Farewell, Jacques Chirac

Despite Chirac being from the “right” I have never liked the man, but sometimes struggle to say why, escept for his arrogance, but he is hardly the only Frenchman with that Gallic trait.

Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post says goodbye and good riddance to him, and really gets to the heart of Chriac – his disdain for democracy. Some quotes:

During a visit to the Ivory Coast, Chirac once called “multi-partyism” a “kind of luxury,”

“Africa is not ready for democracy,” he told a group of African leaders in the early 1990s.

On Saddam Hussein: “You are my personal friend. Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration and bond.”

On Eastern Europe supporting the United States in the United Nations: “It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to shut up.”

On Iran’s nuclear program: “Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous.” Theoretically, Chirac was supposed to be negotiating with Iran to give up its nuclear program at the time.

As I say, it’s an important legacy: one of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular; of suspicion of Central Europe and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s; of preference for the Arab and African dictators who had been, and remained, clients of France.

It was, in other words, the legacy of a man who was deeply conservative, almost Brezhnevite in his view of the world — so much so that the word most often used to describe his political beliefs is “stagnation.”