DanKohn.com

French President Jacques Chirac said today: “As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”

James Taranto in the WSJ’s blog responds: “CNN doesn’t say what language he was speaking when he said this, but if it was French and not German, the statement refutes itself.”

Yes, we’re dangerously close to Godwin’s Law here, but the idea that there is nothing worse than war is so utterly inimical to Western values of freedom and democracy (values that have continually required defending at the point of the gun) that Europeans should be embarrased not to at least be open to the idea that force is sometimes utterly necessary and proper.

As Bill Saffire says in tomorrow’s NYT, “Pyrrhic victories [such as appeasing Iraq] are part of the backdrop to the existential crisis that the Security Council is bringing on itself. The Iraq issue is not war vs. peace. It is collective security vs. every nation for itself.”

France should recall how they fared the last time they walked away from their collective security committments (by shamefully selling out Czechoslovokia at Munich).

The NYT reports on the Segway, and gives the first realistic justification I’ve ever seen for getting one:

Mr. Tropea said some people argue that he has bought an overpriced “geek magnet.” But it is rather a people magnet, especially for the opposite sex, he said. “If I wasn’t married, this is what I would need to meet girls,” he said.

It is no exaggeration. A young woman catches his eye and asks about his ride. “Can you go fast?” she asks, and raises an eyebrow playfully. “Do you think you could catch me?”