Earlier today, Trent Telenko wrote:

"I cannot help but see the face of the evil nation that was once France. Perhaps it should be renamed "LePennistan."

Trent, you're my brother in arms here. Now, howsabout a deep breath or two.

All this adds up to a different bottom line for me: France just blew it. Kicked an own goal. Kicked several. Last time someone screwed up this bad, they were filming Waterworld. Let's review:

• Alienated world hyperpower no matter what they do next... Check.
  
• Ensured significant incentive for payback when Saddam falls, from both hyperpower and Iraqi opposition, thus doing significant harm to domestic oil industry... Check.
  
• Significantly weakened legitimacy of international body that furnishes one of your nation's top 3 claims to being a serious power, regardless of what comes next... Check.
  
• Did this just a week or two after 2nd largest donor to this body, Japan, cut its contribution by 33%. Kicking key source of own prestige when it's down... Check.
  
• Significantly upped the odds that this international body will in fact kark it utterly and go the way of the League of Nations. Check. Fortunately, compensating factor in Euro power-grab. Oh, wait...
  
• Antagonized large group of European states with EU power-grab maneuver, thus creating incentives for future payback on European front, too... Check.
  
• Major insurance against being left more or less completely isolated is German politician so unpopular that he's the subject of widespread online game parodies. Good news: you may not have to honour deals with him. Bad news: you just honured the biggest deal that will do you the most damage, he may not be around very long to honour much of anything with you, and now you're a convenient target for Schroder's domestic opposition. Who may decide to repair strained relations with the Americans and alleviate European anxieties about Germany by knifing you and publicly championing the smaller states in the EU once they come to power... Check, and probably Mate.

Just bleedin' brilliant, this is. All in the space of just 1-2 weeks, no less, and just as payback opportunities are beginning to pile up on the horizon. Pepe Le Pew had more finesse than this.

Now the Americans can treat the oil situation fairly in all other ways but screw France, then turn around and work with smaller European countries to make France's life trying to run the EU a living hell. Many of those countries will be only too happy to oblige, even as the USA uses Turkish membership as a risk-free club to beat the EU with from the outside. Germany may even flip on them once under new management, thus making the disaster complete.

Of course, even if all this gets going France still has the U.N. and that meaningful Security Council veto to guarantee its relevance. Oh, wait....

Like I said, they've boxed themselves in and handed us the keys. Folks, this calls for a Dom!

JK Update: Vodkapundit is back, with his own take on France. He's more measured than Trent, but hardly kind. What all this says to me is that Trent is probably correct about the Jacksonian reaction now underway in America, even if I don't entirely agree with his assessment of France itself.

T.T. Comments: He Joe, I am cool about this. After all, "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold." And it is very cold in the Iraqi Desert during a winter night.

What most people, including you, don't realize is that the French elite's pursuit of a dirigist E.U. leaves them horribly vulnerable for an American information warfare campaign aimed at French nationalism. Just look at how Rumsfeld's off hand crack about "Old Europe" had them hopping. This is from the Times of London

"... Paris has long known that enlarging the EU means tipping the balance towards an EU majority with a pro-American, pro-market outlook. Yesterday, Le Monde, voice of the elite, came close to acknowledging defeat. Mr Rumsfeld was right, it said. “It is perhaps unpleasant to hear it, but for the moment it is unavoidable: the countries of East Europe are massively inclined to follow automatically American leadership in defence and foreign policy.”

The split over Iraq makes a mockery of the EU’s hopes of pulling together as what the French call l’Europe-puissance — Power Europe — on the world stage. Chris Patten, the British EU Commissioner for external relations, worried yesterday that Britain, France, Germany and Spain, the EU members currently on the UN Security Council, would split over Iraq. “Let’s be frank. This will be an important failure for our efforts to build a common foreign policy for the Union,” he told Le Monde..."

The Le Kermitoid EUphiles have had a hard enough time with "Jacque Wine-Glass" as it is. So what happens when you start seeing America calling the current French elites evil for abandoning all the things that made France great for E.U. power? The best kind of information warfare is telling an unpleasant truth about your opponents in a well marketed manner. IOW, calling *Evil* by its name robs it of its power. It worked when Reagan named the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire." And it could work with the thing that was France.

J.K. Replies: I doubt it very much, especially if it relies on this kind of name-calling. Let's close this one and take our disagreements to a new set of blog posts.