On the anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth, I just had
to recirculate this wonderful, if slightly sexist, report
from 2002
Associated Press : For Immediate Release: March, 2002
French Intellectuals to be Deployed in Afghanistan to
Convince Taliban of Non-Existence of God
Kabul---The clean-up portion of the ground war in
Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed
plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist
philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of the
remaining Taliban zealots by proving the non-existence of
God.
Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade,
or 'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat
zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential
anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous
intellectual battles fought during their long occupation
of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to
establish a number of sidewalk cafes at strategic points
near the front lines.
There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about
the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in
the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of
heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will propagate
fear, uncertainty and doubt by looking remote and
unattainable.
Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke
yesterday of his confidence in the success of their
mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and
unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated
wildly and said, "The Taliban are caught in a logical
fallacy of the most ridiculous proportions. There is no
God and I can prove it."
Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on
man's inescapapable lack of freedom of action, with
special reference to the work of Foucault and the films
of Alfred Hitchcock.
However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to
condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the
effects of passive smoke from the Frenchmens' endless
Gauloises and Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on
civilians in the area.
|