A Parisian 9/11
Ezra Levant - Monday,12 December 2005
Western Standard
The Muslim riots in France will have a greater impact on that country than 9/11 did on the United States. Nine-eleven didn't transform the U.S. It made security a higher priority and gave President George W. Bush focus. But Democrats are still Democrats, Republicans are still Republicans, and both view the war largely through a partisan lens. In the past four years, there have been no significant acts of terrorism on U.S. soil, and even 9/11's emotional events were, for the vast majority of Americans, a remote, television phenomenon. It was shocking, but it was not personal, and it's over and has had no permanent effect on their lives.
The total cost of the U.S. war on terror has been US$200 billion--a rounding error in an economy producing US$12 trillion a year. Over four years, that's less than half a per cent of GDP; Canada's national day-care program will cost more per capita. And the human cost--2,000 soldiers dead--while painful, is a minuscule fraction of past wars of this scale. More to the point, America's all-volunteer army has limited the risks to those who accept them.
Compare that with France's riots. Theirs is not a voyeuristic TV experience. The opposite: the French media have downplayed the riots. But countless ordinary Frenchmen have felt the violence first-hand in 300 cities and towns. Thousands of cars and hundreds of buildings have been torched. The police response has personally touched millions, too: curfews have been imposed, and public gatherings are restricted in Paris. It's a form of martial law, and still the riots continue.
The widespread physical reality of the riots is one reason why they are likely to transform France's politics. Another is more profound: France realizes that its enemies are not foreign agents who sneak across the border. They are imbedded in the teeming millions of French Muslims, some immigrants but many French-born. They can't be chased home; they are home. And even if the riots subside, the rioters remain--often idle, their listlessness subsidized by France's legendary welfare state. Like Israel before it, France will learn the Arabic word "hudna": a short truce to gather strength and attack again.
How long before the Paris intifada escalates from rocks and Molotov cocktails to bullets? It's already begun, with police and firemen being shot. How long until car bombs? Last year, French counter-intelligence estimated that al Qaeda had 40,000 recruits in France who "meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives." Some apologists say that the rioters are just street thugs, or thrill-seeking teenagers, or young men angry at their economic or social status. That is liberal excusology, but to the extent it is true, it is no relief--those are also the typical characteristics of "insurgents" fighting in Iraq and the West Bank.
This is a difficult conversation to have in politically correct quarters because it shatters the illusion that multiculturalism is superior to a common, unifying national identity rooted in language, morality, law, history, et cetera. The notion that illiberal waves of immigrants would take advantage of our tolerant welcome is so upsetting that many choose to ignore it. Most media identify the rioters as "suburban youth"--conjuring up images of picket fences and kids no more dangerous than the Fonz. Some (including the CBC) have blamed the riots on Nicolas Sarkozy, France's interior minister, because he called the rioters "scum." Sarkozy's easier to anathematize than an eight-million-person Muslim nation within a nation.
It was one thing for France to defend Saddam Hussein at the UN, or to cluck at Israel's response to its own intifada. Those were faraway TV problems. Now we'll see how France deals with its own burning cities.
Conservatives enjoy ridiculing the French as appeasers and surrenderers, for that is how they act when they discuss Israel's or America's rights. But do not confuse France's willingness to sacrifice our interests for a willingness to sacrifice their own. Remember that French commandos blew up a troublesome Greenpeace ship, French torture was commonplace in Algeria and Vietnam, and France remains unapologetic about its nuclear arsenal.
Though it has not had America's death toll, France has been psychologically brutalized by militant Islam. Don't be surprised to see more of their foreign legion and less of their foreign diplomats in the months ahead.
Ezra Levant - Monday,12 December 2005
Western Standard
The Muslim riots in France will have a greater impact on that country than 9/11 did on the United States. Nine-eleven didn't transform the U.S. It made security a higher priority and gave President George W. Bush focus. But Democrats are still Democrats, Republicans are still Republicans, and both view the war largely through a partisan lens. In the past four years, there have been no significant acts of terrorism on U.S. soil, and even 9/11's emotional events were, for the vast majority of Americans, a remote, television phenomenon. It was shocking, but it was not personal, and it's over and has had no permanent effect on their lives.
The total cost of the U.S. war on terror has been US$200 billion--a rounding error in an economy producing US$12 trillion a year. Over four years, that's less than half a per cent of GDP; Canada's national day-care program will cost more per capita. And the human cost--2,000 soldiers dead--while painful, is a minuscule fraction of past wars of this scale. More to the point, America's all-volunteer army has limited the risks to those who accept them.
Compare that with France's riots. Theirs is not a voyeuristic TV experience. The opposite: the French media have downplayed the riots. But countless ordinary Frenchmen have felt the violence first-hand in 300 cities and towns. Thousands of cars and hundreds of buildings have been torched. The police response has personally touched millions, too: curfews have been imposed, and public gatherings are restricted in Paris. It's a form of martial law, and still the riots continue.
The widespread physical reality of the riots is one reason why they are likely to transform France's politics. Another is more profound: France realizes that its enemies are not foreign agents who sneak across the border. They are imbedded in the teeming millions of French Muslims, some immigrants but many French-born. They can't be chased home; they are home. And even if the riots subside, the rioters remain--often idle, their listlessness subsidized by France's legendary welfare state. Like Israel before it, France will learn the Arabic word "hudna": a short truce to gather strength and attack again.
How long before the Paris intifada escalates from rocks and Molotov cocktails to bullets? It's already begun, with police and firemen being shot. How long until car bombs? Last year, French counter-intelligence estimated that al Qaeda had 40,000 recruits in France who "meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives." Some apologists say that the rioters are just street thugs, or thrill-seeking teenagers, or young men angry at their economic or social status. That is liberal excusology, but to the extent it is true, it is no relief--those are also the typical characteristics of "insurgents" fighting in Iraq and the West Bank.
This is a difficult conversation to have in politically correct quarters because it shatters the illusion that multiculturalism is superior to a common, unifying national identity rooted in language, morality, law, history, et cetera. The notion that illiberal waves of immigrants would take advantage of our tolerant welcome is so upsetting that many choose to ignore it. Most media identify the rioters as "suburban youth"--conjuring up images of picket fences and kids no more dangerous than the Fonz. Some (including the CBC) have blamed the riots on Nicolas Sarkozy, France's interior minister, because he called the rioters "scum." Sarkozy's easier to anathematize than an eight-million-person Muslim nation within a nation.
It was one thing for France to defend Saddam Hussein at the UN, or to cluck at Israel's response to its own intifada. Those were faraway TV problems. Now we'll see how France deals with its own burning cities.
Conservatives enjoy ridiculing the French as appeasers and surrenderers, for that is how they act when they discuss Israel's or America's rights. But do not confuse France's willingness to sacrifice our interests for a willingness to sacrifice their own. Remember that French commandos blew up a troublesome Greenpeace ship, French torture was commonplace in Algeria and Vietnam, and France remains unapologetic about its nuclear arsenal.
Though it has not had America's death toll, France has been psychologically brutalized by militant Islam. Don't be surprised to see more of their foreign legion and less of their foreign diplomats in the months ahead.