President John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 1960’s when Charles DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO.
DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.
Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”
DeGaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop.
When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ’empire building’ by George Bush.
He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those who did not
return.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.
During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?”
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly:
“Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to
shore facilities.”
“They have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships. How many does France have?”
You Could have heard a pin drop.
A U.S. Navy admiral was attending a naval conference that included admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French navies at a cocktail reception.
He found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries.
Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks when a
French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.
He then asked, “Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than
speaking French?”
Without hesitating, the American admiral replied, “Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.
“You have been to France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked
sarcastically.
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.
“Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.”
The American said, “The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.”
“Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !”
The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ”Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchman to show a passport to.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
☆☆☆☆☆
IN GOD WE TRUST
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CINDY LEAL MASSEY, TEXAS AUTHOR
Clever Journeys 
Great stuff!
I especially liked:
“Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”
and
”Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchman to show a passport to.”
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Here are some excerpts from The March of Folly by Barbara W. Tuchman, Chapter Four, “The British Lose America”:
“The Stamp Act, introduced by Grenville in 1765, will be remembered ‘as long as the globe lasts.’ So proclaimed Macaulay in one of his bugle calls to historical grandeur. It was the act, he wrote, destined to ‘produce a great revolution, the effects of …which will long be felt by the whole human race,’ and he blamed Grenville for not foreseeing the consequences. That is hindsight; even the colonies’ agents did not foresee them. But enough information was available to the English to forecast determined resistance by the Americans and prospects of serious trouble.”
“In Parliament, the colonial petitions were rejected unheard on the ground that they concerned a money bill for which petitions were disallowed. Jackson and Garth spoke in the House denying Parliament’s right to tax ‘until or unless the Americans are allowed to send Members to Parliament.’ Rising to answer, the President of the Board of Trade, Charles Townshend, soon to be a critical figure in the conflict, provoked the first moment of excitement in the American drama. Shall the Americans, he asked, ‘children planted by our Arms, shall they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden we lie under?’
“Unable to contain himself, Colonel Isaac Barre, a fierce one-eyed former soldier who had fought with Wolfe and Amherst in America, sprang to his feet. ‘They planted by your Care? No! Your Oppressions planted ’em in America. . . . They nourished up by your Indulgence? They grew up by your neglect of ’em. . . . They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence. . . . And believe me, and remember that I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first, will acompany them still. . . . They are a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated—but the Subject is too delicate and I will say no more.’ These sentiments, recorded Ingersoll, were thrown out so spontaneously, ‘so forcibly and firmly, and the breaking off so beautifully abrupt, that the whole House sat awile as Amazed, intently looking and without answering a Word.’ It may have been the first moment when perhaps a few realized what loomed ahead.
“Barre, who looked on the world with a ‘savage glare’ from a face scarred by the bullet that took out his eye at Quebec, was to become one of the leading defenders of America and orators of the Opposition. Of Huguenot ancestry, born in Dublin and educated at Dublin’s Trinity College (described by the father of Thomas Sheridan as ‘half bear [beer] garden and half brothel’), he had left the Army when his promotion was blocked by the King and was elected to Parliament through the influence of Lord Shelburne, Irish-born like himself. His staunch support of America, joined with that of another champion, of a sort, is commemorated in the town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.”
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American War for Independence (1775-1783)
“The Americans who protested against British encroachments on colonial liberties wanted to preserve their traditional rights. They were not revolutionaries seeking the radical restructuring of society… They used the word ‘innovation’ pejoratively… ‘no freeman should be subject to any tax to which he has not given his own consent’ [-John Adams]… From the American point of view, such taxation without consent was an intolerable novelty… They protested that their ancient chartered rights were being violated… The Americans defended their traditional rights. The French revolutionaries despised French traditions and sought to make everything anew: new governing structures, new provincial boundaries, a new ‘religion,’ a new calendar—and the guillotine awaited those who objected…
“In a certain sense, there was no American Revolution at all. There was, instead, an American War for Independence in which Americans threw off British authority in order to retain their liberties and self-government. In the 1760s, the colonies had, for the most part, been left alone in their internal affairs… [The] colonists did not seek the total transformation of society that we associate with other revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution. They simply wished to go on enjoying self-rule when it came to their internal matters and living as they always had for so many decades before British encroachments began. The American ‘revolutionaries’ were conservative, in the very best sense of that word…
“When modern-day liberals justify extremely broad readings of the Constitution on the grounds that we need a ‘living, breathing Constitution’ that ‘changes with the times’, they are actually recommending the very system the colonists sought to escape. The British constitution was very flexible indeed — too flexible for the colonists, who were inflexibly committed to upholding their traditional rights. The ‘living, breathing’ British constitution was no safeguard of American liberties.”
—The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
from Chapter 2: “America’s Conservative Revolution”
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D.
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