Burn, Paris, Burn

Since October 27th, riots in France by young Muslims have shaken the suburbs north of Paris. More than 8,000 vehicles have been destroyed and over 120 police and firefighters have been injured in 274 towns. Today's Washington Post has an article about the riots in France that includes this telling passage:

On Wednesday, groups of social workers called for an outdoor meeting to appeal for peace. A couple of young men began to harangue the workers. "Go home. You're white. You don't belong here. You have nice jobs. Go back to France," one said. The young men cheered as a stolen car buzzed by, its passengers on their way to torch the kindergarten.

"This confrontation was a shock," said Silviane Becker, a member of the Mirail Social Education Association. "They insult us because the ones they really want to insult are absent."

Members of leftist opposition parties visiting Reynerie on Thursday got a similarly hostile reception. People in the crowd in Reynerie's central square yelled that the parties only show up when there is trouble.

Abou explained the mood: "We want communication, but not just token. We want apologies, and we want to talk about serious problems." He defended the torching of the kindergarten as a symbolic expulsion of France from Reynerie.

The French response to these riots perpetrated by Muslims youths has been pathetic. Confronted with an enduring underclass of a growing Muslim population that either cannot or will not assimilate into broader French society, the French government of Jacques Chirac has been in a state of paralysis that rivals the state of paralysis of the Bush Administration in those fateful days after Katrina hit New Orleans. It seems that the French government would rather buy a tenuous social peace by allowing young Muslim youths to torch cars, destroy kindergartens, and wound policemen than to do what any normal and sane society does with rioters and looters: shoot them, quarantine them, and beat them to a bloody pulp with tear gas and billy clubs. This is the same mentality of appeasement that didn't work against Hitler in the 1930s, didn't work against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and won't work in France today. France has an alarming and growing Islamic threat within its own borders, and all it can muster is a few lame arrests, a tablespoon of appeasement, and some heavy doses of "looking-the-other-way" while social problems fester.

In many ways, I really don't care what is happening in France. The United States and France parted ways many decades ago in the 1960s in terms of foreign policy objectives (when France withdrew militarily from the NATO alliance), and I cannot in today's world think of France as an ally of the United States anymore.

In my lifetime, the defining moment of French perfidy was the French betrayal of United States Air Force pilots during the 1986 U.S. air raid on Libya. In 1986, France refused the right for our F-111 bombers taking off from airbases in England to cross French airspace to bomb targets important to Libyan terrorist mastermind Muhammar Khaddafy (in response to Khaddafy's terrorism against U.S. military personnel in West Berlin in 1985). Two U.S. servicemen died in April 1986 when a bomb, planted by Libyan agents, exploded in a West Berlin disco. President Reagan launched Operation El Dorado Canyon on April 15, 1986 to retaliate against Libya's rampant international terrorism. U.S. F-111 fighter-bombers took off from RAF Lakenheath and RAF Upper Heyford in England, along with A-6, A-7, and F-18 planes from the aircraft carriers USS America and USS Coral Sea, to strike five targets in Libya. The purpose of the mission was to send a message to the Libyans to reduce their support of international terrorism.

Unfortunately, France denied overflight rights for U.S. warplanes. This refusal forced the UK-based American F-111s to fly around France and travel down the Atlantic Ocean coast and into the Mediterranean Sea, adding an extra 1,300 miles each way that required multiple in-air refueling of the F-111s. 22 American F-111s flew from the United Kingdom to hit Libya; all were forced to fly an additional 2,600 air miles due to France turning its back on the United States in a time of need. Two United States Air Force captains — Fernando L. Ribas-Dominicci and Paul F. Laurence — died when their F-111 was shot down over the Gulf of Sidra by the Libyans. Those extra 2,600 air miles foisted on our F-111 pilots by our so-called allies in France sure didn't help matters for USAF Captains Ribas-Dominicci and Lawrence on April 15, 1986.

The back-stabbing French have not been an American ally for quite some time, and I have no love lost for the Frog Republic. Let France continue its futile policies of appeasing rioting Islamic thugs and not assimilating its rapidly growing Muslim population within the broader secular French society. France was destined to be conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940, and now France is destined to be conquered by a future Islamic majority fermenting within its own borders and fed by the generous French welfare state. Instead of fostering policies that lead to a dynamic free market economy that employ and assimilate these youths into society, the French would rather pay them to do nothing through its welfare policies and let them stew in hell-hole ghettos outside of glamorous Paris. No wonder they riot - they have no future in a failed welfare state that has double-digit unemployment and no opportunities to captivate the imaginations and competitive juices that run rampant in youth.

When an Islamic crescent flag is unfurled on the Eiffel Tower, it will be just dessert for a country that has never had - and never will have - the backbone to deal with internal and external threats to its national security and to pressing social and economic problems. My advice for the United States is to steer clear of the mess in France and to resist the urge to bail out the French a third time (WWI = bailout #1, WWII = bailout #2). The United States needs to focus its efforts on supporting its true allies in the world, and forget about countries like France that dial the U.S. "911" when an "oh merde" moment occurs (like Hitler invading France in 1940, or when the French were encircled by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam in 1954) but conveniently forgot their responsiblities as an ally when the tables are turned.