United States / Etats-Unis
Swann - 08:00am Oct 12, 2004
Etats-Unis Nous n'avons pas la même mentalité que nos cousins américains. Ils sont nos grands frères et pourtant beaucoup de choses nous séparent. Nous nous permettons de donner un avis sur les autres avant de nous regarder. Nous nous inspirons d'eux et nous permettons de les critiquer. Nous n'avons pas leur esprit d'ouverture. Nous fuyons les icônes de réussite, nous les jalousons, eux les admirent. Le modèle de réussite fascine les américains, nous il nous rend envieux. Je pense qu'il faut savoir balayer devant sa porte avant de porter un jugement sur autrui et que je suis simplement déçu du fat que l'on n'aime pas les américains. Eux qui ne nous ont jamais trahi, qui nous ont permis d'être ce que nous sommes aujourd'hui, ceux qui se sont sacrifiés sur nos plages en 44. Il ne faut pas l'oublier. C'est dans ma mémoire...
William - 09:35am Oct 18, 2004
Speaking as an American, I very much appreciate your comments. It is often far too easy to criticise the United States or France and to stereotype our countries based on current feelings or emotions. However, it seems that historically speaking, France and the United States have much in common: both aspire for personal freedoms for their citizens, both had to gain their deomocratic institutions through bloodshed, and both have populations who desire peace and prosperity. Facing threats, our countries show this commonality through mutual aid: for example, French help during the American Revolution and American help during the World Wars. While France and the United States may differ on methods, largely based on our leaders (President de Gaulle, President Bush, etc.), our goals for a peaceful and safe world are the same.
Adil - 09:09am Oct 19, 2004
Je voudrais savoir une chose: pourquoi les USA veulent-ils diriger le monde ? Pourquoi veulent-ils amener la paix partout ? Je pense que chaque peuple doit décider lui-même de son sort. Si un pays vit dans une dictature (comme l'irak avec Sadam Hussein) ce n'est pas aux Etats-Unis ou à l'Union Européenne d'agir mais au peuple de ce pays. Chaque pays doit pouvoir faire sa révolution sans que les grandes puissances étrangères n'interviennent. Je pense que les américains font un grand peuple mais que la politique américaine fait des USA, un pays petit par son humanisme.
gregory - 09:23am Oct 19, 2004
Je suis entièrement d'accord avec william, les Etats Unis et la France sont liés par leur histoire, leurs convictions et on oublie trop souvent ces liens qui les unies. N'oublions pas le Général Lafayette (français) qui a participé grandement à l'évolution américaine. Mais ce que les Etats Unis doivent comprendre, c'est qu'en temps que première puissance mondiale, nous leurs demandons d'être plus humble avec le reste du monde. Il ne s'agit pas de donner des conseils au reste du monde et de leur dire faite comme nous, c'est ce qu'il y a de mieux. Au contraire, les Etats Unis, tout comme la France d'ailleurs, doivent aider les autres cultures à trouver leurs propres voies de développement. Sinon, j'aime les Etats Unis, c'est à mon avis le plus beau pays du monde.
Tufool - Nuaimi
I agree with Adil-that every country is responsible to fight its own war. I was always against the war on Iraq, especially because there was more too it that "making the Iraqis happy" But its done. And although a lot of people are angry at what happened, maybe something good will come out of it. Its true that most of Iraq's money from oil export is going to go to the USA for the next god-knows how many years, but maybe something good will come out of it. Iraq, befor saddam, was the most developed countries in the middle east. Today it is the least. So maybe this is a chance for them to go back to what they were.
S - 12:51pm Oct 20, 2004
Il y a deux trois choses que je ne cerne pas! Dans un pays en dictature, il est impossible pour le peuple de se lever puisque cela signifie la peine de mort! Donc comment un peuple peut se rebeller si l'armée est contre lui? D'autre part, la France comme les Etats Unis se permettent de donner des leçons, sauf que la France n'est pas la première puissance mondiale et qu'elle donne des leçons sur les droits de l'homme en Chine, le fonds de commerce de Chirac, alors qu'en France on ne sait même pas gérer nos problèmes de sécurité et nos otages!
Brian - 08:39pm Oct 20, 2004
First I'd like to comment on Adil's comments. As Swann said, people under the power of a dictator are much less powerful to fight their own wars. As you will recall, America was not powerful enough by itself to fight her revolution, and nor was France. Was it not evidence enough of people cheering in the streets of Baghdad that people did not like their dictator but could not do anything about it? What if we had decided to leave Adolf Hitler in control of your country? Afterall, the German flag was flying over Paris, was it not? Or should we have just let you handle it on your own?
