26 Comments

1. heather:

One could look on the sunny side of all this. If I were an Al Qaeda type, I would be on the first plane out of Damascus and on my way to Paris.

So, just maybe, France will at last contribute its mite to the GWOT… and give some respite to the Coalition and citizenry in Iraq by providing a new playground for Islam’s Warriors.

And thank you to the previous thread, I have copied that wonderful article by Norvell B De Atkine, “Why Arabs Lose Wars.” (at http://www.meforum.org/article/441 for anyone else who is interested)

Nov 5, 2005 - 7:39 pm 2. chuck:

I would be on the first plane out of Damascus and on my way to Paris.

Just take the train from London. It’s much closer.

Nov 5, 2005 - 7:51 pm 3. StevenT:

Deport some rioters and their families. See that the deportations are widely publicized.

The rioting will stop.

To those who would say this is cruel or somehow unjust I would

say:

Whose cars are being burned? Whose businesses?

Who frequents those businesses and who has jobs there?

Who suffers when police are afraid to enter a neighborhood?

When firemen have rocks thrown at them?

And who is in the most peril when a society breaks down into

anarchy?

To those who would say we must adress ‘root causes’ I would say you get what you tolerate in a society. That is the root cause.

Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. The rioters are hurling their rocks at the society itself. Throw them out.

Nov 5, 2005 - 7:54 pm 4. marc:

Wow. Not a single use of the M word.

Could you have imagined an AP report on the LA riots that did not mention the ethnicity of the rioters or that didn’t have some ominous background on ‘root causes’?

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:01 pm 5. TedM:

The authorites have no time left. If this isn’t over tonight there is a risk of the salafists taking part. My fear is that they will welcome death. Either with bombs or a shooting incident with the police. they won’t care who dies as long as they have a “massacre”. The more Arab deaths the better for them They will have their recruiting tool for the disaffected. Chirac must act forcefully today or he risks a conflagration which will truly resemble an intifada.

I dearly hope I am wrong and just seeing the worst case.

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:10 pm 6. lindenen:

Given French behavior historically, they seem to lurch from one conflagration to another.

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:15 pm 7. ras:

Might Chirac want a conflagration as the excuse to deport all Muslims?

I know, I know, I’m getting carried away, but why don’t they act already? No one is that stupid as to keep waiting, not even the French Govt. There has to be a reason.

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:26 pm 8. Coisty:

Roger: “The AP is now reporting that thirteen cars have been torched inside Paris itself (where exactly not specified”

Earlier this evening No Pasaran said cars were burnt near Place de la Republique. According to LA Times A Molotov cocktail near Gare du Nord train station burned several vehicles http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-riots6nov06,0,1781355.story?coll=la-home-headlines.

I recall a lot of Arab men just hanging out around Gare du Nord last time I was there. Judging by what I saw on the bus from the airport a large portion of north Paris is Arab and black African (many of them Muslims), not just the suburbs to the north of the city limits.

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:33 pm 9. lindenen:

This was posted at no-pasaran in the comments section but originally appeared at NRO’s the Corner, written by Derbyshire.

“John Derbyshire – NRO (National Review Online)

An acquaintance of mine — French, currently resident in North Africa — sent a long post about the French riots to an email group I belong to. It is a fascinating post, but much too long to paste here. I did think, though, that the following passage would interest NRO readers, so with his permission, I pass it on. It is from a passage headed: “Why an Intifada in France?” It is among a long list of reasons given as answers to the question. “The Iraq war: as I had noticed very strongly in Tunisia a little more than 2 years ago, the opposition of France to intervention in Iraq has been perceived as a sign of weakness, and French are since considered as Dhimmis. The change of attitude from Arabs against French has been dramatic: now I know problems of security in Tunisia, and even in the French planes to go and come from there, and in Nice (French Riviera) Airport! This opposition, probably motivated by the money earned in Oil For Terror program and by threats from Saudi Arabia and Iran, has marked the end of France as a Western country (whatever one thinks about the Iraq war per se!).”

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:34 pm 10. HA:

Everybody knows Churchill’s quote about appeasers and crocodiles:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Well, not only did the French feed the crocodile, they also put it up in the guest room.

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:43 pm 11. HA:

Paris Burns, The Second Leftist Utopia Burns With It:

http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003686.html

Nov 5, 2005 - 8:54 pm 12. lindenen:

I keep wanting them to torch something important but then I’m horrified by the thought they’ll torch something important. I guess I just want them to do something so heinous that the French want them deported.

Nov 5, 2005 - 9:14 pm 13. Jim Rockford:

It is popular to think of the French as “cheese eating surrender monkeys” to quote Homer Simpson, but a more accurate view is that they are the most dangerous people in Europe, fortunately hobbled by horrific politics that inhibits the ability to respond ruthlessly in most instances unless given enough time and space for politics and rivalries to recede in national emergencies.

If you want to know (ironic since Caesar slaughtered a million Gauls) who the inheritors of the Roman Republic and early Empire in all it’s ruthless behavior, it’s the French. Napoleon was no accident. Neither was Louis XIV, nor his prescient “apres moi, le deluge.” The French have both the capacity to organize the State to unheard of levels, and the passion to keep fighting when all seems hopeless. As in Verdun where they took appalling casualties that would have led to almost any other nation’s surrender. Had the French General Staff listened to De Gaulle (they did not due to internal politics) they would have fought a fighting retreat that would have bled the Germans dry all the way to Algeria.

What is happening now is the typical French disease, which also afflicted the Romans, which is too much politics for personal gain instead of National Unity.

