By Ralph Peters
New York Post
June 19, 2006
THIS spring, I visited French-speaking West Africa. Wherever I went, two things remained consistent: The French government was hated, and Africans looked to Washington for a square deal.
President Jacques Chirac and his racist minions know it, and they don't like it, and they're trying to do something about it: Sucker America into showing "solidarity with an ally in the War on Terror." The French want our military and diplomatic cooperation - but not our economic presence, of course. Let me translate what the parasites of Paris really mean: "Support our brutality and exploitation of West Africa, stiff-arm tens of millions of Africans yearning to be free of French neo-imperialism - and just maybe we clever Frenchmen will toss you stupid Americans a little bone now and then."
And we're in danger of falling for it.
In the half-century since France thrust a phony independence on colonies such as Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali, the French government and French business interests have looted everything they possibly could. To Paris, African "independence" meant business as usual, except that Paris would no longer accept any responsibility for the welfare of the local populations.
It was a free ride for the Frogs, guaranteed by a French military that had failed everywhere else, but remained sufficiently competent to bully unarmed Africans. One French government after another supported pro-Paris strongmen, from the relatively benign Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, who merely bankrupted his country with nutty construction projects, to Jean Bedell-Bokassa, a literal cannibal who frequently played host to then-President Valery Giscard-D'Estaing.
But the winds of freedom have been blowing, often in unexpected places. The era of African "Big Men" is over, even if a few linger on. And Africans want real freedom this time, not French colonization in disguise.
In Ivory Coast, the French utterly mismanaged a 2002 rebellion they thought they could manipulate. Their efforts at playing the factions off against each other exploded, shattering a country that had been a source of pride and great profit to Paris. Muslim or Christian, northerner or southerner, the one commonality I found among the people of Ivory Coast was that they all now hate the French.
Even in Senegal, the country that has had the most benign relationship with France, the people are tired of French bullying and condescension. Throughout the region, animosity toward Paris - especially the ham-handed government of Jacques Chirac - has reached a tipping point past which legitimate anger threatens to turn into irrational fury.
In Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, I even found myself in the unusual position of defending the French, arguing that nobody could be as omnipresent and cagey as my local friend believed French agents to be.
We hear a great deal about global anti-Americanism, but, as this column has noted, much of it is superficial or concentrated among the usual suspects, while a tremendous reservoir of goodwill toward us is still overflowing in much of the world. Even those who reflexively complain about American power long for a green card.
In West Africa, everyone has a friend or relative, or the friend of a relative, in one of New York's boroughs or in Chicago. Their vision of America is of hardworking immigrants building prosperous lives impossible elsewhere. The American dream is alive and well - in Dakar or Abidjan.
In contrast, West Africans know that their relatives imprisoned in the suburban slums of Paris or Lyon have no hope of getting ahead, but suffer relentless discrimination.
As a result, street-level Africans consistently express tremendous good will toward Americans (although they're mystified by African-American heritage tourists who complain about their lot - Africans would gladly swap places). Either George Bush or Bill Clinton could win an election by a landslide in any West African country I visited.
Meanwhile, the French know they're in trouble. They know that their African victims are sick and tired of being robbed and treated as inferiors. They want the French out of their economies, out of their elections and out of their countries.
The French response is to offer "cooperation" with the United States. Implying none too subtly that "white powers should stick together, after all," they misread the times and they wildly misread America. For our part, we can only lose prestige, influence and goodwill by being associated with the French in West Africa.
But that's the point, as far as Paris is concerned: The Chirac government wants to present a united Western front to Africans yearning for real freedom, to show them that Washington isn't an alternative because America's on France's side.
This duplicity is especially dangerous, given that many French-speaking African countries have majority-Muslim populations - Muslims who are not anti-American. On the contrary, they practice tolerant, local forms of Islam and resent Wahhabi extremist efforts to "purify" their religion.
Islam is deathly sick in its Middle Eastern heartland, but it's vibrant and healthy on its frontiers, from Jakarta through Dakar to Detroit. The struggle for the future of Islam is cruel and discouraging in the Middle East, but elsewhere the good guys are winning.
By accepting the proffered French embrace in Africa, we risk needlessly alienating tens of millions of Muslims who are our natural allies in the war against Arab fanaticism.
Certainly, we should cooperate with France when it's genuinely in our interests. But, in West Africa, the cooperation Paris wants is a sham that would benefit only French neo-colonialists, while doing America's image and cause great harm.
If we really believe in freedom and democracy, we should stand up for the striving people of Africa, not for the crumpled imperialists on the Seine.
