Word: frenchmen
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...Lebanon's Shi'ite terrorists, who revere Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and want to turn Lebanon into a fundamentalist Muslim state, have embarked on an orgy of abductions since the beginning of the year. Of the 24 foreign captives now being held in Lebanon, eight are Americans, six Frenchmen and two West Germans. Recent victims include two Saudi Arabians, a sign that the terrorists may be trying to pressure the Saudis to moderate their support for Iraq in its six-year-old war with Iran...
Even before last week's grim harvest of hostages, the roster of those already held captive in Lebanon consisted of five Americans, five Frenchmen, two Britons, an Italian, an Irishman, a South Korean and a Saudi Arabian. Last week Vice President George Bush confirmed that another American hostage, CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley, was killed last year by his captors. Anderson and Sutherland were abducted in the spring of 1985 by Shi'ite radicals. Their captors' principal demand: the release of 17 presumed Shi'ites who are serving prison sentences for, among other things, terrorist attacks...
This comes from centuries of Kings, Popes and Presidents acting out the gap between principles and applied statecraft. Says Guy Sorman of Paris University's Political Studies Institute: "Most Frenchmen believe that political power and foreign policy should be Machiavellian. Today when President Mitterrand is called a Florentine -- meaning a Machiavellian -- it is meant largely as a compliment. What Frenchmen dislike is naivete...
Auque is one of five Frenchmen and eleven other foreigners, including five Americans, now being held in Lebanon. The kidnaping underscored the frustration inherent in any attempt to gain freedom for those in the hands of terrorists. Informed of Auque's capture, Waite appeared stunned and said, "I am very, very sorry to hear that." He vowed, however, to continue his efforts to free kidnap victims...
...Parisian dramatist Jean Cocteau once characterized his fellow Frenchmen as a bunch of Italians in a bad mood. As thumbnail assessments go, that may have been incomplete, but it was not too far off the mark. France last week continued to be seized by a wave of train and other public-service strikes that have disrupted the country for a month. Not only was the typical Frenchman's mood even sourer than usual, but there were numerous signs that French political life, and daily life for that matter, was Italianizing at the edges. The successive crises that have beset...