As an officer and gentleman, I will make every attempt to confine my remarks to those suitable for expression in mixed company.
I have this to say about the French:
General Pershing once said-of America's soldiers, sailors and Marines-that "time will not dim the glory of their deeds." Truer words were never spoken. No small coincidence that Gen. Pershing was the first commissioner of the agency formed to care for the graves of Americans who gave their lives in service to their country.
But the French have long since forgotten. Twice in the 20th century, defense of the French took our boys to Europe. There, in cold and windswept places like Bellau Wood and Brittany, Aisne-Marne and Epinal, they gave their lives that others should not perish and suffer under the hand of a tyrant, Adolph Hitler.
60,510 are still buried in France alone. 7,063 are still missing. 334,324 were returned to America to rest in peace on native soil.
But for these gallant men, there would be no France; no Europe, as we know it. So when the French engage in a targeted campaign over several decades which seeks to sabotage the international efforts of the United States, they denigrate not only themselves, but the gift their liberators gave them.
They left us to finish a fight they started after getting whipped clean and senseless at Dien Bien Phu. In 1986 they refused airspace to U.S. planes en route to combat another terrorist, Quaddafi. They have repeatedly undermined U.S. efforts in the middle east to stabilize the region, including their ongoing arms trade with several nations therein. And as salt in the wound, they offered military support in the event that Hussein were to use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces in Iraq. These are but a few examples of the traitorous and graceless nature of the fickle French national sense of loyalty.
As Gen. Patton once said, "I'd rather have a German division in front of me that a French one behind me." (By the way, Patton died defending Europe, too.)
While I save for another day the question of whether it is wise to have a Frenchman anywhere in your general vicinity, I will say that I am deeply saddened by this betrayal. I will also refuse to participate in any economically-beneficial relationship with any French organization.
I will not eat French cheese, nor drink their wine; these are symbols of a dead culture brimming with the ungrateful souls of selfish animals who are in the business of squandering the gift of life. A gift secured to them by the supreme sacrifice of my brothers in arms.
Let them rant and demonstrate. Such foolishness serves only to prove the blackness of their hearts, the marginal quality of their leadership, and their lame-duck role in European governance. But what their actions cannot do-under any set of circumstances-is darken the brilliance of those patriots who died, or lessen the debt that must now be paid.
To those that went before me, I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. To the French who refuse to do the same-well, even a cursory review of French military history shows the wisdom of your restraint. If you joined the fight, we'd just have to bail you out anyway. And we have other things to do right now.
Oh, and if you hear a rumble in the night, a quaking of earth mixed with a mournful groan, it's the sound of 60,510 heroes turning over in their graves.
God Bless America.
2nd Lt. Iain D. Pedden, USMC
My posts reflect my own opinions, and not those of the Marine Corps or the United States.
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