GAZES AT COWS:

D-Day, Chirac Style: How France and its allies liberated Germany, and other E.U. fantasies. (Irwin M. Stelzer, 06/21/2004, Weekly Standard)

What has come to be the heads-of-state equivalent of Nathan Detroit's oldest established permanent floating crap game now moves on. It opened in Normandy, moved on to Sea Island, stopped briefly in Washington to honor the memory of the highest roller of them all, Ronald Reagan, and is headed for an E.U.-U.S. summit in Newmarket-on-Fergus in County Clare, Ireland, before taking a final bow at a NATO summit in Istanbul on June 27-28.

So far, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are the big winners, and Chirac the biggest loser. Bush, with Blair backing his play, bet that he could rake in support for the U.S.-U.K. policy in Iraq, and won unanimous Security Council backing for the new Iraqi government, headed by Ghazi al-Yawar, who was educated in America. Chirac, with Schröder blowing on his dice, lost, and found himself increasingly isolated as Bush's team emphasized the president's warm personal relationships with Blair, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Indeed, when asked at a press conference preceding the D-Day celebrations whether Chirac is likely to get an invitation to the Bush ranch at Crawford, Texas, the president responded that if Chirac wanted to go there to "stare at cows," he was more than welcome to do so.

Bush bet that he could get the G-8 to support the first step in an initiative to foster democracy in the despotic countries of the Middle East, Chirac bet he would roll snake eyes, only to watch a seven come up. Bush bet that he could get NATO involved in Iraq, Chirac bet that he couldn't, but lost the pot when he had to concede that if the Iraqis ask NATO for help, help would be provided.

On D-Day, in Normandy, the French president was playing with his own dice in his own house, and raked in a few chips--favorable television images but very little to put in the bank. A few days later, on Sea Island, the American president had the hot hand, and walked away with just about every pot, sharing his winnings with his ally, Tony Blair, by agreeing to an effort to revive the Middle East peace process. Not a bad week for a president and a prime minister who only a few weeks ago were being written off as real losers.

Just as the French allied themselves with Hitler on his way down, so too they sided with Saddam. They think we're bumpkins?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 12, 2004 12:30 PM