Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“NICOLAS SARKOZY has had a good war. The armed campaign in Libya was the French president’s biggest gamble, the moment he put his reputation, judgment and leadership on the line. France, along with Britain, carried out the bulk of the air strikes. Unlike President Barack Obama, Mr Sarkozy enjoyed cross-party support for the campaign and popular backing at home. The fall of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi ought therefore to yield some domestic reward. Yet Mr Sarkozy’s poll numbers remain grim, and, little more than six months before France’s presidential vote, his chances of re-election do not, on paper, look good. The Libyan air strikes were not Mr Sarkozy’s first armed campaign. He sent French soldiers into hostile territory in the name of democracy in both Afghanistan and Côte d’Ivoire. But his investment in the Libyan campaign was the most intensely personal. Before anybody else, and unbeknown at the time even to his foreign minister, he stuck his neck out and gave diplomatic recognition to the Libyan rebels, whose leaders he met at the Elysée palace at the urging of Bernard-Henri Lévy, a celebrity philosopher…………..”

Now Sarkozy has his own favorite American-Style “celebrity” philosopher. Bernard-Henri Lévy as a Gallic Dr. Phil, or Deepak Chopra, or Jerry Springer, or Howard Stern, et al. I would advise Sarko not to strut in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner yet. Wait for the dust in the Libyan desert to settle, wait for the Sahara dust to settle. Remember: your old pal Rommel thought he was heading to Alexandria (then Cairo) when in fact he didn’t get beyond El-Alamein.

The French
are notorious for being skeptic about their leaders, at least they think they are, yet they keep electing snake-oil vendors who almost always have to be investigated for corruption as soon as they leave office. De Gaulle excepted. Maybe they do that so they can quickly get back to their “French” norm and be skeptic about them.
Cheers
mhg


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