European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 22, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes tuesday april 22, 1986 columns William Safire was there More to French refusal than we know my knee was primed to Jerk in Praise of our Long delayed attack on a source of terrorism and in con tempt of France s Craven refusal of our request to Fly through its airspace on the Way to the target. By More than doubling the length of the Mission French obstructionism had added to the Strain on our f 111 airmen even worse the need for extensive in flight refuelling May have alerted the russians and jeopardize the Security of the Mission. In that Case we should let the new French prime minister Jacques Chirac know what we think of his first major decision. Americans should lean on . Companies that buy $1.3 billion a year in aircraft and Jet engines from France tourists should see America first Consumers should turn to Home grown wine and local fashion design ers. Let France make that up in Trade with Libya. But wait maybe there is More to the French decision than we know. At a private dinner party in new York in Honor of evangel inc Bruce the other night the French chief Delegate to the United nations Claude do Kem ularia took Issue with the barbs directed his country s Way. Before the fish mousse with sauce Verte was touched he wanted it known that France was unjustly accused of weakness. Speaking among friends and off the record the Delegate who serves this month As president of the Secu Rity Council indicated that the Best Way to Stop Moa mar khad Afy was not by bit by bit escalation and that had the . Decided to hit hard and decisively with its military might you would have found us on your William f. Buckley i was not present and am not bound to protect what 30 people heard and More than a few passed on. Reached for confirmation the ambassador gulped i did not say exactly that cautioned me not to take remarks out of context and pointed out that he had been speaking among friends. That poses a question was this a Case of one Man talking Tough giving an excuse for French Usilla Nimitz or did the French government really Tell the . Before the raid that our plan was too limited and re strained to solve the libyan problem i put that question to Caspar Weinberger at an on the record Media biggies breakfast for the usual suspects at the Pentagon. You mean the Don t do a pinprick remark said our Secretary of defense. I was t there but i heard that something like that was let s review the bidding. President Reagan sent our . Delegate Vernon Walters to see Chirac sunday night and president Mitterrand monday morning before the raid. They had already denied us permission to Over Fly France and we did t even bother to ask Italy for use of an alternative base because we knew what the answer would be the French leaders told our emissary that they did not like our plan it was too weak. Don t do a pinprick one of them said or so it is translated and reported Back. As Talleyrand might have said not enough Zeal. The identical Point was made to friends by the French . Delegate and he opined that if we were serious about sustained operations taking out khad Afy France would be with us All the Way. In Public of course France is not demanding War on Libya on the contrary the French line is to go slow to talk this Over at the Tokyo Summit meeting. And in Public the Reagan administration is complaining that the French choked up when the anti terrorist chips were Down. What s really going on i think the French who bombed terrorist bases in syrian occupied Lebanon while we were still hand wringing Are fearful of taking on khad Afy now. Their private excuse for inaction for Refus ing even to cooperate passively is that we Are unwilling to hit hard enough. Their excuse is phony but Here s the irony we did pull our punch. Our bombs were limited to terrorist related targets not to the Oil docks that would cripple khad Afy s ability to pay weapons Bills or Speed his Over throw. Never in the course of modern warfare has so much Power been calibrated so exquisitely against so few. Reagan Ever conscious of Weinberger s requirement for popular support of military action now awaits the next terrorist provocation for a serious blow. At that Point we should Call the Bluff of our privately Tough talking publicly tender acting ally. Per Mission to overfly is not enough in their Subtle finessing of this round France s leaders have tacitly promised Active military cooperation. C new York times a lesson to be Learned from Larouche party upset r Ray i the talk Ever since the upset in Illinois has been of the dangers of political nonchalance. If you Don t watch out look what can happen what happened in Illinois is that two members of the Larouche party it is easier to refer to it As such than to Call it the National democratic policy committee or the National caucus of labor committees the two primary organizational instruments of Larouche won primary contests within the democratic party bringing consternation. Gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson Iii has said he won t run with the Linro scheans on the ticket that he will run As an Independent but there Are statutory problems Here soothing yet is Clear. But apart from the political problem morality tales Are being preached on the Little red Riding Hood theme that you should look carefully into the Mouth of the Lovely old lady because she might in fact be a wicked Wolf there to eat you up. There arc two Points to make Here. The first is that Larouche is everywhere designated these Days As a far right Crank. But the Story is pretty complicated. At one Point in his career Larouche was a member of the communist party. He then became a trotskyism he then decided for tactical reasons that it was Wise to develop a whig coalition in order to exploit american conservative organizations. National review published in 1979, an insider s View of Larouche s machinations. Here is a Small Sample of the Nolc s rhetoric the author wrote from the editorial pages of its theoretical journal the campaigner july 1975 the world stands on the threshold of the greatest dangers and the greatest Promise it has faced in decades. Rockefeller will use any political loophole to try to Clamp Down his police terror regime. His vision is 1946 terror bombing of millions in Japan massive european communist parties doomed to impotence whole populations starved into sub Mission. Again he Aims to be lord of the rubble the rubble of Brazil Western Europe and the unite states " the article also quoted an Nolc Security memorandum from the Spring of 1975 explaining its tactics to insiders which included the paragraph right Wing organizations offer four opportunities 1 sources for fund raising especially related to our organizing 2 political contacts to circulate our perspective in anti Rocky Rockefeller political financial military circles 3 Opportunity to expose and discredit Rocky s Buckley Fri c1a penetration of the right 4 potential Uslip United states labor party members and the article ended the evidence of a soviet connection is extensive and Well founded. Conservatives should regard the Nolc with hostility and should warn and if necessary repudiate those on the right whom it has that was seven years before Larouche snookered Illi Nois democrats. The second question to Ponder is this Why did la x fool All of the people some of the time l d some of the Peoria la of tie time i really fed the ats at primary Rouche during the past period switch his efforts at penetration from the Republican party to the democratic party especially if he is to be thought of As a far rightist would t far rightists tend to gravitate to Hegop primaries what we have Here surely is evidence of the relative stability of the Republican party. In one sense this has been so for a Long time. During the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt accommodated even welcomed everyone from hard bitten Southern racists sen. Theo Dore Bilbo was a Democrat As was cottoned Smith though he quarrelled with Forto the fellow travellers whose chief spokesman at the end had served As vice president under Roosevelt. That kind of latitude arianism persists within the democratic party while the gop has pretty relentlessly fought off the kooks certainly the Kun flux klan made no headway within it nor even the John Birch society Back when it was preaching that Ike was a communist agent. Meanwhile the democratic party has really nothing to say when such As rep. Ronald Dellums gets caught conniving with the communists in Grenada the principal candidates for the democratic presidential candidacy had nothing to say about the tributes paid by Jesse Jackson to such As Fidel Castro and Che Guevara even when Jackson s Friend Louis Farrakhan went into one of his anti semitic spins they tended to remain silent. So what part would Larouche gravitate to Ward clearly the democratic. But if the democrats wish to be a Little More exclusive than they have been and it is Good news that they wish to be so they ought to begin picking quarrels not Only with kooks who mount boarding parties but with kooks who have already boarded. C Universal press Syndicate
