Vive la France.
11 thoughts on “Bastille Day”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Vive la France.
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“La” France, actually. Those articles are always a killer.
[Fixed. Lex.]
The fireworks along the Seine in Paris on Bastille Day are pretty impressive. So is Foch’s tomb which right next to Napoleon’s.
Eh? Nothing to celebrate here, folks. The slaughter and eventual mutiny of the poilus? The Vichy government? The Empire? The Bourbons? Mais non!
I remember driving through France – one small town after another – each had a central square and each had a a granite slab on which were carved the names of those who died in World War I. Sometimes there were more names than there were people still living in the town.
According to a plaque I read at Verdun over a million people were injured or died there. Wikipedia has a smaller number.
A 100,000 wounded or dead at a small nearby village called Liverdun.
The area is pretty and peaceful today.
The horror is overwhelming.
Stopping the Germans? Saving their country? Disproving the lie that the French won’t fight? Mais oui.
My own memory of visiting Verdun and Bar le Duc:
http://open.salon.com/blog/sgt_mom/2008/12/03/country_roads_and_confiture_bar_le_duc
“The Germans tried to take it but the French held on.”
Thanks, Sgt. Mom.
Merde! France has been a pimple on the butt of western civ since Charles Martel passed.
La Gloire? Bleh!
Guerre a la Outrance? Phui!
Dien Bien Phu? Blaaaaaaaaaaaat!
The women are passable, if one does not mind garlic.
The Franks of France of their arms are reft,
Three hundred blades alone are left.
The glittering helms they smite and shred,
And cleave asunder full many a head;
Through riven helm and hauberk rent,
Maim head and foot and lineament.
***
I am not against war, per se. A million died at Verdun – a place few had every heard of. That is the nature of war.
If there must be war, then fight it in the other guy’s country.
It has been US policy since 1890 to fight our wars in some one else’s country, to destroy some one else’s bridge, level someone else’s cities, etc. A very good policy. We did that in WWI, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, Guadeloupe, and places that never made the news.
George Bush fought the War on Terror in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afganistan.
Obama is changing this 100 year policy. He is bringing the War on Terror home to America so he can fight it in our streets, our buses, our trains, our planes and our buildings. Soon we will not need our TVs to watch it.
This in not the change anyone (except jihadis) hoped for.
“They shall not Pass”
And they didn’t. But the impact of the carnage at Verdun warped the character of the man who said it over time, moving him from national hero in the first world war to a grand traitor in the second.