San Francisco, August. 24, 2006

Dear President Chirac:

My colleague Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post has urged you today in an open letter to allow French forces to be deployed in South Lebanon. Don't do it, Mr. President. However well-intentioned Mr. Hoagland may be, his advice is wrong for France in the short run and wrong for America in the long run.

Unlike Mr. Hoagland, I have not met you. But I am well-known in France for the Human Rights Brief I submitted to the French Government in 1997 seeking the release of news personnel that were being held because of their association with the tragic death of Princess Diana; the prisoners were released shortly thereafter.

In recent years Americans have never tired of insulting France. They have called you "Jacky the Lackey." They have changed "French fries" to "freedom fries" in congressional cafeterias. They have constantly suggested that French military personnel are cowards. And all of this abuse was because France refused to join in the neocons' quixotic crusade in Iraq. France was right and America was wrong in Iraq.

Now the United States wants to outsource its failed policies in the Middle East and particularly in Israel to France, by getting you to approve French forces as a garrison in South Lebanon.

President Bush encouraged a war of casual and arrogant terror against the Lebanese people that he could have stopped. His military poodles, the Israelis, were soundly defeated and the Israeli government is near collapse. Although the U. N. voted a cease-fire, Israelis claim a virtually unlimited right to violate the cease-fire by supporting their own flatulent and solipsistic view of what constitutes "defense." Israel continues to blockade the sovereign nation of Lebanon by sea and air.

Why would France want to become immersed in this disaster?

Will President Bush change his policy of blindly allowing Israeli aggression? Obviously he will not. Will he recall the blank check he has given Israel to terrorize Lebanon? He will not. But the Bush Administration wants France to tread where the United States refuses to lead, and to risk French blood to rescue Bush's failed policies.

It would be treason against the French state for you to risk French soldiers in such a situation. South Lebanon has been stabilized. Fighting will continue and in due course Hizballah will push the Israelis back inside their cantonment.

Mr. Hoagland, the Americans and perhaps some members of the EU will push for French/Italian/EU forces in South Lebanon. You must resist this temptation at all costs.

Not unless and until Bush admits his disastrous mistakes in Lebanon and stops endorsing Israeli aggression. Not until Israel withdraws fully and ends its blockade. Only then can the issue of a "peacekeeping" force be considered, when the parties themselves have brought peace to the battlefield. There is no need for a French poodle in South Lebanon. In the meantime, let President Bush send his British poodle, Tony Blair, to provide target practice for the Israelis and Hizballah.

France was right in 2003 to avoid any involvement with President Bush's delusional military ventures in Iraq. France will be right in 2006 if it stays out of Lebanon and forces the people who made this mess to sort it out for themselves.

Respectfully submitted,

Andy Martin