Demagogue

I was looking through a timeline of the year 1957 on Wikipedia.org when I noticed, amid the dates and events, this item:

February 4 -- France prohibits UN involvement in Algeria.

Then, under the month of March, I read the following:

March 20 -- French newspaper L'Express reveals that the French army tortures Algerian prisoners.

Interesting, eh? History has a way of repeating itself, even if the perpetrators rotate.

One wonders if it is sheer wisdom that has led the French, 48 years later, to be so stridently multilateralist. Or, is it merely the sad and slow realization that France's superpower days ended 190 years ago at Waterloo.