It’s likely to lead to a “Reverse De Gaulle” who rallies the Nation to take extreme steps to save it. Most likely leading to deportation to North Africa of any/all rioters or perhaps even Muslims as a whole. We are looking at the fall of the Fifth Republic, just as De Gaulle was viewed as the savior of the Fourth after the failure to deal with the FLN and Algeria.

The Rioters demand essentially the Islamic Republic of Europe; no French Government can afford to openly give in to the demand for de-facto secession.

Nov 5, 2005 - 9:29 pm 14. dougf:

The worst thing is not for these riots to continue and grow worse by the day. The worst thing is not that the French are finally forced to put down the ‘others’ as brutally as possible.

The worst thing is that somehow this supposedly gets resolved so that the decayed French elite can go back to sleep-walking through history. The Muslim ‘underclass’ problem cannot be solved by ignoring it or pandering to it.

Justice delayed is justice denied and problems ignored are problems enlarged.

Better yesterday than today BUT better today than tomorrow.

Nov 5, 2005 - 9:34 pm 15. Jamie Irons:

marc

Wow. Not a single use of the M word.

I commented on The New York Times’ hesitation to use the M word yesterday and again this morning…

Jamie Irons

Nov 5, 2005 - 9:47 pm 16. chuck:

There are some interesting comments at the BBC forum. Some of my thoughts are here

Nov 5, 2005 - 10:00 pm 17. Barrett:

I am afraid to say what I think (in part because it rejects the political correctness and multi-cultural indoctrination of today), but my hypothesis is that Islam as a religion and its followers in general is violent and intolerant. I realize that we in America, and the West overall, live in a pluralistic society that is fundamentally tolerant. There is no reconciliation between the differing values.

The flaws of the Islamic leaders and states are blamed upon the “infidels”. The rabid Islamic horde is too brainwashed or dumb to realize that if they get what they want – an Islamic theocracy – they will continue to live like dogs in a Taliban-like society where they are terrorized by their own leadership in the struggle to stay in power.

I am afraid this conflict is just beginning and will last for a long, long time. The faint of heart and those who would see appeasement as the only road to maintain peace are in for a rude awakening.

Nov 5, 2005 - 10:03 pm 18. heather:

a great and relevant quote from Time Blair (timblair.net): re the “Car-B-Cue”:

“Question: does the pollution caused by all these car torchings (some 20,000 since the start of 2005) count towards France

Nov 5, 2005 - 10:25 pm 19. chuck:

Heather,

It is so marvellous to watch all the lefty hypocrisy go up in smoke!

You are far too optimistic. I don’t think these events will make the slightest difference to the “reality based” community.

Nov 5, 2005 - 10:56 pm 20. Michael_B:

In a similar, corresponding vein, an article in Trans-Int’s quarterly section, Talking With Islamists: The European Left and its ‘Dialogue’ with the Arab World by Thomas von der Osten-Sacken and Thomas Uwer. Excerpt:

“Such “dialogue” with Islamists of all stripes, representatives of Arab dictatorships and all sorts of self-appointed spokespersons for the Arab and Islamic world has been underway for over ten years now. Astonishingly, it is seldom asked what results it has in fact produced.”

Also:

“What, then, is driving the “old” Europeans? Is it cowardice, as Matthias Doepfner recently suggested[3], a preemptive capitulation to Islamism, as Bernard Lewis suspects, appeasement as Henryk M. Broder (Europe, appeasement is your middle name) has insisted, or a mix of stupidity and arrogance coupled with a large dose of anti-American and anti-Semitic resentments? Can it really be the case, as Nikolaus Blome recently put it in the pages of Die Welt, that a German Chancellor seriously defends the view that although Iran does indeed want the bomb, “this does not [threaten] world peace as much as that American President manically fixated on going to war”?”

Nov 6, 2005 - 4:35 am 21. Orson2:

THE best analysis of what’s going in in Paris and now France comes from the good doctor at shrinkwrapped.

http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2005/11/the_french_inti.html

With an assist from Amir Taheri, the Iranian journalist writing for the NY Post, he concludes that this is a French Intifada. Islamists are pressing claims of victimization, leading to demands for apartheid liberation of “occupied territories” (!) from French control. They want to install Muslim Brotherhood emembers to sit on local councils. This is re-installing Ottoman Empire’s “millet system” of local religious conrtol and purity. The consequences, as commenter “goesh” echoes, include a European wide uprising.

Nov 6, 2005 - 4:52 am 22. Michael_B:

I’ll enthusiastically second the recommendation for that ShrinkWrapped article, following excerpt reflects the summary, which is spot on:

“This is very likely to opening round of a long term struggle for the soul and identity of Europe. Even if calm eventually prevails and the status quo ante resumes, the situation can not have any long term stability. The French authorities had already abandoned the Muslim areas and stood with the tyrants and Islamic fascists against the American led coalition, yet this hasn’t protected them and won’t save them in the future; the writ of the Islamists has to grow, it is inevitable and inherent in their ideology and the clashes will become more frequent and, likely, more violent as time goes on.”

Nov 6, 2005 - 5:11 am 23. dougf:

This just in——–

In a stark warning of continued violence Monday, immigrant community spokes-man Imam Tariq Al-Felix of the Lipi Le Lyon Mosque said that arson and looting would continue ,until the French government does something to solve the problem of all the burned out looted buildings in our neighborhoods.

Courtesy of Iowahawk

Nov 6, 2005 - 6:38 am 24. PeterUK:

One can’t help wondering where the New Vichy France will be.

Nov 6, 2005 - 7:17 am 25. Syl:

Does everyone get the feeling the French, er Chirac and the Poet, are dithering, alarmed, and haven’t a clue what to do?

Nov 6, 2005 - 10:00 am 26. Bostonian:

Syl,

Occasions like this are the reason we invented the word “dither.”

Nov 6, 2005 - 12:27 pm

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