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From Michael Rubin, resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute (via the Washington Post):
Iraq's economy is booming. Many Iraqis--denied employment under Saddam Hussein's regime for reasons of ethnicity, sectarian identity, or for refusal to join the Baath party, now have jobs. Iraqis' own private investment, aided with capital remitted from family members abroad, has enabled the private sector to boom. Banks, restaurants, and furniture stores occupy what just last year were empty lots or abandoned storefronts. In August 2005, new business registrations have topped 30,000; this figure does not include the number of start-ups which still ignore Iraqi-registration rules.
Ordinary Iraqis are financially better off now than they were at any time in the past two decades. According to World Bank and International Monetary Fund estimates, per capita income has doubled since 2003. Iraq's per capita gross domestic product is today almost twice that of Yemen and nearing that of Egypt and Syria, hardly a sign of failure in a country in which, just three years ago, antiwar groups insisted children were starving en masse. Statistics aside, the Iraqi economic boom is apparent to anyone who visits an Iraqi market. Not only are appliances and luxuries in the stores, but customers are actually purchasing them.
This underlines the giant win for the U.S. in Iraq:
Per Amir Taheri:
One solution [to the French riots], offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.
The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?
If France permits the Muslims to successfully seize French lands, it is likely to find itself in the exact same position of Israel -- with a hostile population of radical Islamists on its new borders, constantly waging a war of terrorism against the remaining French territory.
It may be time for France to consider calling in the army to put a stop to the riots.
France would be well-advised to expel large numbers of radical Islamists.
From Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," in the New York Post:
President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore [re: the riots] 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."
It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.
Would the riots be taking place if France had mobilized military strength on behalf of freedom and Democracy in Iraq?
Did the attempted appeasement by France of the Islamofascists merely demonstrate the weakness of that country?
It is likely that the answers to these questions would indicate the error of France's policy of attempted appeasement of the Islamofascists.
The whole world is witnessing an attempt by Muslims in France to take over large tracts of the country. From Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," in the New York Post:
How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.
Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for 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.
But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population
...Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.
"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
That's all they demand -- to be left alone. Left alone by the French government, so as to rule those parts of France as a separate territory, beyond control of the French government.
That's the deal. The Muslims want to take over the areas of France in which they live. For 30 years they've refused to assimilate because their goal was to impose Islam, rather than to integrate with the non-Muslim population. In following this path the Muslim population has just been doing what it says to do in the Koran and what Muslims have been doing for 1300 years.
Were the Muslims to succeed in taking over those parts of France, there can be little doubt that they would soon be launching attacks on the rest of the country.
The greatest strength the Muslim extremists had in today's world was the view by many in Western cultures that they could be reasoned with and accomodated. Now that they're threatening France's existence, that cover may be blown -- forfeiting that key strength.
France would be well-advised to expel large numbers of these extremists.
