As you know if you paid attention in your high school history class, the USA and France have had a close friendship since before the USA was formed. While in Paris, we saw a number of statues celebrating this friendship. These included statues of George Washington and Ben Franklin, and a wonderful statue in Place des États Unis commemorating the American soldiers who died for France in WWII.

Here’s some of the photos I took of these monuments while in Paris.

It was for this reason, among others, that the foolishness about “freedom fries” irritated me so much. It’s perfectly fine, apparently, that the USA disagrees with the actions of the United Nations on a regular basis, but when France disagreed, and we happened, in a strange aberration, to agree, we resorted to the juvenile playground tactic of ridiculing them. It was embarrassing, to say the least.