I think it's very important for Europeans (and French citizens especially) to realize that no one's perfect. Do I agree with the Iraq war? Not really, but I have heard too many people say that all American Foreign policy is bad. Well if we reversed all of our previous foreign policies, you'd probably be speaking German today. Bitte schoen!
Pablo - 11:06am Oct 22, 2004
La dictature en Irak existe dépuis plus de 30 ans,alors je me demande pourquoi les Etats-Unis se sont arretés en 1991 à la frontière et laissé des milliers d'irakiens se faire massacrer par le régime? Qui a mis les dictatures d'Amérique Latine au pouvoir comme le cas du Chili avec Pinochet ?
Adil - 11:18am Oct 22, 2004
Une chose. Je préfère mourir en tentant de me libérer dans le pays où je suis né que mourir sous les bombes d'un étranger venu me délivrer. Il faut arrêter d'être aveugle. Qui a placé Pinochet? (dictateur) Qui a armé Saddam Hussein ? (dictateur) Qui a armé les talibans ? (barbares) et la liste est longue... Les irakiens sont des êtres normaux, intelligents, humains, pourquoi voudraient-ils vivre sous une dictature ? Il faut être serieux, les gouvernements occidentaux ont toujours préférer soutenir un dictateur avec qui ils peuvent faire des affaires plutôt qu'une démocratie qui veut être indépendante. L'auto-critique est une bonne chose, des fois...
S - 06:40am Oct 25, 2004
Joli point de vue Adil! Tu veux mourir comme Bruce Willis en héros (d'ailleurs il est pour Bush) ce qui est beau! Mais bon je crois qu'en temps de dictature personne ne sait ce qu'il ferait! C'est comme en France où il y avait 1% de résistants et qu'on entend maintenant que tout le monde a resisté! Bref, bien sur que la politique c'est pas parfait mais là on dit juste que renverser une dictature c'est bien! Et tant bien même qu'ils aient mis Saddam au pouvoir ce qui est complètement faux, ils ont quand même réagi et fini pour le débusquer vivant dans sa cabane! Ils ont fait leur autocritique! C'est comme Ben Laden!
Edgar - 09:16pm Oct 25, 2004
In response to Pablo and Adil about Pinochet and Chile. I fully agree with both of you guys. I find it quite ironic that the United States enforces (or, in their language, "encourages") "freedom" and "free elections" and yet aided a coup against someone who was FREELY elected by the people (i.e., Salvador Allende). There was a film at MIT that was entitled something along the lines of "The truth behind the other September 11." I particularly liked that title because the presidential palace in Chile was indeed bombed on September 11. It was a title to remind Americans that the damage we do to others can come back to haunt us at anytime.
Quite sadly, the United States has a policy that anything (and anyone) that does not benefit them in some way need to be rid of. And, as long as they are the world's #1 power, they can do whatever they want.
Brian - 09:32pm Oct 25, 2004
Excellent points, Adil, but you make it seems like the United States is the only country that has aided other countries. It wasn't like Pinochet was killing thousands of people when we helped him. Nor with Bin Laden, who was simply hired help in an area we knew very little about. France had more colonies than any other country - or have you forgotten? And what has happened in those countries where you have installed or supported governments? Congo? Ivory Coast? Tunisia? Great successes there as well. And as I recall, French Sudan was also part of that list too. (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/French_Sudan) Now I'm not suggesting that you take responsibility for the condition of that country - but following your line of logic, I guess it's kind of France's fault, huh? And what if the new president of Iraq becomes a dictator? Is that our fault too? What you fail to see is that these are also people who make their own choices. Penochet was a better choice given the options - but if we had known what would happen after he took power, I don't think we would have been happy with his taking power.
By the way, how are things going in the Basque region? A lot of those people are French too - but they'd probably want to die under terrorist rule than to have the problem fixed by more swift military action, right?
And in response to Edgar's comment - what did we stand from eliminating Hitler? What about the aide we're giving to Haiti right now? Surely you can't be arguing that helping a new, illegally procured government in Haiti is for our own good. I don't know a damn thing that we get from Haiti except headaches.
Edgar - 11:17pm Oct 25, 2004
Brian, you said it well yourself, YOU don't know a "damn thing" that we get from Haiti. The government does.
Alejandro - 12:21am Oct 26, 2004
To introduce a more positive comment on the US (although it is subjective), I found out on one pdf from the 2000 USA Census that 17.5% of Americans speak languages other than English at home. That's almost 1 out of every 5 Americans! Spanish had the biggest representation, but there's also a lot of Chinese, French, and German speakers.
