More good press for French President Nicolas Sarkozy as he surprises everyone by sending his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, to Iraq. Amir Taheri, an Iranian author has a nice column on his recent visit.
No better man than Kouchner could have been chosen to signal France's change of policy. For Kouchner is one of a handful of people in the West who recognised the murderous nature of Saddam's regime and called for its overthrow as early as the 1980s.
In fact, Kouchner, a medical doctor by training, made his public career by helping the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees who fled from Saddam's tyranny.
For years, Medecins Sans Frontiers, known in English as "The French Doctors", the organisation that Kouchner and his friends founded, was one of the few Western charities that publicised the sufferings of the Iraqi people.
[...]
Kouchner's visit, full of symbolism, shatters one of the key points in Al Qaida's analysis: that the Western powers will never find enough unity to develop a common strategy against terror.
I can't say I'm as optimistic as Taheri, but I'm definitely liking what I see.
c'est tres bien, non!?
ReplyDeleteThe organization is actually called "Doctors without Borders".. I give them money.
ReplyDeleteet,oui, c'est tres bon!