Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and — in an ominous turn — shot at officers.
Two kids died when they collided with a police car. Naturally, their fellow nondenominational "youths" hit the streets.
Two years ago, I wondered what would happen the next time:
This year's rioting is based on lack of opportunity and is not jihad coming to Europe this year.
But this begs the question of what happens next time? First of all, I obviously assume there will be a next time. I assume this because I don't think the French are capable of opening their economy, government, or society enough to bring these suburban aliens into French life. So hopes raised by increased government attention to their plight will be dashed in a few years by pitiful results that leave France's Moslems in pretty much the exact same spot as September 2005. A few dozen more Social Cohesion mime academies won't count as progress.
My fear is that the jihadis in France will increasingly lead the alien and alienated Moslems of France. Remember our own Revolution. When colonists first confronted British soldiers with arms in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, and then lay siege to the British in Boston, we did not seek political separation. Our forebears only wanted their rights as Englishmen recognized. It was not until July 1776, more than a year later, that we made independence from the British our official goal.
This is not jihad and it never has been, says Strategypage. But this says nothing of the future. Will it become jihad? A cry for rights can become a cry for separation in remarkably short time. Will we look back at the events at Clichy-sous-Bois as the first clash leading to a declaration of independence by France's Moslems?
So now, the French police say it is worse, and shots have been fired at police:
A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.
And in a homage to their jihadi brethren in Iraq, the "youths" use car Molotov cocktails:
Rioting and arson quickly erupted after the crash. The violence worsened Monday night as it spread from Villiers-le-Bel to other impoverished suburbs north of the French capital. Rioters burned a library, a nursery school and a car dealership and tried to set some buildings on fire by crashing burning cars into them.
This is escalating. And France seems incapable of mandating social cohesion. One day, these riots will become the Frenchifada and we shall see how France responds when the jihad marches on Tours once again.
It won't be pretty. I wish the French well in this crisis.
UPDATE: The New York Times notes the escalation from two years ago:
And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.
Look, these rioters are not an urban rebellion. But it is closer to being one than it was two years ago. And these rioters hardly speak for a majority of French Moslems. But they probably speak for more today than two years ago.
When I was in the National Guard, we received riot-control training. We were always taught that rioters were Americans. Our job was to make them go home and that killing a rioter to protect a piece of property (unless it was one we were ordered to defend) was wrong.
So, on the assumption that these rioters are still French and that the vast majority of Moslems are French citizens, the French authorities must make the rioters go home. Use forceful measures, but don't kill unless in self defense. Do this and the rioters will get a lesson against rioting and the Moslem observers won't feel sympathy for the rioters being killed.
And then the hard decades-long work of making their Moslems feel part of France must be undertaken. I'm not talking about bribes to local Moslem leaders. That just creates grievance mongerers with an incentive to pose as Moslem leaders who can turn "the street" on and off.
I don't know nearly enough about French society to say how this can be done. But I do know that if they do not integrate these Moslems, one day they will have revolt in their suburbs.
