Obsessive French Surrender Analogy Syndrome (OFSAS) is what happens when your knowledge of world history stems from a select anti-French Jay Leno monologues, anti-French jokes from the Simpsons combined with the analytical refinement of a cement brick.

Case in point, the words of A.W.R. Hawkins in his column about Los Angeles’ Boycott of Arizona. Somehow, Arizona, Illegal immigration, Los Angeles’ City Hall led to the following passage:

“Or like those vile Frenchmen, who long ago forgot that while they were dropping their rifles and raising their hands in surrender during World War II, our Midwestern farm boys were climbing off their tractors in order to climb into tanks and stave off ultimate defeat for the messieurs.” - A.W.R. Hawkins, May 27th 2010

With those words, Hawkins achieved a level of political discourse on equal footing with the words of Groundskeeper Willie. Not only are the French vile, they are of course – collective utter cowards.

Hawkins willfully ignores the fact the French lost 100,000 men keeping the German army at bay and saved the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk and Lille before their leadership yielded to Germany.

Hawkins also completely sidesteps America’s pro-Vichy stance until 1942, America’s widespread isolationism and many pro-Nazi sympathizers from Henry Ford to Joe Kennedy via Father Charles Edward Coughlin, the America First Committee, George Lincoln Rockwell and the German-American Bund to name a few.

Hawkins should be reminded that it was a Democratic President who came to the aid of Europe during its darkest hour despite the isolationism most prominent in the ranks of the Senate Republicans. But we’ll let more capable historians like Robert Young or columnists like Eric Margolis rebuke such simplistic histrionics.

I loathe thee.

Not so much for making fun of Sarkozy, he’s a public figure so he’s fair game, but for your utter disrespect for the most traumatic event in our history. Sure the headline is from the Onion (We know it’s satire – but why mention it? That’s the issue we have), but you think it is worthy of attention when discussing France’s Foreign Policy. You see, the 1940 surrender was not about surrender monkeys nor a ten minute battle. It was about being crushed by the most advanced army the world had known and being betrayed by our leadership.

Not only is making fun of 1940 as offensive to the French as 9/11 jokes are to you, but we were not alone in being crushed. Yet I have never seen a British Surrender Joke. Luckily for the British, after 100 000 French soldiers died in 47 days (more than Vietnam, Somalia, Beirut, Iraq and Afghanistan together), the British were able to evacuate Dunkirk with most of their men, taking advantage of a natural barrier called the English Channel.

But what really grates my nerves, and the nerves of 200 000 French citizens who live in North America, is that you, and so many others, have turned this historical event into a character trait. Check out twitter. It’s two surrender jokes a day …

“Mexicans are Lazy. British have bad Teeth. Blacks like Chicken and the French Surrender”. Welcome to the world of prejudice and of cultural reductionism. But since we – the French – don’t have a strong voice nor lobby in Washington to remind you and your ilk of your offense, you think you’re still funny …

It’s been seven years of Anti-French garbage in the US media from Bill O’Reilly, Jay Leno, Howard Stern, Conan O’Brien, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Regis Philbin, David Spade, Craig Kilborn, SNL all edged on by the Bush Cheney administration, yet you are oblivious to the fact this was nothing more than a political kiss shot in the build up the Iraq war.

Bridget Johnson’s Blog @ About.com – Bridget Johnson is the online editor at The Hill in Washington, D.C.

Our Response: Dear Barry

I’ll be frank and direct here since there is no point going any other way about this. I have spent the best part of the last six years fighting prejudice and anti-French attitudes in the American media after France’s refusal to follow the Bush administration into Iraq (See www.Miquelon.org).

If you have some argument with your president, I suggest you take it up with him directly instead of lambasting the French with a partial and incomplete historical record.

To address your points specifically :

• “Who’s the arrogant one? ” – Right off, I detect prejudice against the French.
• “America, after doing most of the fighting, bleeding and dying to liberate France from her Nazi conquerors” – Pure revisionism. Saving Private Ryan was not a documentary : I do not owe my freedom to US troops, but to the ALLIES. On D-Day, there were Canadians, British and other Allied Troops. I also owe my freedom the African Free French troops who landed in Provence. Secondly, had the Soviets not bled the German war machine on the eastern front (with a ratio of 20 to 1 Soviet to American dead), D-Day would not have been possible. Therefore, I, my French Compatriots, do not owe our freedom to any specific power, but to ALL ALLIES regardless. Thirdly, who are you to use the mantle of World War II and D-Day for your own grandstanding ? Unless you were there on D-Day, I have nothing but contempt for your posturing.
• “America, (…), gallantly lowered its profile to allow General Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle and his rag-tag Free French army” – I don’t appreciate your “rag-tag” qualifier as you are talking about members of my own family who risked their lives to free Europe of Nazism. Any man or woman who fought the Nazis deserves to be respected and not labeled as a second rate soldier. The historical record shows that Paris was partially liberated by a citizen uprising under Henri Rol-Tanguy before Allied troops entered the city. Even WIKIPEDIA disagrees with you : “Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower did not consider Paris as a primary objective; instead, American and British Allies wanted to enter Berlin before the Soviet Union’s army and put an end to the conflict.[5] Moreover Eisenhower thought it too early for a battle in Paris; he wanted to prevent another battle of Stalingrad, and knew that Hitler had given orders to destroy Paris. In a siege, it was estimated 4,000 tons of food per day would be needed to supply the Parisians, plus effort to restore vital infrastructure including transport and energy supply. Such a task would require time and entire Allied divisions”

