Death to French Fries: Matthew Engel

Matthew Engel has a funny take on the ‘French Fries’ story. He wonders why the French have become the enemy when the war is being fought against the Iraqi regime. He hints that making France the enemy was a pursued policy of the UK and US. I would be inclined to agree. Many of the arguments used against the French position were spurious at best. And things seem to be getting worse – Engel mentions a man he met in Chicago.

At the bar, there was a man from Louisiana with his plane delayed: he was getting drunker. Down there, he said, people were exercised about the war: they were pouring French wine down drains. And there was talk, he said, of changing the name of both the French Quarter in New Orleans and the state capital, Baton Rouge, which would become Red Stick.

This anti-French stuff is such blatant nonsense. What worries me is the ease with which Americans were pesuaded into hating the French. And I’m not criticising Americans specifically on this one.

What worries me is the ease with which humans were persuaded into believing other people to be bad – to the point of writing graffitti on French people’s garages. This only supports theories recently put forward that a future war between Europe and the US is on the cards – sound far fetched?

See how easy it is to get people to hate – the next step, killing in war, is not that far away from hating. There was an article in the Atlantic about this that I must refer to.