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| "We are not surrender monkeys!" |
As my good friend John Kerry once said, "the French are . . . the French."
What I mean by that (whatever Kerry meant) is that the French are complicated. It is unfair to characterize the French as merely, say, "surrender monkeys". That expresses a truth, certainly (see 1940), but not the truth. In some ways and contexts the French are efficient, smart, honorable and I would want them defending my back.
After the Jewish deli siege, the government assigned hundreds of soldiers to patrol synagogues and Jewish schools.
So, while pro-Muslim political correctness is still rampant in France--saying many of the things that I myself have said on this blog will earn you a fine and suspended jail-sentence--the French are not idiots. Many of them understand the mortal danger that Islam now presents to the French Republic--even if political correctness prevents them from clearly and explicitly identifying the problem.
Apparently, the French military and security services are actively preparing for when things get worse, as they obviously will. That's not even half of the solution to the current menace, of course, and doesn't really get to the heart of it. But it's a lot better than nothing.
By Henry Samuel and David Chazan, Telegraph, August 27, 2015 (via Jihad Watch):
French security forces are bracing for the eventuality of civil unrest and fear there could be a missile strike on a passenger airliner or a September 11-style attack, according to sources close to French intelligence.
“Airlines have been warned of a possible attack on a plane with an anti-tank missile,” a source told The Telegraph. “But pilots are unsure how to take evasive action.”
After Friday’s thwarted attempt to massacre passengers on an Amsterdam-Paris train and a series of terrorist attacks and attempted killings in France this year, President François Hollande warned the nation to prepare for more violence, considered inevitable as the Islamist threat grows.
The army has made contingency plans for the “reappropriation of national territory”, meaning to win back control of neighbourhoods where the population become hostile to the security forces and where guns are easily obtainable, according to the source.
“There are a lot of alienated and angry fourth-generation immigrant kids in the suburbs and the prospect of radicalisation is increasingly likely,” the source said.
“The idea that attacks like the one on the train are carried out by individuals acting on their own is not credible. We’re dealing with highly-organised networks of militant Islamists embarked on a campaign of violence and determined to intensify it.”
Kalashnikov automatic rifles — used by the train gunman and Islamist terrorists who killed 17 people in Paris in January — and anti-tank missiles are now obtainable in France. Many were smuggled in from the former Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars in the 1990s. More weapons have come in from Libya, the sources said, adding that organised crime and terrorist groups were working together to procure them.
“We don’t know what happened to the arms we (France) to Libyan rebels. It’s worrying,” the source said.
In the chaos following the fall of the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, French officials described the north African country as an “open-air arms market”. In 2011, France admitted to sending “light weapons” to Libyan rebels in 2011, but French media reported that consignments of heavier arms, including European-made Milan anti-tank missiles were also sent.
There were fears that Isil, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups were procuring heavy weapons from the stocks of Gaddafi’s former army, and that rebel groups were losing control of their own arms….
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