At least one member of the French government is wide awake to the danger his country faces.
France must better integrate its minorities and combat religious extremism if it is to foil the threat of terrorist attacks by Islamist militants, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday.
France must fight the root cause of frustrations which Islamist fundamentalists have already exploited to recruit French nationals, he told a conference on “France and Terrorism”.
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“The threat that weighs on us comes from movements or groups based abroad … but we must not hide from the fact that it also comes from people living here, recruited by Salafist groups, trained in schools in the Middle and Far East and who, when they return here, pose a threat,” Sarkozy said.
He pointed out Salafists.
International cooperation was important, but robust action at home was also essential, he said.
“Communities turning inwards, problems integrating into society and religious excesses must be tackled,” he said. “Our immediate operational priority remains the administrative and judicial neutralisation of Islamist networks and activists.”
He pointed out Islamists. Look, this man, a French politician, is speaking more bluntly than our media is generally willing to report. Sarkozy is making a list and checking it twice, and we’re talking about the naughty here.
French intelligence says six French nationals have been killed fighting in Iraq since 2003 and around 10 others are believed to be currently fighting alongside rebels.
Officials say Iraq veterans would pose a real threat to domestic security if they returned to France.
Okay, the problem is legitimate, it’s gone abroad and will almost certainly try to bring the bloodshed home to France. Sarkozy knows and is willing to name the threat within his own society — good, one Frenchie down, 60.5 million to go.
Still, does Sarkozy know the solution?
Sarkozy has led a lone fight for a measure of positive discrimination in favour of France’s ethnic minorities, arguing their exclusion from mainstream society only feeds extremism and the frustrations that helped spark recent rioting.
But he has coupled that with a tough law and order message.
Yeah, the tough law and order part is right, but that’s easy. That’s like being given eleven bunnies, being told to count them and then teach them to run the wishbone. Well, the counting part’s pretty easy. A precisely-executed triple option … well … not so much.
I’m not willing to say that governmentally-enforced reverse discrimination is a good long-term policy. Though it may have a healthy effect in the short run, a government social program is a rather insidious beast, once in place. As a D.C. saying goes, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government agency. In this case, we’re also talking about one that could have a popular backlash that could actually impair assimilation. Other less-intrusive ideas might include regulations enforcing non-discrimination, which the libertarian in me would still chafe at, and a stab at assimilating the youth with forced bussing to integrated public schools, but one must note that militant Islamists and busses aren’t always a good mix unless one is fond of twisted, smoking, bloody wreckage.
Yes, France has allowed itself to manuever into quite a conundrum. Besides the law and order aspect, the steps that are absolutely obvious and long overdue to be addressed are the nation’s immigration policies and labor policies, long perverted by a willingness to knuckle under to French unions and French society’s demands for the easy life. Well, life can be rough and this is war, folks.
In related news, the French are saying that, after three weeks of Moslem rioting, violence has fallen to “normal” levels.