George Will is losing it:

From ABC's This Week roundtable:

GEORGE WILL: There was a famously disagreeable Frenchman, de Gaulle, who said "Nations do not have permanent friends or permanent enemies. They have permanent interests."

FAREED ZAKARIA: No, that was Palmerston.   (laughter)   An agreeable Englishman.

GEORGE WILL: France can be useful to us. Germany can be useful to us. But at the end of the day, by the way, neither France nor Germany is in the top ten of important nations in the world any longer. That's what we have to get over.

MICHELLE MARTIN - spoke about Bush being a moralist

FAREED ZAKARIA: I also take issue with the point you're making George. There's a huge gap between number one and everybody else in the world. But look, Germany is the second or third richest country in the world. The third richest country in the world.

NOTES:

The "permanent interests" statement was made by Benjamin Disraeli. Both Will and Zakaria were wrong. But Zakaria was closer, in that he identified a 19th century British Prime Minister.

As to France and Germany not being in the top ten of important nations, we suggest Will take a look at this table (source CIA World Factbook - except for Russia military):

by GDP
	country	GDP $ trillions	military $ billions
1	United States	$10.08	$300.0
2	China	$6.00	$55.0
3	Japan	$3.55	$40.7
4	India	$2.66	$12.0
5	Germany	$2.18	$38.8
6	France	$1.54	$46.5
7	United Kingdom	$1.52	$31.7
8	Italy	$1.43	$20.2
9	Brazil	$1.34	$13.4
10	Russia	$1.27	$50.0

posted by Quiddity at 6/02/2003 02:27:00 AM