Customer Reviews

The French Betrayal of America

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Regarding the book, it is actually far more critical of Chirac, in particular, than of France. The author has a strong opinion regarding the issues he discusses (not that you couldn't guess by the title), but the stories inside are reasonably well documented, and dovetail with accounts published in newspapers at the time (the 80's and 90's, for those of us old and interested enough to remember them). The author writes well, and the book is an easy read.

However, I keep wondering how many of the 1-star critics have actually *read* the book. Their reviews - almost hysterical in nature, with the odd exception - are the kind you would expect from someone who reads the book description, and, believing it opposite to their preconceived US/World view, decides to deflate it by writing a (pseudo) review and rating it 1-star. Instead of ranting against a perceived neocon cabal against France, it would be far better to point - and document - examples of the book's alleged factual errors; it would make the reviews much more useful to future potential buyers - if that is what the reviewers really want, of course...

Timmerman talks about his experience in France from a perspective one who as a journalist who lived and worked there among the great and near great for over 18 years.

This is not a book about France bashing to say the least. He reviews throughout the book not only recent history, he links it to the over 200 year relationship the French and the USA have had together since the American Revolution.

He likens our relationship to a marriage of sorts that is now on the rocks as Collin Powell put it, "in marriage counselling", with a change in the overall environment since the French decided not to assist us in Iraq.

This is a side of the story that only an insider can tell us about. Yes we did help Iraq against Iran in the '80s. Yet the French have assisted Iraq since then in building armaments and the French have resisted helping us in the war on terror in tracking and capturing known active terrorists.

Anyone who thinks that we are in the war for the oil may be enlightened by this book because oil and the rights to it is one of the reasons the French did not decide to back our decision to go in. In fact they undermined us to a large extent along with Germany. This new perspective, one which has grown through the years is possibly a result of the power that France shares in the new European Union. However, most of the EU states sided with us, along with Spain, Italy, Poland, because we share a common history with democracy.

One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Collin Powell, however it is truncated to; "We've asked for nothing but enough land to bury them (our soldiers) in." What Timmerman left out in this quote was that Powell was responding to accusations at a meeting in Europe where America was accused of attempting to take over the land of Iraq. The implication of Powell's response was that we did take land in France, when we liberated it in WWII and helped defend it in WWI. That land was the massive graveyards that are at places like Omaha Beach and Meuse-Argonne.

Timmerman discusses the WMD issue, although none have been found, he felt at the writing of the book, that Saddam had the time to hide or destroy WMDs while the UN inspection carried on for months at a time. He mentions just as with an audit turning up fraud, the onus is on the one caught to come up with the goods.

It seems that the WMD issue is mute at this point, however, there is still the issue of the support of global terror and Iraq's involvement therewith. Timmerman chronicles some of that from a perspective that includes an allusion to Ahmad Chalabi.

I would be interested in Timmerman's take on Chalabi since the firestorm surrounded him a few weeks ago.

This issue of the book however, is not WMDs. It is the selling out of the USA by France and how that relates to the overall war on terror.

Timmerman is a very interesting writer. He holds your attention throughout this book as he does in his other successful books. This book is well written and well documented. Time will tell if this book is just His-story or a view of things that have really happened behind the scenes in the war on terror.

The reviewer below didn't read the book. Timmerman presents a fairly balanced account. The crux of his argument is that the "French" betrayal is in many ways more of a "Chirac" betrayal, and Chirac really does seem like a cad. I found the narrative about the U.S./Mitterand (a Socialist) relationship to be saddening; how even when our two countries were deeply at odds the bond created by our shared values held fast. The "balance" in this book comes out during these parts. Germany, France, and to a much lesser degree, the US, were guilty of hardcore realpolitik in their support of Iraq over Iran. The French were frustrated by our lack of "sophistication" in our approach to the Arab world, but at the end of the day France, especially Mitterand would come out on the side of "freedom"(their words). Chirac's personal corruption and disturbingly close, personal relationship with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz, the French Arm's industry's utter dependence on Iraqi purchases (which amounted to more than Frances own military), and abundant "oil" bribery left France under Chirac no choice but to betray its old friend in the US. It was pleasing to read that though many of the French have been completely steeped in anti-Americanism to justify this betrayal, ther are still many Frenchmen who find this knife in the back to be appalling. This book could have used a bit more in the way of personal interviews and quotes (this is when it is best) and a little less in the way of historic footnotes, but in the end its an important read.

