ON FRENCH DECLINE

Our former friends the French are going through a massive identity crisis, as a slew of bestsellers examine, basically, why their country sucks eggs:

These messages converge with that of "L'Arrogance Française," by Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, whose chapter and section headings - How France Lost Europe or Narcissistic Blindness - well sum up a book that holds that French foreign and European policy is guided by "obsessive concern with its standing, and terror in the face of its decline."

France's essential arrogance, the authors suggest, is in continuing to act as if the world community and its European partners do not comprehend that for the French leadership, the "EU serves as the means for France to recover its influence and to reconquer its lost power."

In this light, although the writers of "L'Arrogance Française" do not say so specifically, it is possible to see French policy in relationship to Iraq as a temporary instrumentalization of Germany in an effort to recapture European primacy - an attempt understood and foiled by the vast number of its NATO and EU partners.

So go ahead Democrats, keep citing our rough relations with the French to criticize Bush. Even the French themselves know you're full of it.

(via InstaPundit)