April 16, 2021 - 11:42am
With one excellent speech this week, Joe Biden fulfilled what Donald Trump began, and confirmed America’s withdrawal from its failing war in Afghanistan, to be completed just weeks short of its twentieth anniversary. The war was never intended to be a “multi-generational undertaking,” he emphasised. To the liberal hawks demanding America stay a little longer, as if victory was somehow just around the corner, he asked “when will it be the right moment to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more years? Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollars more above the trillion we’ve already spent?”
As Biden underlined, America has lost 2,448 personnel in Afghanistan, to no purpose at all. The cost of the war to the Afghan government is unimaginably higher. As a recent New York Times piece claimed, now that the full weight of the Taliban’s wrath is directed solely at them, the Afghan security forces are suffering an utterly unsustainable casualty rate of 3,000 personnel a month. It’s unlikely in the extreme that their hold on even the country’s largest cities can long survive the American withdrawal. The Communist Afghan government forces managed to hold Kabul for three years after their Soviet backers finally pulled out in 1989 — whether or not the current Afghan National Army (or ANA) can outlast it is an open question.
So what was it all for? It’s reasonable to assume that the withdrawal from Afghanistan will be remembered as a turning point in history — fantasies of spreading liberal democratic governance at gunpoint in countries where it has never existed will be abandoned. That is, at least for as long as the Western world concentrates on the greater challenge from China. Over the generation-long Afghanistan conflict, America and its NATO auxiliaries, including Britain, wasted blood and treasure trying to extend the writ of Kabul’s central government to isolated rural regions of the country it had never, throughout its history, fully controlled.
It is painful, now, to remember the fashion for counterinsurgency or “COIN” doctrine in the 2000. This doctrine held the sincere belief that political legitimacy could be “borrowed” by embattled governments like that of Kabul through infrastructure and governance projects imposed on a restive population by foreign occupiers like ourselves. British military thinkers flaunted their supposed superiority in counterinsurgency warfare, a natural talent derived from the days of empire with which their rude cousins in the Pentagon would surely be impressed. Until, that is, our humiliating retreat from Helmand, like that from Basra, disabused them of this comforting myth.
Helmand towns like Sangin and Musa Qala — resonant names to a British audience — are now firmly under Taliban control. Their ultra-conservative rural Pashtun population is now ruled by an ultra-conservative rural Pashtun government, seemingly more competent and popular than its rival government in distant Kabul. 100 of the 454 British deaths in Afghanistan took place in Sangin alone, for no ultimate purpose other than making British politicians feel relevant in Washington DC. America wanted us to enter a poorly-thought out war with no clearly defined parameters for success, so we did. Now America wants out, and so our 750 remaining troops are to be withdrawn, on Biden’s timetable, and not our own.
It would be worth our Atlanticist politicians like Tom Tugendhat, still forlornly demanding the US stay in Afghanistan like a backwoods Gaulish chieftain demanding the Roman emperor stay the course in Parthia, to reflect on what this says about Britain’s place in the world. The difference between the ANA and the British Army is only one of degree, and not kind, both being expendable, entirely dependent auxiliary forces for American imperial projects.
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Subscribe‘With one excellent speech this week, Joe Biden fulfilled what Donald Trump began…’
Trump tried time and again to withdraw from Afghanistan, only to be stymied by both parties and viciously attacked by the media and Pentagon etc. But now that a Democrat is withdrawing the troops it is suddenly a wonderful thing. What an evil world this is.
That aside, the whole thing was always a scandalous waste of money and lives, particularly from the British point of view. After all, the Afghans had already kicked us out twice before, not that morons like Blair and John Reid would ever have taken this into account.
And now the place will revert to its normal, ungovernable status.
There is no reversion, it was ungovernable the whole time the US were there. The only people who did “govern” the place were the Taliban, albeit in the most brutal fashion.
The American intervention in Afghanistan had mostly to do with domestic American politics, not with Afghanistan. After 9/11, the American leadership, with its claims of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, had to Do Something; invading Afghanistan was Something; therefore, it had to be done. Apparently the resultant war wasn’t big enough, so the American leadership also invaded Iraq, eventually working their way around to Syria, Libya, and Somalia as well. God knows where the Wrath will fall next. The natives are still restless.
