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A Veteran Journalist and an Ex-Marine Discuss the Iraq Conflict

the breakfast table
entries
123456
from: Mark Bowden
to: Anthony Swofford

The View on the War From France

Posted Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 10:56 AM ET

Who are these people?

Dear Anthony,

It has been a gorgeous week in Paris, with first hints of spring breaking out all over the place. Big crowds at the Eiffel Tower. I have been surprised by how much folks here seem to care about war breaking out, as though they had a big national stake in it. On the way from the Gare Nord to my hotel on the Left Bank, my cab driver rolled his window down at a red light and had a friendly conversation with the cabbie next to him.

"It looks like this war is really going to happen, no?" he said,

"Can you believe it?" the other cabbie said.

"What a piece of shit," said my driver.

In a way, President Jacques Chirac's determined break with America and Great Britain has given the French a kind of negative stake in the war. I think it grieves their national pride to discover that their loud "non" has had no effect whatsoever. They worry that the somewhat jocular tide of Francophobia in the States is for real, which I assure them it is not—at least I don't think it is, I haven't been home in three weeks. I tell them that Americans have always loved to make fun of the French, this just affords new ammunition.

French TV seems to have better access to the streets of Baghdad than the American crews. I watch the French channels and CNN, and the French have more and better pictures of street scenes in Iraq on the French channels. The French reporters don't seem to care as much about blow-dried good looks as the American reporters do. I have never seen an American TV reporter who didn't look like he or she had just stepped off the pages of a fashion ad. The French male reporters in Baghdad affect the more traditional foreign-reporter-in-a-war-zone look. They are unshaven and wearing T-shirts, flak jackets, and helmets. Come to think of it, probably the French are just demonstrating a better sense of fashion. They also tend to show more of the press conferences given by Saddam's ministers. I just about gagged on my Madeleine this morning when I heard one of Saddam's toadies describe him as "a hero for humanity." I keep waiting for these clowns to wise up and dump Saddam, either shoot him or arrest him, which has always been our best hope for avoiding the war, that or a well-aimed cruise missile.

At dinner last night, my waiter, who noticed right away by my terrible French that I was an American, asked me when the war was going to start, as though all of us Yankees were George W.'s peeps, and he checks with us about everything. I told him my bet was 2 a.m. (Paris time).

"Our president is nothing if not eager," I said.

Yours,
Mark

the breakfast table
entries
123456
from: Mark Bowden
to: Anthony Swofford

The View on the War From France

Posted Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 10:56 AM ET
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Mark Bowden is a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. He writes a weekly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer and is an adjunct professor at Loyola College of Maryland. Anthony Swofford is the author of the novels Jarhead and Exit A. He lives in Manhattan.
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