Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 15 2023 08:38pm)
Strange. If my memory serves me right, the US tried to assemble a large coalition in 2003, to conduct the largest military operation of the past 50 years - but Canada, France and Germany, 3 of their oldest and most important allies, told them to fuck off.
Even stranger that these vassals outright refused to give the US allegiance, yet the reaction from Washington wasn't to send tanks across the Canadian border or to launch missiles on Paris and Berlin. The evil empire has truly gone soft, hasn't it?
Both Germany and Canada supported the war though, they didn't have boots on the ground but according to the US Ambassador to Canada, we provided more help than most of the 46 member coalition
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shortly after the US invasion began, the ambassador openly praised Canada’s contribution to the war effort (even though he groused over the Chrétien government’s public caginess). At a meeting of the Economic Club of Toronto on March 25, 2003, Cellucci stated that Canada’s military support for the invasion exceeded that of most coalition members: “Ironically, the Canadian naval vessels, aircraft and personnel in the Persian Gulf… will provide more support indirectly to this war in Iraq than most of the 46 countries that are fully supporting our efforts there.”
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/debunking-the-myth-of-canadas-non-involvement-in-the-iraq-warGermany also participated in similar ways by not putting boots on the ground but supporting the war indirectly. Not exactly a "fuck off".
https://wri-irg.org/en/news/2006/pflueger-en.htmFrance is less of a vassal state than say the UK or Germany, but they can still be controlled to a large degree via trade and political pressure from their neighbours, they did oppose the Iraq war but that did have consequences. This is a excerpt from an article which talks about how the US started to frame France as an enemy due to its opposition to Iraq
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Relations between the United States and France in 1797-98 and 2003-2004 followed a path that was the exact opposite of the course described above. In both instances, official statements opened the way to media campaigns that resulted in the creation of an enemy image of France that was accepted by a significant portion of the American public.3
During both crises, the “elite statements” that signaled that France had become an antagonist in the eyes of American officials came from the highest levels of government: in 1798, President Adams repeatedly issued calls to arms against the French in front of town assemblies, societies and militia companies (DeConde 1966: 81), while Representatives in Congress advocated “open and deadly war with France” (Bowman 1974: 331). In 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s reproach that “France has been a problem” (Rumsfeld 2003), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s willingness to “punish France”, and Colin Powell’s assertion that France would be made to suffer for its opposition to the war (Knowlton 2003a) prompted editorialist Thomas Friedman to write in The New York Times: “It’s time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy” (Friedman 2003). These lines sum up the spirit of a media campaign whose effects paralleled the damaging work carried out by the press in the context of the 1790s Quasi-War.
In 2003 as in 1798, the media accomplished what the polished language of international diplomacy could not: it spread deprecatory images of France and the French in order to rouse public opinion against a nation that came to incarnate everything un-patriotic and un-American. In both cases, the media campaigns were carefully orchestrated. In 1797-8, three quarters of the press supported the administration’s stance against France (DeConde 1966: 79). Federalist newspapers such as The Boston Gazette and New York Commercial Advertiser became fora for all those who sought to spread rumors of an impending invasion of the United States by French troops, calling for military action against France. Alexander Hamilton himself took to pen under the pseudonym “Titus Manlius” to publish a series of articles titled “The stand”. “Like the prophet of Mecca”, he wrote in one of these columns, “the tyrants of France press forward with the alcoran of their faith in one hand, and the sword in the other” (Hamilton 1798). The association between Frenchmen and Muslims, a topos that would be widely used in 2003 as well, can be seen as the justification of a crusade-like enterprise.
The Washington Times, which is owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Movement, is well-known for it (...)
11In 2003, leaks from alleged “anonymous administration officials” (Ireland 2003) provided the source of articles accusing France of selling military equipment to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. As noted by political scientist Justin Vaïsse, the breadth and depth of the disinformation campaign against France was striking: anti-French articles did not only appear in controversial papers such as The Washington Times and New York Post,4 but also in prestigious and widely read outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek (Vaïsse 2003b).
https://journals.openedition.org/angles/408