As for Britain, my take on its sidekick role in Afghanistan is that the British leadership feels it must go along with the Big Dog of the Anglosphere. The alternative would be to cohere with Europe, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. That would be like losing World Wars 1 and 2 in retrospect. I can understand not wanting to finish up a century and more of catastrophic policy and action by facing it squarely as Airstrip One.
Correct, when the ‘master’ calls the ‘servant’ obeys. It was ever thus.
Actually Afghanistan was an annoying distraction from what GW Bush always wanted to do, which was to finish the war he felt his father had left unfinished.
Not sure how true it is, but the story goes that when the Joint Chiefs presented the initial target list, GW said, but I don’t see any targets in Iraq here.
As for UK involvement in those conflicts having a total phoney as our PM
I was never a great fan of Harold Wilson’s time as Prime Minister, but at least he had the very good sense to refuse US entreaties to join in the folly of the Vietnam War.
Yes , better than that great statesman and negotiator Tony Blair who signed us up for Afghanistan at the same time as Bush was imposing tariffs on UK steel imports .
We were already ‘busy’ in Borneo, Aden, Oman and later Northern Ireland.
In the event Australia was happy to help out.
Vietnam was was needed, without it communism would have spread to blossom into a dozen North Koreas and destabilized the entire reigon. You do not have to always win to win, and USA stopped Commie intervention as they proved it was too costly, and when it was enough USA pulled out.
Sanford, forget my earlier entreaty – treble the meds please.
Do you know the history of Korea? 1950 and Russia, China, Kim sung, and MacArthur? Wild days. Anyway if you do not I recommend some youtubes. (You may not know MacArthur wanted to use 23 Nuks on China but Trueman decided not)
Anyway, history is not the simple thing you readers think it is. It is extraordinarily difficult to evaluate, I happen to be a bit of an expert on WWII, and so believe in a very different truth about what really happened to what a casual understanding teaches. I would say to you to challenge your meds of MSM and high school classes, and university Liberal/Left agendas because things really are not as they seem with just a casual understanding..
The US bombing of Cambodia is widely credited with bringing Pol Pot’s murderous regime to power. They believed it was their most effective propaganda, causing many a non-communist patriot and peasant to join their movement.
I think it was this time we finally began to figure out that the Military Industrial Complex had run amok.
It’s time Britain stopped slavishly following the USA in all kinds of ways.
Meanwhile, in Europe, there’s a good deal of nail-biting going on about the possibility of civil war breaking out in Afghanistan after the Americans leave and the ensuing refugee crisis…
The best thing we could do, is put a great big fence around Afghanistan and forcibly return any, and all, Afghan refugees to their country. It’s THEIR country, as Afghan’s like to remind everybody, and they can either live in it as is or join the modern world and shift their backsides sorting it out. Denuding the country of the very people who might have the capacity to actually do something about the issues facing the country is rather short sighted in my view. If that requires that they risk their lives in defence of what they believe then so so be it, better that than the poorly paid plebs from other nations risking their lives and futures at the behest of idealistic, vain, politicians.
This writer is an agenda man, and not correct at all.
“The difference between the ANA and the British Army is only one of degree, and not kind, both being expendable, entirely dependent auxiliary forces for American imperial projects. ”
The writer just is full of self loathing (British self loathing) and anti-Americanism. That he gets a national stage to say his untruths is the way things are now days.
“With one excellent speech this week, Joe Biden fulfilled”
Pandering to Biden, TDS for Trump, says UK is a toothless lackey of America, this writer is all which is wrong with the MSM – lies, distortion, and the Agenda of anti-Western Liberal/Lefty. He needs to move on to writing on Race where he can use his skills as manipulation of that agenda fits right in with the anti-Western-ism.
I have talked a lot on here about Afghanistan, and it has been a disater, but why? As much from the Liberal agenda saying it is all about women’s issues and so on. Real-Politic, once in the mess, was totally tossed asside in the promotion and protection of Liberal/third wave feminism, politics.
If this had really been a Right Wing fight we would have been long gone. Obama was not there for any reasons but Liberal weirdness – look at the actual politics, not just your stupid throw away lines. And look to the military Industrial Complex too – a Very Liberal industry as it is where all the Lefty/Liberal Soros elites make their real money, and so pull all the political strings.
