THE CHOCOLATIERS:

US sneers at 'chocolate makers' (News24.com, 02/09/2003)

The United States on Tuesday sneered at plans by four European countries to create an autonomous European military command headquarters near Brussels separate from Nato, referring to the idea's proponents as "chocolate makers".

In unusually blunt language that drew surprised gasps from reporters, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher scoffed at Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg for continuing to support the proposal that they first introduced at a mini-summit in April.

He described the April meeting as one between "four countries that got together and had a little bitty summit" and then referred to them collectively as "the chocolate makers".

He sounds like he's paraphrasing The Third Man, wherein Harry Lime (Orson Welles) has the immortal line:

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Old Europe--mostly France and Germany--has determined to die a peaceful death rather than engage in the confrontation and even bloodshed required to defend liberty. It is no surprise that it has accordingly become culturally insignificant.

Posted by orrinj at September 4, 2003 5:43 PM