The Will of Allah

"Sounds great Lex. But you're not a god." - Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey)

"Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their power with mankind." - Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey)

- from Superman Returns (2006)

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"And when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in remembrance the favor of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'"

- Holy Qur'an 5:20-21

To some, this current war in the Middle East between Israel and Hizballah is simply over religion. To others, it is simply a war over land. In truth, it's over both, but it's also a war over who will live in peace and who will not - and who gets to choose, governments or terrorist groups. Or, God for that matter. Speaking of God, one side believes in a God who blesses all peoples, but chose the Jews for a specific purpose. The other side believes Allah damns all peoples who are not Muslims, or at least not a certain kind of Muslim.

The world we inhabit is not an American world, a European world, a Christian, Jewish or Muslim world, but our shared world. We didn't create it, we just live on it. What's more, this planet that we call our home is but a speck in the cosmos, really; a dot. Whether you're a believer or an agnostic, the irrefutable fact that the universe is much, much bigger than our most petty problems - it is even bigger than our most intractable problems over borders, beliefs or oil - should humble us.

Now, I'm not the most religiously observant of people. But I do have spirituality. I do have faith. I believe in God. For me, and millions of others, acknowledging that there is a higher power than ourselves helps to keep us humble, just as thinking about the size of the Earth vs. the Universe can. Doing so helps put us in our place. Whether you submit to the power of God or the power of the Universe (for many, the one is indistinguishable from the other), the wisdom of recognizing our size in the overall scheme of things should make us think twice about how we act. If we truly submit to a Higher Power of any kind, then there is no room for arrogance. On our world, we may attain power, importance or influence. On Earth, we might matter.

On Mars, we're nobodies.

Islam, the word, means "submission"...or more correctly, "submission to God". Islam teaches - drills into the heads of students, in fact - that everything that happens is the will of God. Nothing is separate from God. If God wants something to be, it is. If God doesn't want something to be, it isn't. It's that simple. Though Iran's president and countless Arab and Asian imams say otherwise, isn't it right and logical - if using Islamic core beliefs about God as a guide - that Israel's creation, and Israel's having won major map-changing victories in the wars of 1948-49, 1967, and 1973 (against great odds), and Israel's continued existence, would either have been or would be impossible without God allowing it?

Many Muslims often say that they submit to God, but what extremists really seem to think is that they aren't accountable to God, but only to the teachings of Muhammad. If it were otherwise, they would not have raised such a stink about cartoons of their prophet. Muhammad was just a human being, after all. And if such Muslims really submitted to God's will, they wouldn't insist on trying to destroy one the manifestations of his Creation, both ancient and modern: the State of Israel. For those Muslims who would kill innocent people, God is not the inspiration, but a tool. They base their murderous reasoning not on God's reasoning, but on their prophet Muhammad's, or their imam's.

An imam who, with hatred on his tongue, denounces in his mosque the Jewish people or calls the State of Israel an abomination that exists contrary to God's will, needs to stop and think about his words: If nothing can exist outside of God, if God is all powerful, if everything is the will of Allah - see where I'm going? Is it not so that Allah, in His infinite wisdom, knows more than the Arab & Muslim peoples about what an abomination against Him is and what is not?

You can be a devout Muslim and say the Israelis (or generally, just the Jews) stole Arab or Muslim land, and then use Islam and "occupation" as your excuse for terrorism against innocent people rather than peaceful protest, but...well, look at this entry from the Qur'an:

"Say: 'O God, King of the kingdom, Thou givest the kingdom to whom Thou pleasest, and Thou strippest off the kingdom from whom Thou pleasest; Thou endowest with honor whom Thou pleasest, and Thou bringest low whom Thou pleasest: all the best is in Thy hand. Verily, Thou hast power over all things.'

