America Embarrassed: You Know It's Bad When the French Call You Out

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

We all love a baguette, some fromage, a sip of Cabernet Sauvignon crafted from the grapes of Bordeaux; possibly even an incomprehensible black and white, smoke-filled French cinéma such as Breathless from Jean-Luc Goddard. What we don’t expect from le Français is to be criticized for our military prowess. The famed Maginot Line fell to the Nazis in World War II like a game of Jenga, leading to classic jests like:

French Joke

Q: What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up?
A. The French Army.

There are some who even label them as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” but I am better than that; I won’t go there.

I kid. I love the French.

It’s a bit disconcerting, though, when the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, calls out the United States for its impudent language on the dangers of nuclear war currently facing the world. And yet, chiding the U.S. is exactly what Macron did Friday at a European Union summit in Prague. He publicly dressed down President Joe Biden, who in yet another in a long-running series of intemperate utterings, claimed the world was closer to destruction than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Putin was:

“…not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons,” our Commander in Chief intoned. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

I don’t know if Biden is a poker player, but he violated the basic rule here: keep your cards close to your chest.  When questioned about his pronouncements, Joe simply ran away:

Is this the kind of reassurance we’re looking for in our leaders? Can you picture Ronald Reagan speaking like this? Me neither. Here is Macron weighing in on our leader’s comments:

“We must speak with prudence when commenting on such matters,” Macron scolded.

Biden’s gaffes and garbled statements have been extensively chronicled at RedState, not because we’re gleefully piling on an elderly man prone to confusion. No, the problem is much more serious than that. When the leader of the free world keeps spouting histrionic, spur-of-the-moment remarks, it can actually impact the world order—and inadvertently lead to war.

Biden’s missteps are often dangerous—as we can see from his comments about how the U.S. might not take a Russian “minor incursion” into Ukraine seriously, which almost immediately led to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country. Vlad assumed he had been given the green light, based on Joe’s muddled declarations.

Joe’s comments claiming essentially that we’re on the verge of nuclear annihilation does nothing to calm the already nervous public, yet does everything to inflame the already tense international crisis that concerns the globe. Unfortunately, Macron is right—we must “speak with prudence.” Despite endless decades in the bowels of government, Joe Biden has not learned this lesson.

When the French are calling you out, you know you’re in “grande difficulté.”