Maybe try at get the Guardian to run this article, it would fit right in with their agenda.
Sanford, cool down and double up on the anti-psychotic meds please.
“That he gets a national stage to say his untruths is the way things are now days.”
Well, I happen to know a bit, first hand, of Afghanistan, and it was a utter disaster from 1979 till now. Really from 1973 when the King’s cousin had him overthrown by a Russian lackey coup. When that was falling apart they let Russia in, to assist them, but really an invasion.
Then things got crazy when USA and KSA agreed at a 1 to 1 USD$ spend, where USA gave the money to ISI to spend int he fight against Russia, and KSA spent it on establishing madrassas across the Western Frontier to teach Deobandi Salifism based on Pashtunwali sponsored by the Wahhabi leaning, and all kinds of other weirdnesses. So you had these madrassas spring up teaching the Koran in Arabic to the Afghan youth, Talibs, they were called, Students, and with the Pashtunwali coupled with the Salafist Deobandi became the Taliban – meanwhile the Mujahideen had taken much of the country and were corrupt, and seen as venal, but with USA Stinger rockets had Russia kept to the roads, and so it went – total chaos! A dozen sides and billions of money coming from crazy directions – And into a crazy land.
So – the Talib kicked the Mujahideen, who had kicked the Russians out, and the problem is let Osama stay, (The principal of ‘Hospitality’ is paramount in Pashtunwali) and so USA decided to go in and get Osama out – but once in Afghanistan the MSM, and insane Western Leadership just could not help themselves from trying to social engineer Afghanistan to make Women’s issues more on level with Western ones.
That really was what it all was about. Real-politic was over, now we were in Afghanistan to make it Western with regards to women! That is why the will to stay existed, the MSM (and back in the dark, the military Industrial Complex)
This is Crazy. History tells EVERY ONE to let the Afghans be Afghani, but no, we had to make them treat the women as we wished. We had to make it democratic, we had to make them secular and nice, but if you know the reason they are like they are for 3000 years read on Pashtunwali – they have the code which is not bendable.
The Iraq war was good, losing the peace was a crime! The Afghan war was bad. Vietnam was good, but is good we did not really try to win, should have left sooner, the Korean war was good, but should have been better. You people think wars, winning, and losing are simple, bit it is not. The war is about the peace, that is where it must be judged.
You make it sound like US funding of the Mujahideen began after the Soviet intervention, when it most likely began before, with, many suspect, the intention of drawing the Soviets in and ‘creating another Vietnam’. (Brzezinski said, in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, ‘according to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, kept secret until now, is quite different: Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul,’ and ‘The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”‘)
As for women’s rights, they had been improving, but went downhill, starting with the rise of the Mujahideen.
The lesson from history is crystal clear – stay out of Afghanistan, if you make the mistake of going in, get out.
Gee Dubya Bush made that mistake and thought he could leave a bit behind and redeploy the rest to finish daddy’s war against Saddam – another horrible folly which cost US and UK treasure, blood and reputation.
Afghanistan is a basket case which needs to be left to sort itself out – trying to bring what is essentially a medieval country into the 21st century is a fools errand. The sole focus of foreign policy towards Afghanistan needs to be on preventing malign outsiders from using it at a safe haven to mount attacks outside Afghanistan. There was a strange concept during the “Great Game” that Afghanistan had some strategic importance as a global crossroads. There is nothing of real importance there and never was.
Having spent 6 months there in 2007/8, I do feel for the Afghan peoples – when not killing each other and outsiders, they are decent, honourable people. It is a shame that they cannot be helped by outsiders without making things worse, but that is the reality of Afghanistan.
If you look at what Brzezinski said about why the US backed the jihadis in Afghanistan, helping the people hardly figured. Deliberately trying to create another Vietnam did.
Afghanistan has been over millennia a crossroads for central Asia and this fact did provide the Afghans wth their culture, which is not inconsiderable So I think it’s not right or fair to characterise Afghanistan as a “nothing” county as the writer did “there is nothing of real importance there, and there never was”. That’s not right.
Afghanistan is full of minerals, and is the best place for pipelines and roads for resources above to the sea. It has a lot. It is also a land of magical beauty, and one day will be something economically.