- Holy Qur'an 3:26

God took the Land of Israel away from the Canaanites and gave it to the Jews. God took the Land of Israel away from the Jews and gave it to the Romans. God took the Land of Israel away from the Romans, and gave it to the Muslims. God took away the Land of Israel from the Muslims, and gave it back to the Jews. Simplistic it might sound, but for a religious or faithful Jew there should be no question that this is so (there are ultra-religious Jews that don't accept this, funnily enough). Too, for the humble Muslim who submits to God, there shouldn't be any question that God has the right to do whatever He wants. As we all know, though, questions abound.

Muslims hold up the Qur'an to be the word of God; it is said that Muhammad heard prophecies from the angel Gabriel, and only later were the oral teachings transcribed into written material. Given this sort of development, we can probably assume that what is the finalized Qur'an of today evolved more along the lines of the game "telephone" rather than the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Think about it: God instructed the angel Gabriel; Gabriel instructed Muhammad; Muhammad instructed the Arabs. But Muhammad wasn't a god to be worshipped among the many other gods that Arabs believed in and worshipped at the time; he was a human. Fallible. Prone to make mistakes.

You're telling me that 1,400 years ago, messages from the Almighty couldn't get lost in translation, or distorted by a fallible human? As Hollywood has reminded us on occasion, long before Muhammad, Jews had their own problems with getting the full story from God when it was passed down to mankind via a human intermediary. Take this incident at Mount Sinai for instance:

"The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...(drops one of the tablets)...Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!" - Moses (Mel Brooks)

- from History of the World: Part I (1981)

See?

Imagine if God said to the angel Gabriel, "Tell the Arab Muhammad that women are superior to men." Say the angel Gabriel committed it to memory, flew down to Muhammad...but forgot the entire message on arrival, and only said "Women are equal to men." In Muhammad's mind, in the tribal society of the Arabia of the time (and today), such an idea was preposterous. He might have listened faithfully, remembered it for later, but heard it as "Women are inferior to men." Thus - fast forward - even today devout Muslim women in some countries need permission from the eldest male in their family to travel abroad (men have no such restrictions), and in Saudi Arabia women can't drive.

Walk around on a Saturday in Jerusalem, though, and you'll see Muslim Arab women giving driving lessons to other Muslim Arab women. I guess they have more rights here than elsewhere.

If you were a Muslim who truly submits to God, you would be humble before Him. You would not commit such acts of blatant arrogance as blowing yourself, a bus, or a restaurant up to kill others of His children, because you would know that it is not you or your imam who decides whether Israel exists or not, but God. Iran's president this very day said the solution to the Middle East's problems is the destruction of Israel. What sort of god does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe in? I use lower-case, because he obviously isn't talking about our God. In his deluded arrogance, Islam is the supreme power on Earth - Islam the religion, not the God of Islam. Any god will do for Ahmadinejad.

Going further, if this Islam was truly a God-centered religion instead of a human-centered religion, when "fundamentalist" Muslims go on a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, they would honor God's power, rather than pay lip-service to it while memorializing Muhammad's memory more. What good is symbolically stoning the Devil, when Muslims seem intent on symbolically working with the Devil to destroy Israel? Peacefully questioning God's will is one thing...but openly challenging God's inherent right to have His way is another. Hizballah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, and millions of others around the globe, question on a daily basis God's right to have His way.

Every rocket or missile launched at Israel from southern Lebanon or the Gaza Strip is a vocal protest (that in His wisdom God allows) against God's will and the Qur'an, not a celebration of either. It's a temper tantrum; it's Muslims saying to Allah, "You're not the boss of us!" By the same token, any suicide terrorist who would scream "God is Great!" before taking innocent lives in an Israeli restaurant or before flying a passenger jet into a New York skyscraper would, rather than glorify God, commit acts of holy war against Him. They should thank God that He is merciful and forgiving.

Rather than submit to God's will, too many Muslims would rather that God submit to theirs.

As a result, people are still dying in Israel and Lebanon...

"And thereafter We said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.'"

