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The Poor, Poor French.

jimmiebjr | August 4, 2006 | 2 Replies

It must be a real bear to be a French diplomat. Charting the flips and flops and backs and forths of your country’s foreign policy is enough to give even the most bull-necked person a champion case of whiplash.

Consider. On Monday, according to our bestest Euro-buddies, Iran was “great” and “plays a stabilizing role in the region”.

Today, France has had to reconsider that opinion ever so slightly because Iranian President Mahmoud “Sane as a Post and How Dare You Say Otherwise” Ahmadinejad decided to be helpful and offered his ideas for how to solve the present war among Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

“Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented,” Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site.

Uh oh. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has to run back so fast from his earlier glowing praise that he left a little smoke outline of himself. Now, according to our cheese-eating friends, Iran is not definitely a stabilizing force. They merely “…can play a positive and stabilizing role in the region…”

I wonder. Is this the first time that Philippe Douste-Blazy, or anyone high up in the French government has head Mad Mahmoud call for the destruction of Israel? The Gallic outrage of the foreign minister strikes me as sincere as the feigned shock of Captain Louis Renault though delivered with much less believability.

I’m guessing that if France stays engaged as publicly as they are with Iran, their foreign minister is going to need a neckbrace. And a big box of ChapStick for all the Mullah-smooching he’s going to have to keep doing.

In related news, the Russians win the “well, no duh” prize for this quote.

“Iran could also contribute to the efforts,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Saltanov as saying.

Gee, you think? I doubt that Hezbollah could continue their terrorism for another two weeks if Iran stopped cutting them checks and shut down the missile deliveries. Something tells me, though, that’s not what he meant.

If the French are the masters of international duplicity, the Russians have shown a bit of skill in pointedly ignoring the blindingly obvious.