Posted on Sat, Mar. 15, 2003

Offer to exhume U.S. war dead backfires
A Florida lawmaker's bill deemed French soil unfit for fallen Americans.
By Chris Mondics
Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Forget, for a moment, the contretemps over french fries and government contracts. Now, even the dead have become bargaining chips in the emotional clash between the United States and France.

Not content with proposals to ban U.S. military participation in the Paris air show or a decision to rename french fries served in House cafeterias "freedom fries," a freshman member of Congress wants to help families bring home the remains of American war dead buried in France and Belgium.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R., Fla.) wanted to send a message to France by providing U.S. government money to bring home the remains of soldiers who died on European battlefields. But the measure she introduced Thursday has triggered a small backlash in her central Florida district. Some constituents mistakenly believe that Brown-Waite's bill would require that all 74,000 American dead from World Wars I and II buried in France and Belgium be brought home.

Brown-Waite and her staff have spent the last two days reassuring constituents, many of them military families, that the program would apply only to families who request that the remains of their loved ones be brought back.

"In the district, there has been a mixed reaction," said Caryn McLeod, a spokeswoman for Brown-Waite. "A lot of people don't understand that the bill affords people a choice. A lot of people think she wants to bring home all [the war dead], and the image of digging up the graves has been very unsettling."

So it goes in the House, where a backlash against French efforts in the U.N. Security Council to undermine U.S. war plans has produced a flurry of proposals aimed at expressing American disapproval. The House, whose members run for election every two years, is often the source of bills that play to populist sentiments but have little chance of becoming law.

In this case, the bills range from proposals by Rep. H. James Saxton (R., N.J.) to prevent French firms from obtaining U.S. government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq to a suggestion by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) that the United States restrict imports of French wine and bottled water.

Saxton also has proposed preventing the American military from participating in the Paris air show in June.

Earlier this week, it was disclosed that Rep. Bob Ney (R., Ohio), chairman of the Administration Committee, ordered that the fries served in House cafeterias be renamed. Ney, who is of French extraction and speaks French fluently, said he was simply trying to express American displeasure with France's opposition to U.S. efforts to get the Security Council to authorize invading Iraq.

All the bills aimed at the French have at least this in common: It is highly unlikely that any will be adopted. That's because they run up against the free-trade impulses of the Republican leaders who control Congress. These are the very people who have been fulminating the most against the French.

In the view of some Capitol Hill observers, it is a good thing that the bills won't get far.

"As important as this war is, this too will pass," said Christopher Foreman, a political scientist at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs. "So we need to have the capacity to go on with trade issues and other security issues [involving the French and American governments]. The problem right now is that we have the political equivalent of the solar eclipse of the sun, where we have a shadow moving across and blocking out the sun. But like a solar eclipse, it will pass."

Foreman said bills such as those of Saxton and Brown-Waite served some purpose by enabling members and constituents to express displeasure without actually doing much to damage relations, since there was little likelihood they would be signed into law.

"This is a way for the country to blow off steam," Foreman said. "It lets everyone understand that there are serious disagreements and issues without necessarily damaging the relationship between the countries."

Yet, the outpouring of emotion on Capitol Hill has caught some of America's allies by surprise. They say they never imagined that a policy difference would engender such an intense response.

"There has been a certain surprise about the level of anger," said Patrick Herman, deputy spokesman for the Belgian ministry of foreign affairs. "Our position has been from the beginning of the crisis that this is not a personal issue; it is a policy issue."

Contact reporter Chris Mondics at 202-383-6024 or [email protected].