- Holy Qur'an 17:104

The Perception of Incompetence

Following the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the establishment of a beachhead, and the push into northern France, Allied troops believed that before too long Paris would be liberated, Berlin would be occupied, and that by Christmas 1944 the War in Europe would be over.

History had other plans, and on December 24 and 25, 1944, the Allies were still slugging it out with the SS and Wehrmacht in and around the Ardennes region during what is popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge; the Allies were doing their best to finally turn back what had been a surpising, resurgent Nazi offensive. Allied troops were no longer so loftily proclaiming that the war would be over soon.

Reality had set in.

If I had tried to predict, in December 1999, when I would graduate from the University of Arizona, the prospects didn't look good. I would've been proven a fool, especially after my disastrous first semester which had just ended. I would've been an optimistic fool, but a fool nonetheless. Then, in May 2000, things looked better. They went sour again later in the year, and then slightly rose...before falling in spring 2001.

When I ran away to New York on a Greyhound bus that summer, any bold pronouncements that I'd graduate by a certain date would've been laughed off. That fall, before and after 9/11, I'd been considering switching schools and going up to Northern Arizona University. Then, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity came calling. Spring 2002 came along, and then Fall 2002. Then, I took a semester off. I had an idea, though, that the goal I had in mind was within reach.

In fact, it was only as I grappled with the decision whether to move to New York or Israel in late 2003 after returning to classes that I could remind my Dad of the promise he made to send me to Europe after college graduation, and say that in May 2004 I would graduate.

If in October 2003 I had said "I want to move to Israel by July 2004," and then in November 2003 said "I want to move to Israel by August 2004," and then in December said "I want to move to Israel by September 2004," well...in all likelihood I never would have left Tucson!

The point of all that?

One of the most aggravating things for me about this latest Middle East war is what we're hearing from the Israeli government. Jerusalem consistently says that Israel needs 10-14 days to finish the campaign. What's the problem with this? The problem is, 10-14 days ago I seem to remember hearing that Israel needed 10-14 days to finish the campaign. Now, 10-14 days later, we hear again from the Defense Minister that the IDF needs 10-14 days to finish the operations.

Such was told to Washington at the start of the war 21 days ago, then again 14 days ago; again, such was told to the world 10 days ago, and we were treated again to this prediction today. This evening, one general even said that the IDF needs two to six weeks for ground forces to "clean" southern Lebanon of the Hizballah threat...or what the Canadian government today rightly called the Hizballah "cancer". Of course, opinions differ on how to do it. That's democracy, and military planning, for you.

I'm pretty sure, though, that if the war hasn't ended by 10-14 days from now, 10-14 days from now we'll hear once again that Israel needs 10-14 days to finish the job. The Jewish state has come a long way from being able to destroy the armies and air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in six days as it did in 1967, though Hizballah is a better funded, better trained, and more dedicated fighting force than any Arab country's regular army has ever been, except for maybe Saddam Hussein's army in the Iran-Iraq war. Then again, the Gulf War in 1991 showed what a paper tiger that was...insurgent terrorists have fought better...anyway...

Despite my overall misgivings about the international political scene that will emerge at the end of the war - whenever it ends - I admit that see the progress being made by Israel. There are fewer rockets hitting northern Israel. Up until now, the bold pronouncements by chief Hizballah terrorist Hassan Nasrallah that missiles would hit central Israel have been shown to be so much bluffedy-bluster (and may it remain so, though it may not). Trucks carrying armaments for Hizballah from Syria into Lebanon are being destroyed by the Israeli Air Force en route. Israeli troops are pushing further into southern Lebanon...and taking casualties.

Yes, the war continues, despite the bombing in Qana and with the revelation that Hizballah might very well have orchestrated the PR campaign that followed (such as a "rescue" worker taking multiple pictures throughout the day with the same body, and information that several corpses displayed showed rigor mortis too early to have died when the Israeli bombs hit or the building collapsed).