Regardless of one's views on the Iraq war (I'm undecided), most Americans (war supporters and war protestors alike) were puzzled by France's ardently vicious, even hysterical, opposition to the war in Iraq. At first, the initial opposition just seemed rooted in the common anti-American sentiment found in France/Europe. However, after a few days, and after Mr. Chirac devoted all his time to seeking out allies for this opposition, many started to wonder WHY the French government was taking it so personally! No government would go this much out of their way just to promote "peace." Can anyone really believe that France and Mr. Chirac would go on such an intense campaign against the war simply because they believed in the war was morally wrong? C'mon! There had to be more to this... This "more" is what Mr. Timmerman lays out, with irrefutable evidence, in his book.

I found the book to be an outstanding testament to what France's true motivations were -- not peace, but rather greed. France did not want to see Saddam deposed because that would ruin it's oh-so-lucrative multi-billion dollar deals with the dictator's regime. In other words, France felt that allowing Americans to depose a dictator who unspeakably tortured people and, many argue, posed a threat to global security, came in second to its greed for oil and money. As Timmerman explains, France/Chirac had a cozy, quid-pro-quo arrangement with one another which was incredibly lucrative for both: France would sell Iraq top-secret military techology and weapons in exchange for Iraq's oil and money. Putting aside the fact that selling military technology and weapons to a ruthless dictator and world-safety-hazard like Hussein is highly questionable, what's even worse is the way the European media and Mr. Chirac refused to admit that this lucrative relationship was France's actual reason for opposing the war!

Ironically, many uninformed, unread individuals claimed AMERICA was going to war with Iraq for oil, yet it seems it was Mr. Chiraq and the French who were the oil-mongers...

Mr. Timmerman's book gives the reader all the facts he or she is looking for, and then some. This book stands as a testament to the fact that, as truth seekers, we must always search for the true motivations behind a government's stance.

If you want to know about the French and their duplicity with the Iraq situation, then read this book. It is stuffed with facts, interviews and figures from a man with plenty of experience with the French. He has written for countless medias, both from the Left and Right, and gives a balanced look of what really happened, without stepping over any lines. Pay no attention to (the few) extremely negative reviewers below, because I can guarantee you they did not read this book, but are just frustrated partisans trying to discourage people. This book is a tell-all that is sure to embarrass and haunt the French for decades to come. The Saddam-French soap opera, along with the corrupt UN oil-for-food scams (that the French had a huge part in) is just getting underway. Expect to see more and more news on this, as the weeks go by. The French cannot hide from this massive, negative exposure and the American people should know about how they were stabbed in the back for Iraqi oil/weapon contracts, debt repayment (from illegal weapon sales), coupled with an anti-American agenda, that has been rife for decades in France. As a person who can read the French language, I have already seen a lot of this exposed in some of France's own medias, but this is a wonderful book that puts all of the facts together, coupled with countless examples of inside information/quotes, for an excellent read. Definitely a page turner! Know thy enemy and the enemy seems to definitely be the French, especially their current leadership, under Chirac.

I was outraged by the actions of Chirac and others during the months leading to the Second War with Iraq, and after having finished reading this book, I am even more outraged. This book presents a factual account of France's relationship with Iraq since at least 1975 and exposes the real reasons for the French opposition against American operations.

I was particularly outraged by two items covered in the latter part of this book. The first was the amount of and the kind of trade carried out by France during the Oil for Food program, and the second was the amount of nuclear expertise and material support that the Iraq government received from 1994 from the French government.

Make no mistake about it, "Betrayal" is the correct term.

I actually read the book and found it revealing.

As a criticism I wish the author addressed more the broader spectrum of French neo-imperial ambitions in Africa, and at "home" in the context of France's expectation that the European Union should reflexively follow France's interests.

But mostly is a great read, foremostly because it is a catalog of truths about France in the Near East. France has its own business interests in the Near East and these were bolstered not so much by opposition to the US and UK, but reliance on US and UK enforcement of UN "containment" policy and the lucrative French-dominated Oil for Food program containment ironically enabled.

