Whew - I was sicker

Whew - I was sicker than I thought yesterday. I'll try to make up for lost time today.

One word: Theraflu.

Premier Chirac - Most of Eastern Europe is overtly backing the Administration on Iraq. Virtually the entire former Warsaw Pact - Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltic States, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria - are backing us. It must have something to do with having been subjects to a far-away dictatorship.

Last week, French prez Chirac attacked the Eastern European nations that had broken ranks with France, Germany and Belgium. At one point, Chirac said the nations had "missed a great opportunity to shut up".

Today: They're talking back:

Romanian President Ion Iliescu led the attack on France, describing the President's "outdated" views as an affront to democracy and free speech.

"Such reproaches are totally unjustified, unwise and undemocratic," he told reporters in Brussels, after a meeting for candidate nations on Iraq.

"It is unwise to separate countries into pro-American and anti-American. I thought it was outdated to say, 'He who is not with us is against us'."

"In the European family there are no mummies, no daddies and no kids - it is a family of equals," said Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz

Chirac has be be nervous.

The EU is an offshoot of fifty-year-old efforts to reconcile France and Germany, after two world wars. Of course, the effort always saw France and Germany as the leaders of the effort.

But today, with their economies moribund, the French and Germans see some of their power shifting eastward, to countries that have largely adapted freer markets, that detest authoritarianism....

...and that are often staunch US allies. Poland and the Czechs are among the best allies we have in the world, these days. And unlike France and Germany, the economies of Eastern Europe have nowhere to go but up.

Posted by Mitch at February 20, 2003 08:09 AM