It is easy to make fun of the French and their pompous pretense to the grandeur they shed a half-century ago when their loss of honor under Vichy, and then their loss of empire, relegated them to the rank of second-class power. But the fun is over. Before Sept. 11, France's Gaullist anti-Americanism as a form of ostentatious self-aggrandizement was an irritant. With a war on--three, in fact: Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism--France's willful obstructionism becomes dangerous and deadly.
That obstructionism was on amazing display at the recent NATO summit in Istanbul. The supremely courageous President of...