"American neocon" wins French presidency

First, who says immigrants can't succeed in France?

Nicolas Sarkozy, the 52-year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant was just elected president of the Republic.

His wife has foreign roots too according to the Agence France Presse, which describes the new French first lady as being of Jewish-Spanish ancestry who was quoted as making it abundantly clear back in 2004 that she did "not have a drop of French blood in my veins."

Being pro-American apparently didn't hurt the French president-elect either. 53 percent of the French voted for someone referred to by friends and foes alike as "the American," according to Agence France Presse, because of "his unabashed praise of US society, its dynamism and meritocracy."

Some people have even gone so far as to describe Sarkozy as an "American neo-conservative with a French passport."

So what is this new American neocon French president going to do? According to the French news agency:

France's new leader is expected to pursue Chirac's policy on Iraq by upholding calls for a deadline for US troop withdrawal, as well as on Iran and the Middle East peace process.

Though he says he will fight for tough sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he opposes military intervention. While seen as close to Israel, he insists he gives equal importance to Palestinian statehood and Israeli security.

As to other areas of interest to readers of this blog: Sarkozy is said to "fiercely oppose" Turkish entry to the European Union as it would mean the "death of political Europe" -- to quote the AFP report again.

And in other regions of concern, the AGF reports:

Sarkozy has promised an overhaul of relations with France's former African colonies, tacitly criticising Chirac's "personal" ties with the leaders of questionable regimes.

He also says France's military presence in Africa -- 10,000 soldiers in five permanent military bases -- should be kept to a minimum, handing over to an African Union force when possible.

On Africa's bloodiest conflict, in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, he has called for "urgent" action, warning that Khartoum would be made to face international justice for its actions in the region.

Sarkozy strongly opposed calls by election rivals for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics to force China -- Sudan's most important international ally -- to back international action in Darfur.

But he has vowed as president to confront rights violations committed by powerful allies -- citing the question of political freedoms in China and the in Russia's war-torn southern republic of Chechnya.

The state of free speech in France

In this month's issue of Commentary, Christian Delacampagne gives the reader some interesting context in "The Redeker Affair." This, for those of you who may not have followed the story, Robert Redeker is a French highschool teacher, who published an op-ed in Le Figaro, in which he posed the question, "What should the free world do in the Face of Islamist intimidation?"

To make a long story short, because Redeker called the Prophet Muhammad a "master of hatred" and said that Islam, unlike Christianity or Judaism, "exalts violence and hatred” he was widely denounced to the point of receiving death threats. He and his family were forced to go into hiding, at his own expense but under French police protection.

According to Delacampagne, the only French leader who would vociferously defend Redeker's right to free speech was Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who said the fatwa calling for his death for having insulted Islam was “unacceptable.” Most officials and human rights advocates simply tried to distance themselves from Redeker's remarks. Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, summed up the prevailing reaction when it characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting,” and blasphemous.

Redeker's tale reminded Delacampagne of his own painful history in France. He says that because he published a book on what is considered to be a politically incorrect topic in France, anti-Semitism, he too was shut out of an academic career in France. Though he eventually found work in the United States, he claims the situation in France has only gotten worse over the years: "[Now] to speak at conferences or to be considered for important posts, a scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial era in French history as nothing less than an exercise in genocide and to denounce American policy in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty."

Beginning with Charles de Gaulle, he says the French have taken a distinctly "pro-Arab" stance in order to gain back the political capital they lost during the Algerian war and their other colonial activities in the Middle East. Zionism, or support for the state of Israel, he says is now seen as "just a form of Western colonialism, now backed by the brute strength of an imperialistic United States."

Delacampagne tells of an email he received from Redeker a few weeks after he had gone into hiding. “I never thought that such a thing could happen in our old Republican France,” he wrote his friend. "Neither did I," Delacampagne writes, "But things have changed. What was once unthinkable in France has already come to pass."