The war continues, with Lebanese, US and UK bloggers accusing Hizballah of having placed those who died in the building themselves - I speak of handicapped Lebanese and children - and as we hear the various announcements of the body count at Qana. That more people have died , more often, in single-day terror attacks in Iraq recently, apparently is of little concern to the world community. We certainly don't hear Human Rights Watch, or the UN, condemning the insurgents for deliberately targeting innocent civilians in Iraq as loudly as Human Rights Watch and the UN condemn Israel for accidentally killing civilians in war against the terrorists who started this in the first place and who deliberately place civilians in harm's way.

Even so, while all that happens and while we can see some progress, some hope, I wonder...is the IDF full of psychics? The government certainly isn't. These predictions just sound so silly. You can start a fighting a war when you want to, or rather when you need to or you should, but you can't really put time limits on it. Not in a war like this. You'll be disappointed. Every time the government sets goals in this war, it goes back on them. Or changes them. Or extends the deadline to meet them. That's because predicting how a war will play out on paper is often much different than how it plays out on the battlefield. I thought the Israeli government knew that from experience.

Is it any wonder, then, that when trying to measure the progress that we can see, we are often frustrated? We know it's there, but come on...it just seems like an excuse for not meeting the original goal. How do we know goals are truly met, if we don't know what they are (I'm talking strategic, not just political)? We've heard two or three times that 40-50% of Hizballah's capabilities had been destroyed.

Let the results speak for themselves. There are fewer rockets, now. Then, it was different.

I say give us the straight goods. Admit that military goals might not be met right away, but that they are being worked toward. Hype up the accomplishments-that-are, not the accomplishments-to-be. And be clear on what, exactly, the goals are.

Prime Minister Olmert said tonight "we never promised that at the end of this war there would be no rocket threats against Israel. Neither the defense minister, nor the leadership, nor I promised there would be no rockets within range." He went on to say, "We will agree to a ceasefire when we know for certain that the conditions on the ground will be different from those which led to this war."

And when exactly will that be? Can we be enlightened on what this means, in real terms? We know that implementing UN Security Council resolution 1559 is an ultimate, international goal...this constitutes the disarmament of Hizballah, and the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese Government extending Beirut's sovereignty into the south, and so on. But if, as one general (different from the one I mentioned earlier) stated this evening, Hizballah will not be disarmed with these battles and "that we will achieve this objective in the next series of battles," when does it end?

How does one make the ultimate decision, "Israel is safe, for the moment"? When can it be made? When the rocket fire stops? When the kidnapped soldiers, from the unprovoked Hizballah attack that started this war, are returned to Israel? When Hizballah goes from saying "Death to Israel! Death to America!" to "Am Yisrael Chai!" and "Allah Bless America!"? When Syria can no longer support Hizballah? When Iran can no longer finance Hizbullah, or send Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon?

When? What? How?

Let us hope that Vice Premier Shimon Peres was right today, when he said in Washington, "Syria won't go to war. They know their strengths and weaknesses. Their equipment is not modern and they won't go to war alone. The current conflict won't escalate to an all-out regional war." Let us hope that those are not included in the next edition of that informative book, "Famous Last Words", and that we don't get to find out if and when Iran - which has a defense treaty with Damascus - will come to the aid of a Syria with outdated Soviet weapons that we were told "won't go to war".

The lesson Jerusalem needs to learn is that you shouldn't set - or at least announce - deadlines you can't keep due to the fluidity of the battlefied situation, and then change them and believe that no one will notice. That just gives off the appearance of incompetence at the top levels.

When the stakes are this high, with irrational yet calculating enemies who perceive incompetence to be weakness, and when these enemies seeking to pounce on that weakness could set in motion a whole lot of regional - even worldwide - trouble...triggering what might unmistakeably, unarguably be a world war (given the various alliances and treaties)...well...

At the moment, incompetence - or the perception of incompetence - could be deadly. For millions.

Give France Back to Germany

So, did y'all hear the latest bit of wisdom to be spouted out by a representative of the French government?

No?

