Exclusive: God Bless Charles DeGaulle by Daniel N. White

by Daniel N. White
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 18, 2009

Recent Washington Post article talks about how some unidentified Iraqis are saying that they are going to suffer if the United States leaves soon.  These Iraqis are saying that there will be a lot of killings by the various militias running around the country once the US leaves.  No doubt they are right on that.  Unstated but obvious message of the WP article is that therefore we the US must continue our war efforts there at least for the reasonably forseeable future and therefore things, if not fine, are at least the least bad of all the possible alternatives.  Which dishonest message, is of course to be expected from a newspaper that shamelessly shilled for the war in the first place.

Exclusive: God Bless Charles DeGaulle, Verse Two by Daniel N. White

by Daniel N. White
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 17, 2009

Another good story from France’s war in Algeria, featuring our hero, Charles DeGaulle.  DeGaulle, who had been in self-imposed political exile since 1946, came back into power in 1958 via a major political flareup concerning Algeria and the messy war therein.  The army had been threatening a coup over a feared political sellout in Algeria, and the politically weak and fragmented Fourth Republic mostly wasn’t able to do much to prevent such a thing from coming to pass should the Army try.  DeGaulle cleverly played the Army against the Fourth Republic, and visa-versa, and wound up being granted the presidency with near-dictatorial powers for the next six months while he and his colleagues rewrote the French Constitution, and established the Fifth Republic.