Hating "l'Oncle Sam"

...Against American claims that France is behaving as an "objective ally" of Saddam, antiwar Frenchmen have consistently argued that their opposition to war should not be confused with support for the Iraqi tyrant...

...C'etait I'Oncle Sam...

...It goes without saying," the general said during his presidency, "that under no circumstances will France accept that a collection of more or less totalitarian states and past masters of dictatorship and newly invented states . . . should dictate the law to it...

...After all, Muslim citizens themselves want a say in how they are integrated...

...Even if integrating the country's Muslim citizens into French life is a worthy goal, using the war to that end is risky...

...French public opinion has come into sync with the opinion of its Arab immigrants and their children...

...army base outside of Pisa, has always been an attractive Sunday destination for peaceniks...

...There is an unsettling ratcheting up of tension at anti-American protests across Europe...

...Only under extraordinary circumstances do most non-Arab Frenchmen view their presence without trepidation...

...Nonetheless, the presence of substantial American interests—from fast-food joints (too many...

...This is an old French dream—^but it is a decidedly un-Gaullist one...

...As one kid told Le Figaro, "Let's hope Iraq wins, Inshallah...

...The French press has been full of reports in recent days that Palestinian families have begun to name their newborn boys "Chirac...

...A group of young beurs, started in the Cite des Quatre Mille, a heavily Arab apartment complex in the suburb of La Courneuve, battled with riot police as they moved into nearby Aubervil-liers, and were not dispersed until they approached the center of Saint-Denis, burial site of France's kings and queens...

...When the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked citizens whether they approved of the American attacks on Iraq, the answer was Non, by 87 percent to 12 percent...

...It was he who, as prime minister, arranged the sale of the Osirak nuclear reactor to Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s...

...Boualem Azahoum, a representative of the activist group DiversCite, told reporters on Thursday, "There's no reason there should be tensions in France...

...Voters do approve of Chirac's position by 92 percent to 8 percent...

...The 1998 World Cup—won by a French squad that included many Frenchmen of Arab descent—was such a circumstance...

...And France's estrangement from the new— military—^part of the war on terror is almost complete...

...But at marches that started in front of the American embassy off the Place de la Concorde last Thursday evening, the day after the bombing began, a group of Iraqis waving their country's flag were the first to arrive...

...As Americans rallied around President Bush when the war began, the French rallied around Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...Camp Darby, the U.S...

...But at a march there last November, some of the participants had motorcycle helmets of the sort used in the more violent anti-globalization protests...

...At the most recent Camp Darby demonstration a few weeks ago, a group of protesters managed to breach the perimeter of the base...

...Ce n'etait pas Saddam...

...It is true that this fellow feeling has cost Chirac a certain price in ideological coherence...

...The first protest march— and perhaps the angriest—began shortly after the sun rose on Thursday, after the first night of bombing...

...These are the kind of measures that can create tensions on the street...

...The recent insistence of Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin that the United Nations is the sole source of legitimacy in the postwar rebuilding of Iraq is a sign that France is bidding for a role as leader of what used to be called the "non-aligned" movement...

...Chirac's stance against the war has provided something all French governments seek, but most lack: common ground with the country's poor, crime-prone, and discriminated-against "Arabo-Muslim" minority...

...When Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin was pelted with stones for describing Hezbollah as a "terrorist" group on a visit to the West Bank in 1999, Chirac angrily reminded Jospin that foreign policy gets made by the president, not the prime minister...

...It is that frequent televised scenes of devastation in Iraq will provoke real street demonstrations engaging the whole country...

...But the most widespread worry voiced in France is not over young beurs in particular but over protesters in general...

...Last Thursday, the Vigipirate officers, searching a locker in the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris, found vials with traces of ricin, the same poison that v^ had been found on suspected terrorists arrested in London in January...

...They're Muslims...

...Ce n'etait pas I'Islam...

...skeptic...

...On such matters as American militarism and the Middle East, its poll numbers resemble those of an Arab country...

...Chirac is seeking to put this kudos among Muslims to use for his country...

...There are no American bases in France, of course, but that does not foreclose the possibility of an equally calamitous escalation...

...God is with them...

...The government would be better off focusing its vigilance on making sure the Vigipirate programs aren't put into effect in a heavy-handed way...

...France, after all, from the storming of the Bastille through May 1968, has been a place where demonstrations are routine things until the moment they become non-routine things...

...In Germany, protests have moved closer and closer to sensitive American installations...

...Chirac is in a better position than most to woo Muslims, French and otherwise...

...France's ongoing military intervention in Ivory Coast is another such sign...

...He has long been something of a hero in the Arab world...

...And with the popularity of Jacques Chirac soaring, his advisers are seeking to turn the magic of the moment to a vital end: solving the festering domestic Clash of Civilizations between "Old France" and its Arab immigrant population...

...But the domestic ends for which Chirac seeks to use his popularity are arguably more important...

...North African immigrants and their second- and third-generation French offspring, known as heurs, account for 10 percent of the French population, by conservative estimates...

...BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL Paris AS THE UNITED STATES and many of its European allies girded for war last week, France's popular interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced that his office had "no precise information indicating any terrorist threats" in France...

...indeed, Youssef meekly expresses his hope that he might serve as Cicero to Chirac's Caesar, or Stendhal to his Napoleon...

...France does not collect ethnic data in its census...

...and Le Napalm...

...In other words, we have nothing to be vigilant against except vigilance itself...

...their antiwar president...

...And a new book that arrived in Paris bookstores last week—L'Orient de Jacques Chirac, written by the Egyptian journalist and literary critic Ahmed Youssef—compares Chirac to Alexander the Great and Aladdin...

...When he visited Algeria early this month, crowds estimated at over a million turned out to acclaim him...

...A certain current of Franco-Arab public opinion has even petitioned Chirac to take this occasion to lower France's guard against terrorism...

...These days of wild popularity for Chirac's anti-American position—and the wave of street demonstrations that are its most visible sign—are turning out to be another...

...Under such circumstances, Muslims feel themselves much more part of the country than they did in 1991, when Frangois Mitterrand's decision to join the coalition in Operation Desert Storm was wildly unpopular among them...

...Nonetheless, France believes its position as leader of the worldwide opposition to the American-led attack on Iraq has given it a measure of shelter from the terrorist storm—or at least bought it some time...

...to cultural monuments—led Sarkozy to double the number of anti-terrorist operatives assigned to the national "Vigipirate" program, which keeps transit hubs and public areas under surveillance for bombs and other threats...

...As Jean-Claude Casanova, editor of the prestigious quarterly Commentaire, noted recently, de Gaulle was a U.N...

...They led a march that eventually drew between 60,000 and 80,000 people, chanting Allahu Akbar...