"In the region there is of course a country such as Iran – a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region,"

– French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy in Beirut on July 31, 2006.

Now, when he said these things earlier today, Monsieur Douste-Blazy might have been overlooking Iran's sponsorship of Islamic terrorism as embodied by Hizballah in Lebanon, a group which has subjected "a friend of France" (a.k.a. one of many screwed-up former French colonies) to ruin and destabilized the region once more.

To read Douste-Blazy's comments and then read the following comments by President Ahmadinejad of Iran, recorded for posterity over the last nine months or so (including one, second to last, this past week), is to see that his comments are yet another, dangerous French delusion:

“Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.”

“Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime (Israel) must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.”

“The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm.”

“He who sows the wind will reap a hurricane and this will be a very strong storm in the whole Middle East region, which will strike painfully…”

“We thank God that our enemies are idiots.”

Yeah, them Iranians have a right mighty stabilizin' role in this here Mideast...not.

Those idiots, the French, don't know when to shut up. The French are destabilizing enough as it is.

Enough is enough.


I've thought long and hard about all this, and figured out a solution to the enigma of the French. One might call them a plague, though I'll personally leave the "frogs as plague" line for Passover. Moving on, this upcoming proposal of mine would likely solve most of the world's pressing problems, or at least pave the way for the many problems plaguing (whoops, guess I used it) this, our planet, to get solved more quickly than they normally would.

It first came to me in the midst of a fight my French ex-girlfriend, Sophie Chetrit, started with me way back in September 2004. I told her that if Germany took over France again we (America) would not come to rescue the French again. I know, it was stupid and inaccurate. So was the fight.

Saying what I said was inaccurate...but does it really have to be?

No. In fact, what I propose would be something similar, but much less violent, than the surprise "Can I talk to you?" punch to the face Sophie had given me not long before I said what I said to (or rather, yelled at) her. What a soap opera that relationship was…

Anyway…my proposal?


The End of France

We took France away from Germany towards the end of the Second World War. We fought long and hard for it, but the Germans earned it just as much as we did, really. The Germans certainly deserved France more than the French then, since the Germans fought for it so much harder in 1940 than the French did.

So I say we give France back to Germany. Yes, that's right, let’s give Frankreich back to Deutschland. If the ungrateful sods in Paris, Marseille, Lille, Lyon and oh, what the hell – Vichy too – want to do anything they can to endanger international order, they don't deserve their sovereignty anymore. It’s not like they’ve really done anything constructive with their sovereignty since the Allies who didn’t lose World War II right from the get-go enabled them to have it again.

I say the French are ungrateful, yes, because hundreds of thousands of brave American, British, Canadian (and Free French) soldiers risked their lives in 1944 and 1945 so that France - and Europe - could one day be free of Nazi occupation...and ever since that time, whether it's been their leaving NATO in the 1960s or praising state-sponsors of terrorism in the 21st century, they've proven quite well that they're just plain trouble.

They do whatever they can to obstruct their former liberators, and you can’t use the argument “Well, they helped us win the Revolutionary War!” with me, because the very first war the United States fought once peace was achieved with Great Britain was, you guessed it, fought against France on the high seas. They tried multiple times before the Civil War to split the Union, and very nearly recognized the Confederacy.

Though they reneged on paying back war debts to America from World War One, they squeezed the Germans for reparations in the 1920s as revenge for the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s – a war the French started, lost, and which resulted in the formation of the German Empire.

The French have never respected international norms, and for anyone who has ever heard the French admonish the United States of America, or Israel, or anyone else on the need to respect international norms, well…this is incredibly funny. Sad, but funny. They restrict the ability of democracy to spread, and pay no mind to the needs of others.

Click on the picture if you can't see the "h" after "bus". How creative. It's why I took it.


The French are not simply “the French”, as John Kerry once said. They are incredibly selfish, self-interested; they're just too dangerous to be allowed to run around free anymore, as "French".

Thus, France should be taken over by Germany.