It will have to be ‘sanitised’ first with Tactical Nuclear Weapons.
Was it really worth divulging your colossal cretinous ignorance?
Calm down, there’s a good chap!
America and its NATO auxiliaries, including Britain, wasted blood and treasure trying to extend the writ of Kabul’s central government to isolated rural regions of the country
Roussinos omits how the CIA and MI6 had previously backed the Mujaheddin in doing exactly the opposite.
We’ll see. The usual suspects have already started whining, much as they did when Trump raised the issue. Biden had 8 years to influence this and failed; since it’s Biden, my confidence is limited that this effort will be better. I hope it is; that conflict ran its course more than a decade ago and I doubt anyone wants to be the last soldier to die for some politician’s vanity.
America has “lost” pretty much h every “war” it has entered into since Korea. Vietnam, Iraq1 Iraq2 and now Afghanistan. For all their technical superiority they dont ever seem to be able to define what winning might look like. Maybe backing the likely winning side from the start might help. As for the UK… they should follow their own national interest not that of a foreign country, with a foreign culture, who’s only similarity is that they share a mutually intelligible language.
That’s largely because the military winds up being used as a political tool. You’re spot on about the failure to define victory. Because of that, no one could recognize it if it were to be achieved. Troops have no idea what the mission is.
Exactly. US wars have been for domestic consumption. They can’t be won because the actual goal is the war itself.
The military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned hasn’t “lost” many wars of late. Arms manufacturers’ profits and military spending continue to rise.
By Iraq 1, I assume you mean the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi invasion (Desert Storm). As wars go that was a success, it achieved its aim (Kuwait back being Kuwait) and did not leave troops to be shot at for years after.
It does depend on your point of view to some extent, as it was pretty messy, but Clinton’s Balkans bombing campaign could also be considered a success – the Serbs stopped their ethnic cleansing and there were no troops left to be shot at for years. This and the effects of doing SFA about genocide in Rwanda led to a renewed, false sense of confidence in and need for the “world’s policeman”. It has most certainly been all down hill from there
USA always wins the war and loses the peace. This is because the peace is managed by the Lifer Swamp degenerate creatures.
Except the 1812 where they lost both!
Sanford, it’s not working. Change meds and use quadruple the recommended maximum dose please.
What do you know of anyhing? Have you been out in the world on foot? have you been down with the people utterly unlike you, have you lived with the weird folk and lands? Or are you some desk rabbit who’s brain has been fed entirely a diet of MSM and Liberal Lefty agenda education?
It’s probably unlikely that the UK will join the US or anyone else into a new war. With the new cuts to the defence budget the UK will now have 72,000 service personnel. As far as i recall the last US administration told the UK to increase it’s defence budget or become irrelevant. I doubt the UK could full fill it’s roll in the looming civil war in the province of Northern Ireland ,let alone get involved in another international conflict. This is a good thing as thousands of British troops and countless foreign troops have lost their lives during the 30 year civil war in Northern Ireland , the Falklands war, Iraq , and Afghanistan, to what end?
Thank you for that succinct account of one of the most humiliating episodes in British Military History Mr Roussinos.
Not quite on the scale of Dunkirk, Singapore, Tobruk, Kabul or Yorktown, yet Afghanistan still revealed the British Army in a very poor light.
Ill equipped, incompetently lead, it spent most its time treading on Home Made Bombs (IED’s if you are American), whist perusing a courageous enemy dressed in pyjamas and flip flops, wearing impressive beards and armed with a mobile phone and an AK 47.
Had they had any SAM’s (Surface-to-Air Missiles) such as the famed “Stinger”
‘we’ would have been blown out of the place in less than a fortnight.
What was particularly irritating for older observers was how traditional, disciplined, British Infantry Fire Control procedures were completely abandoned in favour of the American doctrine of ‘suppressing fire’. The concept of ‘aimed shots’ which had held true since the Boer War was deemed obsolete.
Thus in a seven month tour, British Battalions literally fired ‘millions’ of rounds, hitting almost nothing. Sadly the new British Infantry rifle, the SA-80 allows for full automatic fire with all too predictable results, unlike it’s worthy predecessor the SLR.
However let us be thankful that Messrs Trump and Biden have now ended this nightmare.
