If one of your friends knew that your house was burning down, but did nothing to help until the flames circled the block and threatened his own house, would you feel incredibly indebted to that friend?
Grateful, yes, but his motives are clear. He was acting in his own self-interest. The French acted in their own self-interest during the American Revolution -- they wanted to embarass and weaken Great Britain, and to have favorable trade relations with the former colonies after the war. The United States acted in her own self interest by liberating the French, which is also to say, dealing a major defeat to the Nazi Germans who just happened to be in France. We were also afraid that if we did not invade Europe at that time, the Russians would start the show without us, and we'd have to end up fighting them.
So we did the French a favor, but hardly a selfless, saintly deed.
Nazi Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940. A full year and a half later, on December 8th, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan. It was not until December 11th, when Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, that the U.S. formally declared war on the other Axis powers. The D-Day invasion of France did not come until June 6, 1944, three further years later.
So, sometimes countries do good things for other countries in their own self-interest. However, countries rarely do such "good things" when they have no self-interest in the matter. And we should never be surprised when this remains true. Why the shock, then, and outrage at the French for their reluctance to support a war in which they had no self-interest?
Yes, the French had some deals with Saddam. You know what, though? Halliburton, under then CEO Dick Cheney, had more. In fact, some believe that Halliburton did more business with Iraq than any other company.
According to the Financial Times of London, Halliburton in that time period sold $23.8 million of oil industry equipment and services to Iraq, to help rebuild its war-damaged oil production infrastructure. For political reasons, Halliburton used subsidiaries to hide this. [4]
More recently, the Washington Post on June 23, 2001, reported that figure was actually $73 million.
The head of the subsidiary said he is certain Cheney knew about these sales.
Halliburton did more business with Saddam Hussein than any other US company.
Asked about this by journalists by ABC News in August 2000, Cheney lied and said "I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal."
Source
More on Cheney, Halliburton & Iraq
We did no selfless deed in Iraq, either, liberating them. It was in (debatedly) our own self-interest (because of oil, or WMD, or the neocon agenda, depending on who you ask) or we wouldn't have gone. So spare me the phony moral outrage.
