Having some experience on the Euro Disney project, I'd have to say that we Americans are rather late comers to this whole "boycott Disney" game. From French beet farmers blocking roads, French environmental groups running an ongoing campaign to bomb the electrical towers supplying power to the property, to gangs of French youths beating up on costumed characters, and to the constant anti-American critics hurdled at
Disneyland Paris, any effort at Epcot is simple small time in comparison. All of this has been going on since before the project opened.
As for the French pavilion at Epcot, I know the restaurants are operated by a French company, but I do not know the status of the shops. Like most of World Showcase, everything is operated by a mix of outside companies. Some of the companies are from the "sponsoring" nation, some are local American distributors. Not all of the employees are even technically Disney staff: they work for whoever runs the establishment but follow Disney cast standards. It might be fruitful to research some of the business licenses.
As for what the French think about our foreign policy, I could not care less. Any nation that put up less resistance than Poland against the Nazis and then eagerly spent following years shipping their neighbors away in cattle cars to the camps does not deserve to be heard. Their post-war imperial adventures in Southeast Asia, Algeria and Africa (up to the present day) are little more than attempts to relive the vague memories of 18th century glory. Far from having the moral high ground, their concerns are rooted in the depths of cheap self interest.
The world has changed. We no longer live in a world of massive armies poised on national borders; we no longer have a world where distance has any meaning for economics or politics. The integration of global economics have made us all part of a vast interdependent system where my computer is made in China, my food is imported from South America, my cell phone in Finland and the CNN broadcast from Atlanta is being seen live across the world.
But
time does have a meaning. There are some elements in the world that are centuries behind the others and that makes a dangerous combination. To be blunt, people who believe that mass murder will be rewarded by an eternity in Paradise where they will be surrounded by 72 virgins can not be allowed to play with nuclear weapons. Medieval warlords who gas their own people because they don't "love" him enough can not be allowed to posses engineered chemical bombs. The West has spent two centuries learning brutally painful lessons about all of this; there are others who haven't. They do not understand the power they are using and so they become a danger to all.
This is also no longer the age where conflict is confined to diplomatic meetings or a distant front line. You, I, that guy over there
we are the front line now. It is a sad reality, but it is reality nonetheless. And so I will do what I need to do. If that means refusing to support those that are hostile to us, than I will give up my Evian and alter my travel plans. I do take it at a personal level because the guy with the dynamite strapped to his waist is aiming at
me. It is
I that worries about my airliner being turned into a missile. It is
I that has to wonder what ship is going to dock in LA Harbor or who is coming up from the border. Sure, a boycott may seem small, but it is doing something.
The last time the French tried to preserve peace a politician stepped off an airplane and promised that a sheet of paper guaranteed "peace in our time". Five years and forty million deaths later we learned it wasn't true. I see no reason to risk turning Boston into a smoldering hole simply to learn that lesson all over again.
