the vacillating “cheese-eating surrender monkey” of Iraq. France is now the go-to country in the evolving battle against "Slamic groups in Africa, her paratroopers and pilots the advance troops in this fight. It not only smacks of Beau Geste and the Foreign Legion fending off the masked Tuaregs at Fort Zinderneuf, it is a very real and vital new role, a reassertion of French power independent of an ailing Europe and a NATO alliance weakening with every cut to defense budgets. 

With his dramatic interventions in the Ivory Coast and Libya, “Sarko” had demonstrated that, for all the political misery in Europe and the gloomy talk of decline so popular in Paris, France remains a vital political, military, and moral power—if it chooses to be. Mali offered Hollande the chance to show that he was more than marking time in the Élysée. That he too was capable of projecting French power overseas.

The final judgment on France’s interventions in Libya and Mali will take time. Its diplomatic activity on Syria has yet to stop the fighting there.

What cannot be doubted is that France has shown herelf willing to act at moments when her global peers have not. Her planes, helicopters, and paratroopers have become the steel tip in the emerging battle for democracy and stability in Africa

Pic - "Next up - Cameroon!!"