For more information about what the FRENCH DID:

• The French fought in Africa, in Sicily, liberated Corsica, fought in Italy, took part in the invasion of Europe and fought through the battles of France and Germany — from Normandy to Munich.
• Units from the French navy participated in the invasions of Sicily, Italy, Normandy and South France.
• Units of the French navy and merchant marine took part in convoying operations on the Atlantic and Murmansk routes.
• On June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day, over 5,000 Frenchmen of the resistance dynamited railroads in more than 500 strategic places.
• They delayed strategic German troop movements for an average of 48 hours, according to our military experts. Those 48 hours were tactically priceless ; they saved an untold number of American lives.
• French resistance groups blew up a series of bridges in southern France and delayed one of the Wehrmacht’s crack units (Das Reich Panzer Division) for twelve days in getting from Bordeaux to Normandy.
• About 30,000 FF1 troups supported the Third Army’s VIII Corps in Brittany: they seized and held key spogs ; they conducted extensive guerrilla operations behind the German lines.
• 25,000 FFI troops protected the south flank of the Third Army in its daring dash across France: the FFI wiped out German bridgeheads north of the Loire River ; they guarded vital lines of communication; they wiped out pockets of German resistance; they held many towns and cities under orders from our commmand.
• When our Third Army was approachiung the area between Dijon and Troyes from the west, and while the Seventh Army was approaching this sector from the South, it was the FFI who stubbornly blocked the Germans from making a stand and prevented a mass retirement of German troops.
• In Paris, as our armies drew close, several hundred thousand French men and women rose up against the Germans. 50,000 armed men of the resistance fought and beat the Nazi garrison, and occupied the main buildings and administrative offices of Paris.

More about why the US landed in France:

• We didn’t come to Europe to save the the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn’t come to to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came to Europe because we in America were threatened by a hostile, aggressive and very dangerous power.
• In this war, France fell in June of 1940. We didn’t invade Europe until June of 1944. We didn’t even think of “saving the French” through military action until after Pearl Harbor – after the Germans declared war on us. We came to Europe, in two wars, because it was better to fight our enemy in Europe than in America. Would it have been smarter to fight the Battle of the Bulge in Ohio? Would it have been smarter if D-Day had meant a hop across the Atlantic Ocean, instead of the English Channel, in order to get at an enemy sending rocket bombs into our homes? Would it have been smart to wait in America until V bombs, buzz bombs, rocket bombs, and – perhaps – atomic bombs had made shambles of our cities? Even the kids in Germany sang this song: “Today Germany, tomorrow the world.” We were a part of that world. We were marked for conquest.
• When France fell, our last defense on the Continent was gone. France was the “keystone of freedom” on land from the Mediterranean to the North Sea; it was a bulwark against German aggression. France guarded the Atlantic, and the bases the Germans needed on the Atlantic for submarine and air warfare.
• American security and American foreign policy have always rested on this hard fact: we cannot permit a hostile power on the Atlantic Ocean. We can not be secure if we are threatened on the Atlantic. That’s why we went to war in 1917; that’s why we had to fight in 1944. And that’s why, as a matter of common sense and the national interest, President Roosevelt declared (November 11, 1941): “The defense of any territory under the control of the French Volunteer Forces (the Free French) is vital to the defense of the United States.”

SOURCE : Published in Paris in 1945 by the ‘Information & Education Division’ of the US Occupation Forces.

On another front, this one being in the Gulf of Aden, the news of French successes against Somali pirates is being greeted with sarcasm by Jennifer Fermino – are we Italian? – of the New York Post. Harping on France’s 1940 surrender, which we remind our non-French readers, is as funny to the French as 9/11 is to Americans, Fermino plays loose with history and claims the French have not had a military success on water since 1884.

Please use the comment section of the New York Post to leave informative and thought provoking comments.

“Yes, there’s that Muslim thing – which, if you ask me, the xenophobic French are making way too much a fuss about. The legal ruling, despite all appearances, is based on Article 180 of the Civil Code, which dictates that neither a bride nor groom may misrepresent themselves before wedlock.” – Antonia Zerbisias

We do not wish to take anything else away from her column, as the issue of marriage, virginity and the law has come to the forefront of the societal debate in France and in Europe ever since the news broke about this arcane legal decision. We applaud the interest in this case, however we are deeply disappointed with the association of xenophobia and our nationality.

French bashing has come and gone in the last few years, most of which has been the intellectual property of the right-wing pro-war movement south of the border. The French have been proverbially tarred and feathered time and time again, without consequence, as we are most often not an organized political group abroad.

We believe that columnist Antonia Zerbisias, and many others for that matter, never think twice about associating a negative character trait with the people of France, yet would never dare publish anything remotely similar about any other nationality or ethnic group.

A full and sincere apology is in order.

Source: TheStar.com