Spoken like someone who clearly wasn’t on the ground. The reason Terry Taliban went to IEDs (efficient devices provided from Iran & Pakistan) was because they learnt very quickly that Thomas is quite useful in a direct contact. ‘Home Made Bombs’ as you describe them detonate without risk to the one who put them there. Courage has little to do with planting them knowing they will go off at a later time. I, myself was caught by an IED strapped to a downs child that had been brought to Helmand over the Kush from Pakistan for that very task. The child and IED killed 19. All of them other Afghans.
I do agree on the ‘ill equipped and incompetently led’. Both very accurate observations. From afar.
Indeed I was not on the ‘ground’, but rather sitting comfortably in an armchair reading Homer to my Springer Spaniels.
Fortunately for such ‘armchair warriors’ as myself, the BBC had thoughtfully collated numerous amateur films made by ‘Thomas’ on the ground and the picture they painted was somewhat disturbing. In one incident, at the end of a ‘contact’ which had killed the platoon commander, a certain Lance Sergeant was heard to boast “f**king hell I fired off 39 magazines (of SA 80 presumably) in that”!
How was that even possible? But it does illustrate that what we used to call ‘fire control’ is a thing of the past.
Presumably you concur with my hypothesis that had the Teletubies had ‘Stingers’, as had their forebears, the Mujaheddin, we would have out of there rather smartly?
Probably not. The reason being is at any one time we had 3 viable chinooks for the entire theatre. So not much opportunity to shoot anything down surface to air wise as we had so little. Terry would have been very frustrated.
3 Chinooks for a theatre the size of Wales:
Those air frames needed to cover casualty evac, day to day ops, non green moves, insertions, all mission resups, SF, etc.
Blair said ‘I want you to do more with less’ whilst Brown refused to open his purse…
We did have a number of lynx left over from Germany somewhere, but they could only operate prior to 1300 as after that they couldnt manage the afternoon heat….I look back and I do wonder….
Three Chinooks sounds incredibly parsimonious!
What about the odd Nimrod? And were there any Tornadoes or some such?
How did people arrive in Bastion in the first place? Via donkey?
Presumably a C-130 would be an easy target for a ‘Stinger’?
What about the rather expensive Apache, or was that later?
Hate to flaunt ‘Told you so ….’ But I did and I don’t.
In early 2002 (a few months after 9/11), I found myself sitting next at lunch at a house in Hertfordshire, England to the American Ambassador to Bulgaria. In the course of a conversation about current affairs, I asked her what the Americans were going to do in Afghanistan, once they had found Bin Laden, and killed him. She had no answer to my question. Of course, there was no plan, and no real purpose, at least at that time.
The truth is that George W was a weak, and muddled President who was under the thumb of his Vice-President and through him, became controlled by the “Axis of Evil” philosophy created by pro-Israel interests in the united States, which became the inspiration for the trail of murder and chaos which America blazed through Central Asia and the Near East, starting in Afghanistan, then spreading to Iraq, Libya and later Syria. It’s an appalling record of which America and Americans should be deeply ashamed, with no justification of any sort except that of bringing pleasure and satisfaction to the pro-Israel lobby and to many in the Pentagon in Washington DC, and assisting American weapons companies to meet their sales targets. I suppose it also provided excellent training facilities to British and American troops, at the cost of many thousands of lives
I am very surprised, but delighted by Biden’s decisions, not just in exiting Afghanistan but also in every other area since his election. All strength to him !
Spot on in every respect, bar one.
You omitted to mention that it was Mr Trump who instigated the withdrawal.
or that Biden was part of an administration that had 8 years to do this.
I don’t think Biden had a lot of clout in Obama’s administration.
Or even in the Biden Administration, or as he calles it now, President Harris.
Well that depends on the issue. If it was something that he thinks is worth taking credit for – not that I can think of anything – Biden suddenly had a lot of clout.
It’s on the record that Biden has wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan for years. He was over ruled when he was VP. He’s also on the record as saying he would withdraw if elected. As for the Trump, he was trying to get a ‘deal’ he could boast about. Like Nth Korea, that deal was just smoke & mirrors
The post is so riddled with TDS, anti-Americanism, and anti Israel that the fact he loves Biden comes as no surprise.
