Miracles never cease
France finally has a leader who's not a total wus.
It'll be interesting to see how this story will be reported. I find the Reuters headline of "France's Sarkozy raises prospect of Iran airstrikes" to be a bit tendentious. The gist of Sarkozy's comment, which one might not glean from a casual glance at the headline, is that a military strike against Iran is undesirable. He clearly wishes to derail Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy, not by force, and is raising the specter of air strikes to augment the prospects of a diplomatic solution.
It's a far cry from warmongering, but I doubt his critics will see it as such. It's also a welcome departure from the European norm of "We'll try diplomacy, but if that doesn't work we won't really do anything about it." Sarkozy understands that with the lack of proper incentives, it's pretty hard to get people to do what you want no matter how good your diplomatic skills are. To paraphrase Al Capone, you can get a lot more done with a diplomatic initiative and a gun than with a diplomatic initiative alone. If Iran is to respond to diplomatic measures, it must first know there will be consequences for not doing so.
Comments
Sarkozy is a welcome change for France.
He's moving the country toward more market-based reforms and, like Germany, toward a more "American" economy.
He's also refused to move off his promise of mass deportations, which I happily anticipate.
I'd rather see Britain or Germany "go first" and puke out their Muslim hordes, but if France goes first, that may spur the others on to do what must be done.
Posted by: JMK | August 27, 2007 07:32 PM