Paris gets roused in spite of Iraq stance
Posted on November 4, 2005
Filed Under World Affairs Leave a Comment
Well, it seems that PARIS IS BURNING and burning hot. De Villepin and Chirac are finding out what the United States are her allies in the global war on terrorism have said all along: you cannot pacify or appease terrorists, you must get them dead.
President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.
That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a “ticking time bomb.”
How did it all start? What touched off this firestorm of angry revolt? Well, the accepted account is that a week ago, a group of youth in Clichy stoled parts off of parked cars. Being the norm, nothing usually happened since the police haven’t shown up in that suburb for several years.
The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them. Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted. Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms. With cries of “God is great,” bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee. The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.
Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the “occupied territories.” By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.
So, what…are we to conclude that when someone sees a crime happening, they’re not to report anything? They’re to be branded a “busybody”? Pacifism…it’s killed the french spirit and their identity — and it’s about to threaten their entire nation if someone doesn’t “grow a pair” to get bold and overwhelming with this threat and “grow a spine” to sufficiently handle the political fallout that will invariably be a part of quelling an uprising.
Nothing less will be sufficient.
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