Over at the Globe and Mail, we have this clever fellow Jeffrey Simpson who’s keen to tell us that those French should be careful about undertaking foreign adventures from which they may have more trouble extricating themselves than they had in inserting themselves. Perhaps the readership is as short on memory as the French leadership, which all seems a little nonsensical given that the French only recently pulled the last of their troops out of Afghanistan after ten years of what can best be described as futility. We still have people there, though not in combat positions (is there anywhere in Afghanistan that isn’t a combat zone?) and who knows where all the Americans are these days. Given their jag of base building since March of 2003, I find it hard to believe that there aren’t still significant numbers of American military personnel in Iraq, which brings us to the instant parallel that came to mind when I read the headline on Simpson’s discourse:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/entering-mali-is-easy-exiting-not-so-much/article7536744/

This was around the internet just about the time W sent the boys off to finish Saddam Hussein, a sly little ditty from the man who recorded the Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag as the Vietnam War raged, and so had a bit of a perspective on this here-we-go-again routine in 2003.

Cakewalk to Baghdad Lyrics and music by Bruce Barthol © 2003I remember back, before we whacked Iraq I was watching the news, were we gonna attack? A man named Richard Perle came on and talked He said going to Baghdad would be a cakewalkCakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to BaghdadIt went real easy, Took a couple of weeks Tore down that statue Set those Saddamites free The Frogs and the Krauts, they feel real bad, They missed out cakewalkin’ into Baghdad Cakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to Baghdad Next we’re gonna cakewalk into Teheran, Gonna cakewalk to Damascus and Pyong-yin-yang When we strut on in, Everybody’s gonna cheer They’ll be wavin’ old glory, We’ll have kegs of beer, just like that… Cakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to Baghdad Cakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to Baghdad Now moms and dads don’t worry ’bout Your soldier boys and girls We’re just sending them cakewalkin’ Around the world When the coffins come home and the flag unfurls Cheer for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle Cakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to Baghdad Do you think we’ll see those Bush boys patrollin’ the streets Like our soldiers got to do in Basram and Tikrit? We gonna see Richard Perle cakewakin’ ’round The streets and alleys of Baghdad town? Cakewalk to Baghdad, Cakewalk to Baghdad Easy to cakewalk in … not so easy to cakewalk out.   http://www.countryjoe.com/cjb.htm#cakewalk If you go to this page and click on Richard Perle’s face, you can listen to the song (I love it) via Real Player, and there is a version of it available through iTunes.   In any case, the French have Vietnam experiences of their own on which to base a certain sense of caution, along with the nastiness of the war in Algeria leading up to the Evian Accords of 1962, along with a bit of a misadventure in Rwanda in 1994 and the recently ended Afghan sortie.

Looking at the multiple recidivism of so many countries when it comes to intervention in foreign countries, we perhaps come to the conclusion that this is part of the scheme to drive the economy based on blowing things up, hopefully someone else’s stuff and in someone else’s yard, but as long as we can call them terrorists, we’re good to go. Meanwhile there are rumblings in the French press that the bigwigs in Bamako, on whose behalf our C-17 is ferrying French stuff to Mali to be blown up, are more concerned about the independence movement among the Tuaregs of the northeast than they are about Al-Quaeda au Maghreb Islamique in the northwest (who knows?) and perhaps the French have their own little agenda relating to gas, oil and uranium resources in the northern desert section of Mali.