On the eve of war with Iraq, we’ve got to start picking our fights wisely.

On a recent lunch outing I noticed that Pfeifer no longer serves French fries. They now serve “liberty fries” due to France’s unwillingness to go side with the United States in waging war against Iraq. Thank God our food service has the guts to stand up for our nation in these trying times.

This idiotic use of the term liberty fries is not relegated to our small college alone. All over the county restaurants have renamed any food with the word “French” in it, giving us “liberty toast” and “liberty dressing.” Are we complete morons? French fries and toast have nothing at all to do with France, and if the chefs over there knew what constituted for French dressing they might push for a renaming project of their own.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Americans have gone overboard with renaming items that are associated with a nation we disagree with. During World War I, you couldn’t get a hamburger or a frankfurter due to their German connotations. Liberty burgers and hot dogs became staples on menus. As if that weren’t enough, doctors began diagnosing German measles as “liberty measles.” Nice to know that our nation’s sick were fighting those dirty Huns here on the home front.

I don’t understand the need to rename a hamburger, but at least I can comprehend that fact that we were at war with Germany at the time. What has France done to us? Last time I checked, France wasn’t on our hit list. Iraq: yes. Afghanistan: check. North Korea: getting to it. France: no.

All that the French government did was attempt to diplomatically disarm a nation of all its weapons of mass destruction. They did everything according to the United Nations charter they had signed, agreeing with almost every other country on the planet that force was not necessary to do so. When the United States asked them to come on board, they declined. I fail to see where any of this signaled a backstab to the United States or infringed upon our freedoms in any way.

I question why we didn’t go further with these cheese-eating surrender-monkeys. Why not pay France the ultimate lip service and push the Statue of Liberty over into the ocean. We can then erect a giant Uncle Sam. Facing east, he can have both arms raised with middle fingers pointed toward the heavens, showing our former friends just what we think of people who disagree with the almighty United States. Wish we would’ve done that a century ago. The immigrants arriving at Ellis Island that helped build our nation would have known right off the bat that nobody #$*@s with America, baby.

Sure, France may seem like a poor ally to have, given the fact that they have a slightly better record in warfare than the Washington Generals have against the Harlem Globetrotters, but do they truly deserve this type of treatment? We can’t afford to burn any more bridges than we already have.

Remember, the actions of France and other nations in the United Nations were allowed because of the very rights and freedoms we are supposedly fighting to protect. Doesn’t denouncing the decisions of those governments make our imminent war with Iraq a bit hypocritical?