Germany isn't the same as it was the last time it owned France. It is a country that now has a right to be proud of itself, even with its dark past. It could be a fair and effective administrator of affairs in Frankreich. And, it could teach the former French a thing or two about combating anti-Semitism...which the current French just don't seem to want to do.

The Federal Republic of Germany proved capable, although it was at times difficult and costly, of integrating West Germany and East Germany after the Berlin Wall came down and the regime in the so-called “German Democratic Republic” fell.

"Wait," you might ask. "How can you give France to Germany? You don't own it."


Ah, yes this is true. Not so much a problem, though.

There are remedies to this particular state of affairs. Once again (see last blog entry), we need only look to the 40th President of the United States for inspiration and a spot of humor, and the solution presents itself:

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." - President Ronald Reagan, August 11, 1984

(By the way, you can click on http://www.npr.org/news/specials/obits/reagan/audio_archive.html to hear this line for yourself. Scroll down a bit to find, and make sure you have Real Player for, this famous sound-check joke. The Soviets weren't all that amused.)

Change "Russia" to "France", soften 'em up a bit, and then give the Germans the go-ahead...and that's how to give France back to Germany. I said before it wouldn't be too violent...it is France they'd be fighting. The French can sucker-punch. I can personally attest to that. But as World War II, and Indochina (Vietnam), and Algeria (among others) showed...they suck at winning. The Germans would, as in 1940, probably be able to march right in once the French've surrendered.

It'd be so fast...blitzschnell fast...the French wouldn't have time to use their nukes.

Speaking of which, I’ll be honest with you – I trust the Germans with nuclear weapons more than the French anyway. This is relevant, as the Germans would of course gain control of the French nuclear arsenal after any takeover. Since the French military isn’t really good for all that much anyway, French units could just be absorbed into the German Bundeswehr, a.k.a. the German Federal Armed Forces, or just be disbanded or, for the sake of preserving order (given the example in Iraq after that army was prematurely disbanded) turned into well decked-out gendarmes.

I think the European Union would be able to adjust fairly well to the disappearance of France. The absence of a French Republic wouldn’t fix everything about the EU, but with the outrageous farm subsidies demanded by Paris no longer forced upon Brussels, some major economic hurdles could be finally leaped. No longer would Europe be forced to hear about “dangerous Anglo-Saxon” conspiracies of one kind or another. Post-France, the EU could think for itself about the path it should take, since French manipulation would no longer be an issue.

There would be no need for discussions or negotiations on Germany gaining a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, as Germany would inherit France’s seat.


Not Everything Need Go to the Deutsch

The régions of Haute-Normandie and Basse-Normandie would remain outside of German control. America, Britain and Canada would split these regions of Normandy between them. After all, tens of thousands of Yanks, Limeys and Canucks sacrificed their lives on the beaches, fields and hedgerows of Normandy to get rid of the Nazi occupiers in June 1944. It would only be fitting that as the various regions of France became the newest states of the reformed, democratic Bundesrepublik Deutschland, one special area remained separate, under international administration, as a permanent reminder of the former French state’s military impotence.

The collectivité territoriale of Corsica, the island birthplace of former French dictator-emperor Napoléon Bonaparte and a région long simmering under French control, would finally get the independence Corsicans have agitated for over the years (unfortunately, often by resorting to violent means). International support would be needed to ensure that Corsu, the native language of Corsica, doesn’t disappear.

Back on the mainland, historic Brittany, which used to be a kingdom in its own right and is currently split between the régions of Bretagne (80%) and Pays-de-la-Loire (specifically, the Loire-Atlantique département of Pays-de-la-Loire – constituting the remaining 20% of historic Brittany, with the city of Nantes), would gain independence and international recognition.

As for Monaco, a sovereign country linked closely with France in a number of ways, Prince Albert II would no longer have any need to consult with Paris over who the principality’s Minister of State (head of government) should be. As there would no longer be any French citizens, only a Monegasque would be considered for the position of Minister of State (before 2002, the Minister of State of Monaco had to be a French citizen, but later Monaco’s Constitution was changed so that the position could be held by either a French or Monegasque citizen).