I recommend this book. And it's sorely needed given the ill-informed and credulous statements posing as reviews here at Amazon. There can be Francophilic arguments made, but reflexive anti-American arguments do nothing but deflect examination of French conduct, objectives and interests.

I find it amazing that these posters making negative comments about the book are pretending to have read it. They clearly have not and are simply making their political points. These people are too obvious and should quit it.

Children, all.

Like another writer, I have to wonder whether all the reviewers who gave this book a single star actually bothered to read the thing. Few of those reviews sounded at all like they were talking about the same book I read. If you're willing to set aside knee-jerk assumptions -- if you have them -- about the meretriciousness of the Bush Administration, and also ignore the unfortunate and loaded word "betrayal" in the title (a point I'll get back to in a moment), there's actually quite a bit of important reporting going on here. Kenneth Timmerman should be thanked for uncovering it and bringing it to our attention.

One area where this book could have been stronger is in explaining more thoroughly how French actions in the run-up to the Iraq war were consistent with that nation's political culture. I think this is a critical point ... and while I was glad to see it mentioned finally in the author's discussion of Dominique de Villepin and his devotion to Napoleon Bonaparte, hero of megalomaniacs everywhere ... I wish this point had been given more prominence. Here, a title like Nadeau and Barlow's Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French is a very useful companion. The general context of Timmerman's insights -- for example, his flat statement that the French "have consistently favored authoritarian regimes over democracy, not just in the third world but also in Europe" (p. 253) -- would have been harder to understand without having already read that other book.

Even without that grounding, however, Timmerman lays out a strong case for why the French -- and especially President Jacques Chirac -- were so adamant in opposing attempts to put the screws on Saddam Hussein. He charts the long and tortuous history of French investment in Iraq, as well as Chirac's personal, decades-long friendship with Saddam. Chirac, whom Timmerman tags as "the head of the unofficial 'Iraq Lobby' in France" since the mid-1970s (p. 43), comes across as absolutely the worst -- from Bush's standpoint (or best, from Saddam's) -- person to be running France at this time. His motivations are complex, ranging from his desire to keep France separate from the U.S. and a key player in world events ... to his oft-repeated conviction that he speaks for "eighty percent" of the world's population ... to the simple and mercenary fact that he has long received kickbacks from corporations doing business in Iraq. "Chirac knew that France would never get the same kinds of deals from a free Iraqi government" (p. 242), and so he was willing to sink France and America's centuries-long partnership in order to protect and defend a savage dictator.

In sum, Timmerman makes a pretty ironclad case that French opposition to military action against Saddam was based less on high-minded rejection of war (though, of course, the French are hardly capable of waging war any more [p. 24]) than on a self-interested devotion to commercial advantage and geo-political positioning. And while we may find this outrageous, I'm not convinced "Betrayal" is really the right word. It implies France has some sort of obligation to the U.S., or that the French "sold us out" somehow. And despite Timmerman's frequent use of "marriage" as a metaphor for the long partnership between the two nations, I don't think either implication really applies. As Lord Palmerston noted, nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests. If French and American interests diverged over Iraq, it may be regrettable but it probably doesn't constitute "betrayal."

But even if you don't agree with that element of Timmerman's conclusions, the facts he uncovers and the details he lays out are the important, and timely, part of this book. Rather than raging about "freedom fries" and how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris, people seeking to understand the why and the how of this episode in diplomacy could do a lot worse than to look deeply into the picture Kenneth Timmerman has painted.

Here we are shown the truth about why France refused to support the invasion of Iraq and actively campaigned to thwart America. Contrary to belief it had nothing to do with human rights or Altruistic motives. Instead this wonderful text sheds light on the hundreds of millions of dollars in business the French did with Saddam including the massive debts Iraq had to France that they knew America would never repay once we won. This book sheds light on Chiracs secret relationship and support of Saddam, something that goes back more then a decade. A very eye opening book that looks deep inside the American-French political relationship in the later part of the 20th century and the early 21st century. A great current events read and a must read for anyone seeking to understand the 2nd Iraq War.

Seth J. Frantzman