And it's not like our history overall shows us in any better light than any other big power. The war in Algeria was not very clean, and even more recently, we have nothing to be proud of our passivity in the Balkans and Rwanda.

I don't say one cannot be proud of one's country, including France - what I found maddening myself was that direct, explicit poke in Germany's eye, and the apparent lack of reaction as of this afternoon.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes