Is France an American ally?

Michael Barone carefully parses the apparent ambivalences and paradoxes behind John Kerry’s debate statements on Iraq to deduce Kerry’s “final answer”: “Behind the ambivalence.” In parsing Kerry’s statements Barone notes the unreality of Kerry’s call for additional troops in Iraq from countries that have opposed our efforts there.
When Kerry refers to American allies alienated by President Bush, he seems to have in mind preeminently France, but also Germany. Are they American allies? John Miller and Mark Molesky are the authors of a new book on France’s historically adversarial relationship with the United States. In a column for the New York Post they join Barone in expressing serious doubt regarding potential assistance from these American “allies”: “Iraq allies — oops.”
Bat Ye’or is the world’s foremost scholar of the status of non-Muslims under Islam. Her forthcoming book Eurabia elaborates the thesis that France and Germany long ago cast their lot with the Arab world against Israel and the United States. See, for example, Ye’or’s “How Europe became Eurabia” and “Beyond Munich: The spirit of Eurabia.” Ye’or writes:

On the political front, Europe has tied its destiny to the Arab countries, and thus become involved in the logic of jihad against Israel and the United States. How could Europe denounce the culture of jihadic venom which exudes from its allies, while for so many years it did everything to activate the jihad by hiding and justifying it by claiming that the real danger comes not from the jihadists, themselves, but from those who resist the Arab jihadist, the very allies that Europe serves at every international gathering, and in the European media.

I can think of evidence that tells against Ye’or’s thesis, such as the adoption of the French law against the wearing of head scarves (and skullcaps) to public schools, but Ye’or’s thesis explains a lot.

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