Does France have a similar phenomenon? I know Spain has 4 main languages: Spanish (Castillian), Basque, Catalan and Galician. I'm guessing you might share some of Spain's languages. Moreover, what do you, or the Americans for that matter, think about the diversity of language? Is it better to celebrate diversity, or would it be easier if we all spoke the same language? I do expect answers to be biased given that this is a French/English class, so we obviously have some interest in diversity.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf
Frances - 09:06am Oct 26, 2004
I think it's better to celebrate diversity and embrace the fact that many people in our country speak languages other than English. The fact remains that English is not likely to stop being the national language any time soon, but I think people do accept/recognize that many people speak other languages.
I think the United States should in fact make a greater emphasis on its students learning other languages. I was having a hard time finding specific statistics, but in general, students in Europe seem to speak many more languages than American students. Is this true for Paris II students?
William - 10:41am Oct 26, 2004
It is interesting to see how quickly the French students are able to point to past problems with the United States - botched interventions in South America and the Middle East. Likewise, many Americans who are familiar with history could quickly highlight dark chapters in recent French history involving the people who were not part of the resistance during WWII (putting it politely), interventions in Egypt and Algeria, and the sins of De Gualle. However, I have a question that I have wondered about for a while, that will hopefully allow us to overlook a lot of the past mistakes of our countries.
Why do the French students think we have troops in Germany, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Japan, etc? Do you honestly think that it is because the US has an imperial interest in these countries? Do we want to make Iraq or South Korea the 51rst state?
Alejandro - 07:40pm Oct 27, 2004
Will, I think you're also exagerating. The United States obviously doesn't want to add Iraq to it's list of states, much less wants to make American citizen's out of Iraqis. The US doesn't even want to make Puerto Rico a state. But the huge economic interest America has in the oil in Iraq is something you can't ignore.
Imperialism is no longer about aquiring territories, but about controling economies and governments, and the US has been doing this for a long time. I don't think whatever you mean by France's "dark chapters" compares to what the US has done in the world.
Frances - 12:49am Oct 28, 2004
I'm pretty sure Will was being sarcastic.
William - 09:29am Nov 2, 2004
Alejandro, by referring to "dark chapters" in France's history, I was pointing out that we could spend all day accusing each others' countries about past mistakes without much progress. However, I think it's fairly absurd to hear people talk about the US as having imperialistic desires, especially in Iraq.
Most people who make the claim that we invaded Iraq for imperialistic reasons also claim that we went in to gain access to their oil - presumably because that would make us significantly richer. However, if you look at the actual oil reserves and exports of Iraq, you will find that their total exports are slightly over $7.5 billion /year with production of 1.7 million barrels /day. While that is significant for a small country, their exportable wealth is approximately 0.06% of America's GDP ($11 trillion) and approximately 1% of our exports. The source for these figures is the World Factbook: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html and http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html.
This can all be summarized by saying that if we invaded Iraq to get their oil, it was a pretty poor investment, and I find it hard to believe that Congress would go along with something like that.
I suspect that our influence in most of the world derives more from our economy than from any military presence. If other countries resent that influence, they are welcome to compete with the US in the global market.
Juan - 09:53pm Nov 3, 2004
This has not much to do with the discussion, its just a fact check: In response to Brian's comment on Pinochet, his coup was on september 11, 1973, so by the time Manuel Contreras met in Washington with Vernon Walters, the adjoint director of the CIA (1975) to coordinate "operacion Condor", he (Pinochet) had commited atrocities aplenty. "operacion Condor" was the colaborative network of south american dictatorships that allowed them to capture and "dissapear" opponents who were living in other South American countries. This was all part of the wider "fight against communism". Let's see what the "fight against terrorism" brings.
Alejandro - 01:26am Nov 8, 2004
Will, I know what you meant idiomatically by "dark chapters," but as far as I know, France hasn't done anything concrete that is as bad as funding guerrillas in foreing countries that lead to thousands of dead innocent civilians in those countries and other things that the US has done. The only thing that might be comparable is that France in recent history sold weapons to Iraq and other countries (the US has done it too, as in the case of the Iran-Contra scandal). And that's it.
As for the US invading Iraq for oil, or being imperialistic in general, I don't think it's a ridiculous proposition at all! America's past and modern history has defined it as an empire, yes just like the Romans and the French used to be in ancient history. Iraq currently doesn't export as much oil, but they definitely have the capability to export much more. That they haven't doesn't mean that they can't. Iraq has below it one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Pardon if my source is a little bootleg, I don't have time to look for a better one, but you get the point:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872964.html
With all that oil, America would become even more of an economic influence worldwide!