Monaco would, for the first time since the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Treaty of 1945, and the Agreement of 1963, be given the support to forge its own path.

The French départements d'outre-mer, or Overseas Departments, of Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion island would be offered independence, or if they so wished they could become overseas territories of the Federal Republic of Germany (necessitating a renaming of French Guiana).

Speaking of Overseas Territories, the French Southern Territories (also known as the “Territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands”, or Terres australes et antarctiques françaises) would either be directly administered by Germany or, in the case of Adélie Land, merely watched over in keeping with the Antarctic Treaty; while Germany was not a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty (which among other things banned territorial claims to the continent of – you guessed it – Antarctica), Germany would inherit the former France’s treaty obligations just as the Russian Federation inherited the treaty obligations of the former Soviet Union.

So to sum up…Corsica and Brittany would gain independence, Monaco would no longer be under the yoke of Paris, and the overseas departments would be given the choice of German statehood or independence.


Easing the Financial Burden

In order to help Germany shoulder the burden of integrating its newfound states in Western Europe, the United States and the World Bank would disburse financial aid to Berlin for as long as needed.

Language

French would not be outlawed, of course, but discouraged, as German would take precedence over French in schools, on government documents, and so on and so forth. Germany would become, in effect, kind of like Switzerland...only bigger. And stronger.

Resistance

No doubt, many French would vehemently resist the takeover of their country by the Germans, given the historic enmity between the two countries. This could take the form of terrorist attacks against German institutions and the defacement of American property. However, as there is a sizable (five million strong) Muslim community in France, co-opting the Mohammedans and carefully seeing to their needs could provide much needed stability in a vital demographic of the former French state.

Germany would be encouraged to refrain from neglecting the newest Muslims of Germany as France once did. As Germany has Muslim immigrant citizens of its own, it is possible that any official German methods of dealing with Muslims in the country would deal with those from France too.

An underground would likely emerge, and it is possible that a “government-in-exile” would be created. Of course, it will be important to remember in any case that the French will only begin to fight after they've been taken over, and then if - if - their country is liberated once more, they'll take credit even if they don't do much of the fighting.


In Conclusion

France has time and again demonstrated that it is not willing to play a constructive role in world affairs. While in its various forms the French government has extended aid to the United States and other countries, the times when France has acted antagonistically toward those who help her – sometimes even as they help her – far outnumber and outweigh the modern effects of past friendships. France has shown a willingness to consort with dictators more openly than other democracies (President Jacques Chirac has more than once referred to Saddam Hussein as a "personal friend"), and has a disturbing tendency to celebrate its own imperial, dictatorial past.

It is thus my opinion that France should cease to exist as a nation-state for the sake of all mankind. Certain areas, as shown throughout this, would become independent or come under international administration, but the vast majority of the territory/territories of what we know today as the “French Republic” would be absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany is best suited to the task of absorbing its former rival, as it has experienced its own integration issues since the end of the Second World War and the Cold War. If anyone can keep the French in line and France in Ordnung, it is the Germans.

Moreover, this event would be for the own good of the French. Stability has never been a noticeable strength of the French nation-state, and the country’s stagnancy with reform is an example that is holding back the economic progress not only of France but also of the European Union. It limits the abilities of its own people to grow and develop as secure, self-assured people (that they are headstrong with little moral justification is already known).

Newly christened as Germans, the former French would learn how to combat the social disease of anti-Semitism from those who were once emblematic of what the most extreme forms of anti-Semitism can lead to.

In short, without an independent France the world might just be a better, safer and saner place.

In closing, how is it that I ever fell in love with, dated, or got engaged to, a French citizen?

Why did I stay so long with her?

Oh. Yeah. I remember why...because even with a disgusting cigarette in hand, she looked like this!


Damn the French!