The upper crusts of the American life have traditionally felt scorn and embarrassment at the "crass" culture of the United States. In the United States, the middle class has always ruled the day. And to those elites, who consider their tastes and intellects much more refined, such a situation is abhorrent.

As a result, American leaders, particularly on the left, have generally gone to great lengths to appease "their betters" in Europe and in particular western Europe. Most Americans have no idea how much we have suffered as a result of politicians, like Howard Dean, wanting to be accepted and liked by countries like France.

Let's take Vietnam as an example since those who want us to do what France would have us do use to compare the situation with Iraq with. The implication is, if we just listened to the wise, sagely advice of our "allies" in France we wouldn't be in this "Vietnam-like" mess.

But Vietnam, in a nutshell, was a result of trying to placate the French. The more you know the history, the more infuriating it gets. In 1944, the OSS worked with Vietnamese nationals such as Ho Chi Min against the Japanese. We trained them to try to help liberate Indochina from the Japanese in World War II.

But where things get interesting is France's behavior. It's not commonly known that France was an Axis power for most of World War II. "Vichy France" is treated as some sort of puppet but it was an active participant in World War II as an Axis power. Most history books gloss over France's behavior in South East Asia. But in fact, France actively aided the Japanese, a fellow Axis power, in Indochina. Most people aren't aware of this, they think after France got taken out in 1940 that they were essentially like a chess piece off the board. In actuality they switched sides and from 1940 to 1944 they fought for the Germans and Japanese. Only after those bloody Anglo-Saxxons (UK/USA) conquered, er liberated France for Charles De Gaulle (and boy he sure showed his appreciation didn't he?) and his small contingent of "Free French" did France nominally return to being an "ally". And that was in the last 6 months or so of the war in Europe.

This is important because it sets up everything that happened next. So World War II ends and in the chaos that followed in Indochina, Ho Chi Min, an ally of the United States, sets up the Republic of Vietnam...

And then the French return.

Unlike Britain who started freeing its colonies and the United States who made the Philippines an independent country in 1946, the French wanted to keep their empire and fought tooth and nail before losing it.

The first thing the French did when they got back in force to Vietnam was arm the un-repatriated Japanese troops to "police" the population. Think about that. After fighting for their freedom from brutal Japanese occupiers while the Vichy French stood back and let it happen, the French return and rather than make clear that thought the Axis was an evil thing, they arm the Japanese again. They only stopped doing this because the Americans and British threw a fit about it. Most Americans on the ground believed that the French had no business in Indochina after their behavior during the war. They had seen the bravery and nationalism of the Vietnamese. To put it in perspective, Italy lost more troops fighting on behalf of the allies than the French did and Italy wasn't given back their various overseas possessions. But having France like us was apparently more important than doing the right thing in Indochina at the time.

Eventually France alienated Ho Chi Min who fled to the hills and began a guerilla war. The United States, wanting to support its "ally" France intervened in increasing ways which culminated in what we call the Vietnam war.

The United States, by no means, is blameless in the matter. But if we're going to start comparing the current situation with Iraq with Vietnam then let's not cherry pick. Let's remember that the whole ugly mess was largely caused by doing what France wanted. Hoping that they would like us more if we did.