| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Let me get this straight -- it took 12 nights of rioting for the French government to come up with the notion of a curfew?
The renewed violence followed a warning by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that he would take a firm line against lawbreakers, including reinforcements for police and curfews not seen here since the Algerian war of 1954-1962.
Maybe it will actually work. In which case, one would have to wonder what took them so long to impose it.
Villepin ... dismissed growing calls for army intervention, saying: "We have not reached that point."
How much of France would have to be destroyed to get to that point?
Today's announcement makes the whole thing seem absurd. The rioters burn down everything they can get to, and the French government is really okay with it. They let it play out for a couple of weeks, and then put up a curfew that could have shut the whole thing down on day 2.
In 2001, Ann Coulter jokingly said:
We must attack France. What are they going to do? Fight us?
If the curfew doesn't work, we may get a chance to find out if France is willing to defend Paris.
If it does work, after inflicting so much damage on the non-Muslims, the rioters will have made their point, that they can attack France at any time. They will be in a strong negotiating position, via blackmail, to secure large regions within France under Islamic, rather than French, rule -- this time, recognized officially, rather than unofficially.