“The truth is that George W was a weak, and muddled President who was under the thumb of his Vice-President”
haha, and Obama had Biden his 8 years, and maintained this all. I am not surprised the ambassador to Bulgaria declined to tell you of what was really going on.
Americans should be ashamed?
UK is a key funder of anti assad almada groups in Syria.
It was France and UK that pushed Obama to intervene in Libya .(Sarkozy and Cameron)
Ofcourse you are right about Bush and d**k Cheny….the project for the new American century and neoconservatives push Isreali interests in the Middle East.
The British followed the Americans into Iraq whilst other Europeans had the sense to avoid.
We are seen by the world as one of the country’s with the most warmonger- interventionist ; in recent history and the past.
Hated across the world too.
If anyone should be ashamed it’s us.
The Foreign policy establishment that we tolerate still isn’t reflective about creating a circle of instability from Iraq to Syria to Libya around us with its waves of migrants and terrorism (Manchester bombing).
For some reason we are still supporting Alqaeda in Syria – to boot.Helping Sunni fundamentalists set up a state right underneath Europe?
Which is a strategic lunacy if I ever heard one.
Instead of doing everything we can to prevent human traffickers from pushing refugees into Britain (which could destabilise the country) the UK insists on destabilising stable countries in the middle East and then opening our borders.
Quite correct and bravely spoken.
HMG is morally degenerate, and a national disgrace.
It is an abomination that the UK population has remained so supine whist its rulers behave in such a disgusting fashion.
Fortunately, plucky old Assad seems to have beaten us off, as we so richly deserved.
Now Iraq is an Iranian client state and Afghanistan is about to be back in Taliban hands, 1 trillion dollars later. Thanks Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all of the Dem hawks and foreign policy blob that enabled them. The same cast is hard at work now cooking up new wars to put on President Senile’s desk for a quick scribble.
This is UK’s third or fourth Afghan war, for a start I can’t see why we are so concerned.
So USA wanted to be top dog it got itself Afghanistan and as a bonus it also got Vietnam. In future it should support Empires and Kings, and if it is going to build a UN to decolonize Empires it should START with the Marxist Empires not with the Western ones.
Next time USA (Roosevelt/ Truman) as an Empire which masscred the brave and murdered the free and replaced them with Europeans (a better definition of Empire impossible) USA shouldn’t go around saying “we don’t support Empires” and “we don’t do Kings”. Former successful imperial colonies which have failed the decolonization and are now supplying millions of refugees. Including Afghanistan.
The most concerning “icing on the cake” isn’t geting Moslem politics of Afghanistan wrong, it has to be getting Marxism wrong and allowing the Chinese Communists to win in China (Truman’s appeasemet of a doctrine which can’t be appeased because of its definition) AND THEN to make matters worse, as if that wasn’t bad enough go and give them the blue prints of the West in order not to pay their own workers a bit more for their work.
So USA now has built up Marxist China to be at the top of technology with its tyrany and its doctrine which demands expansion (International socialist departments of the Marxist regimes). Now that is the BIG mistake of USA, and perhaps it can’t be fixed.
One helpful development would be a really strong united Anglosphere in a project like Canzuk, start walking back the other way before it is too late. USA has not worked to unite the Anglosphere all the contrary.
So, this is interesting commentary. But I must point out a few minor differences that I have with this column….Let us see, what do you call someone who is speaking through there behind? I don’t remember France and the UK following the US in to war with Libya, in fact the opposite occurred. Let alone follow the US in to declaring war on Germany. I must also point out that were it not for Ronald Reagan arming the British Fleet during the Falkland War…British soldiers would only have there johnson to hold on to. Half the mess in the world was caused by colonial Britain…the entirety of the Middle East problems have come about due to Britain….So with due respect…you can stuff it.
You forget France. Most of the world’s problems have French Fingerprints all over them. In the MENA, Sahel, even some of Tropical Africa, France was paramount in wrecking it all.
Sykes-Picot, Vichy North Africa, allowing Germany to re-arm, after forcing the treaty of Versailles on them, refusing to get Saddam out of Iraq, so emboldening him and causing the disastrous war, sheltering Khomeini and turning him loose on Iran, neglecting the Balkans war, Just everything the french do is to make things bad for their allies, USA and UK.