Right-Wingers Don't Speak French

Je parle un peu du Français, très mal. Still, it's enough to recognize when Red State's brightest bulb's making an utter imbécile of himself:

I know that Erick Erickson is very rarely wrong, but check this out:

Obama Hacks Off France In Latest Foreign Policy Blunder

Someone forgot to tell Barack Obama that Jacque Chirac is no longer the President of France.

Obama, y'see, wrote a letter to former French president Jacques Chirac. A French newspaper wrote about it. Erick, being a red-blooded Amurkin, can't speak French. Hilarity ensues, especially when one of his own commenters spanks him for being un enfant terrible:

Before you go any further with this...
nod90 Sunday, March 22nd at 11:19PM EDT (link)
...you need a good French to English translation of the original article from Le Figaro. I ran it through Google Translate (I’m not claiming this is a good translation) and this is what I got:

Barack Obama wrote to Jacques Chirac

The U.S. President has just sent a letter "very sympathetic" to Jacques Chirac, in the words of the latter. "I am confident that we can over the next four years working together in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world," writes the successor to George W. Bush’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. In mentioning the word "peace," Obama makes implicit tribute to the action of the former French president who opposed the war in Iraq. A U.S. intervention against which the future U.S. president had opposed as a senator, in a vote in Congress.

Some of the comments on the article say that Obama sent the letter to the Chirac Foundation as a reply to a letter that he recieved from them. For example:

Two birds with one stone?
21/03/2009 at 16:08

In writing to the Foundation Chirac, Obama may have had two objectives in mind: to allow the future by keeping open the option to use the services of the former president, who, like himself, had opposed the war in Iraq, .........

Apologies to Erick if you have already checked this out, but I just want to be sure that Redstate isn’t getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

He's not only got hold of the wrong end of the stick, he's running with it. And all because he can't read French. Here's what the pertinent bit says when translated by a human (moi):

...writes George Bush's successor to the predecessor of Nicolas Sarkozy. [écrit le successeur de George W. Bush au prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy.]

Rather seems like everyone's aware who's current and who's former, doesn't it?

This, my darlings, is why American schoolchildren should be taught a second language, évidemment!