Ah, the French

Rico says it's been awhile (Algeria) since France was in a serious war, but Steven Erlanger has an article in The New York Times about their latest:

President Nicolas Sarkozy may be in down in the opinion polls, but he has put France boldly in the forefront of an allied effort to prevent the decimation of the opposition to Libya’s leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. Ten days ago, Mr. Sarkozy met with representatives of the Libyan opposition and recognized it as the country’s legitimate government. While the United Nations Security Council has authorized the use of force to protect civilians by “all necessary measures”, the logic of the military operation would seem to be the ouster of Colonel Qaddafi.
Mr. Sarkozy, motivated by French failures to respond quickly to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and pressed by a new foreign minister and vocal public figures like the writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, came together with Britain to drag Europe and the United States toward a military engagement in the Arab world that key allies like Washington and Berlin never wanted.
France had “decided to assume its role, its role before history” in stopping Colonel Qaddafi’s “murderous madness,” Mr. Sarkozy said solemnly, standing alone before the television cameras and pleasing those here who still have a strong sense of French exceptionalism and moral leadership.
Mr. Sarkozy was aided in his ambitions, ironically, by the rapid decline of the rebels, who fell back quickly toward their last stronghold, Benghazi. It appeared that the quick movement of Qaddafi troops, with all their advantages of aircraft and firepower, would soon put an end to the ragtag opposition. And Colonel Qaddafi and his sons had promised the kind of fierce, merciless retribution that Washington and other allies, including Italy, with its traditional ties to Libya, decided they had to make an effort to stop.
Although the situations are almost entirely different, Libya was compared with Bosnia and Kosovo, and analogies were made to the 1995 slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica by Serb forces, despite promises of United Nations protection.
The aggressive French stance, which included lectures to others by Foreign Minister Alain Juppé about how “the weakness of democracies gives dictators free rein”, and that how “it’s not too late to break with this rule”, put some noses out of joint.
Some officials of NATO countries resented having to rush to Paris for an elegant lunch meeting and a show of hands giving symbolic backing to the military strikes while Qaddafi forces were nearing Benghazi, while others complained that initial French air sorties were not coordinated with allies.
But, by Saturday night, none of that seemed to matter very much, amid an acknowledgement that French action had been instrumental in protecting Benghazi.
The enhanced war against Colonel Qaddafi appears to go significantly beyond the no-fly zone that the Arab League supported a week ago, prompting criticism by its longtime secretary general, Amr Moussa, only a day after he was at the Paris meeting called by Mr. Sarkozy. “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” said Mr. Moussa, who is also a candidate for Egypt’s presidency, as he called for an emergency Arab League meeting.
Arab League support had been crucial to the French strategy for winning international support for the strikes, which French planes began unilaterally even before the meeting was over, in response, French officials said, to anguished calls for help from the Libyan opposition in Benghazi, who said Qaddafi troops were already within the city limits.
To general applause in France, even from the opposition Socialist Party, it appears that French planes were among those that destroyed a column of armored vehicles near Benghazi and halted government air attacks there.
Arab League criticism that the military operation has already exceeded a simple “no-fly zone” was echoed by the African Union, China, Germany, and Russia, which criticized the “indiscriminate use of force” and said the allies had exceeded the United Nations mandate, a charge rejected by France.
But what matters is that some of the most important blows against Colonel Qaddafi have already been struck by French, British, and American forces, using cruise missiles and warplanes to dismantle the Libyan air forces and air defenses.
And more allied airplanes were converging on air bases in Italy. While Italy itself decided, after the Security Council vote, to cooperate fully in the coalition against Libya, not only providing bases and freezing Libyan assets, but also taking part with eight jet fighters of its own, said Maurizio Massari, the Foreign Ministry spokesman.
As for France, with at least forty aircraft and numerous ships committed, including its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, the battle in Libya is one of the largest French military operations in years, even though it does not involve any troops, as in Afghanistan.
France began the allied attack on Libya with about twenty planes executing at least four sorties and continued to fly missions with about fifteen planes over Libya on Sunday, concentrating on the east, near the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, French officials said.
On Saturday, in what the French are calling Operation Harmattan, French planes attacked armored vehicles and tanks belonging to Qaddafi forces on the outskirts of Benghazi and on the main road leading to the city. The twenty planes, the ministry said, included twelve fighter jets, six refueling planes, and an AWACS aircraft. The aim was to create a no-fly zone over the area around Benghazi, about sixty by ninety miles, the ministry said.
In a statement, France’s Defense Ministry said that it flew missions to create “a no-fly zone around the region of Benghazi and to stop the flights of the aircraft of Colonel Qaddafi, including attacks on identified military targets on the ground that menaced the civilian population.”
On Sunday, French planes faced no opposition and saw no threats to civilians, said Laurent Teisseire, the Defense Ministry spokesman. France has several dozen fighter planes operating from French bases. The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle left Toulon, France, for Libya with a protective escort including submarines. It carried another twenty planes, mostly Rafale and older Super Étendard combat jets, as well as helicopters and two E-2 Hawkeye surveillance aircraft, the ministry said.