I love France, it’s a beautiful country with wonderful food, lots of historical sights to visit, but the only problem I have with it is that France is full of French people. And they lived up my expectations yesterday when they elected a Socialist, Francois Hollande to be President, replacing their relatively conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. The French committed to join us in the war against terror in Afghanistan, but even Sarkozy was withdrawing from Afghanistan a year earlier than he had agreed (the end of next year). <\/p>\n
Hollande promised during the campaign to withdraw France’s 3,308 troops by the end of this year, according to Stars & Stripes<\/a>;<\/p>\n \u201cI will not comment on any possible decisions that the very newly elected French government might take in the future,\u201d German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said at a news conference Monday. \u201cBut France has committed itself very clearly in one of the first strategic partnership agreements with Afghanistan to a long-term commitment way beyond 2014.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Funny to see the words “France” and “committed” being used in the same sentence without a mention of three month vacations and 30-hour work weeks, doesn’t it? The French are already fighting the war against terror in their streets<\/a>, a war that followed them back from Afghanistan, so I guess they’re comfortable with that. <\/p>\n When I was in Paris, the tour guide told us that there were ten bombs going off every day in Paris. I have no evidence to confirm that, but I know that we had to go through metal detectors and hand searches to get into a Parisian department store, so I don’t doubt it. If that’s the kind of life they enjoy, more power to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"