Res Publica 2005

The president of a major Western power orders troops sent to a crisis-torn country on another continent. Officials close to the president talk of the need for “regime change” and “democracy” and ramp up a military response to the unrest under the cover of a United Nations resolution.

Mobs take to the streets of the crisis country as the Western troops seek to impose order. The military reports that European women have been raped, and local thugs have beheaded foreigners with machetes. The troops rescue frightened whites as the mobs bay for Western blood. Chaos reigns, and back in the Western capital, the public begins to demand what their soldiers are doing in that far-off country.

The troops are French, the country is the former French colony of the Ivory Coast and this is what some observers are now calling French President Jacque Chirac’s “little Iraq.”

Indeed, a letter from a resident of the Paris region to the editor of the French daily “Le Figaro” says, “France is doing in the Ivory Coast what we reproach the Americans for doing.” It is, the writer says “none other than the unilateralism which we denounce (in Iraq), but of course France loves to give lectures to others.”

(source: CBS)

And why is this happening?

This was a former French colony, and an area that France still considers, in some strange way, hers. If the official government won't do as the French would have it, why back up the rebels.

And this is the cultural light some are saying we should emulate?