You... you... Frenchman!

Digby has an inspired way to bait the Republicans who go ballistic everytime someone on the left so much as whispers a nazi reference, no matter how tempered, and no matter how egregious the the thing americans are doing:

Compare our follies with those of the French.

It seems to me that the Pentagon planners who held that screening of "The Battle of Algiers" were, perhaps, trying to get that message across, at least if one were to take the movie at face value. Its central premise is that it was French tactics (like torture) that fueled the FLN rather than defeated it in the long run. But, as the Slate article points out, it also shows (incorrectly) that torture works in the short run --- and that may have been the lesson that was taken to heart.

But regardless of whether the Pentagon actually studied and approved of French tactics in Algeria, or if anyone took those screenings seriously, it's pretty clear that we're on the same path. (And don't be too sure they didn't. Apparently, half of Washington was devouring "The Arab Mind" a completely discredited piece of sociological crap, so it wouldn't be surprising. These Republican Intellecutals, after all, tend to believe what they want to believe.)

And, since Nazis, Soviets and Commies of all stripes are off limits when describing our failing and immoral tactics, I think we should just fall back on every Republican's favorite whipping boy -- the cheese eating surrender monkeys.

I can't wait to hear Orrin Hatch stand up in the Senate, bursting with wounded national pride as he reflexively clutches his antique pearl choker, and dolefully expresses his outrage that the Democrats would ever say that Americans are like the French. I have no doubt that the high priests of right wing radio would start speaking in tongues and the FOX News analysts would go into full-on head spinning, green vomit, Linda Blair mode.

And maybe, just maybe, the absurdity of it all will finally hit home with the Democratic establishment, the press and the American people. After all, in the "who's the traitor" game, the Democrats are supposed to love the French, who hate America just like they do only...now they hate the French? Whose side are we on again?

I like it.