Austin Bay Blog

The rather cursory “Is Paris Burning?” post attracted a number of fascinating comments, from “mais oui” to “mais non” and “possiblement.”

The French riots are not” jihad comes to Europe”– jihad is already in Europe. A year ago a jihadi murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (hey Hollywood, where are the protests?). I know, I’ve been called a Euro-optimist, a counter to Mark Steyn as Euro-pessimist. Mark and I identify the same problems, and he’s been writing about them for years. I’ve thought that Holland and France would fight back– eventually. Well, the fight is on. Political evolution is far preferable to revolution, but evolution on the domestic means arresting Salafist/Islamist radicals and encouraging “Euro-Islam,” (France has been doing the latter.) On the international front evolution means developing democratic alternatives in the politically-dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East. And that means helping the Iraqi people defeat Saddmist and theo-fascists in Iraq.

New reports indicate the riots have moved from simple “burn” to calculated fire bombs. Though reports say “youths” are carrying out the attacks, discovering a bomb factory says some type of organizing spine either existed or now exists.

Here’s a new AP report. The French police found a Molotov Cocktail “factory.” Fire bombs are easy to make, so the factory could have been created quickly:

Ten nights of urban unrest that brought thousands of arson attacks on cars, nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the German border reached Paris where at least 28 cars were burned overnight in the French capital, government officials said Sunday.

Police found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a southern suburb of the city, with more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces, a senior Justice Ministry official said Sunday.

Six youths, all aged under 18, were arrested in the raid Saturday night on a building in Evry south of Paris where the gasoline bombs were being put together, Jean-Marie Huet, the ministry’s director of criminal affairs and pardons, told The Associated Press.

The discovery, Huet said, shows that gasoline bombs being used by rioters “are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms.”

Hmmm. Poverty breeds molotovs?

The report suggests the French police are reinforcing the urbs and suburbs:

Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security on a restive Saturday night while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles.

At least 918 vehicles _ including those in Paris _ were burned during the 10th night of violence, said the Interior Ministry’s operational center tracking the violence. There was no word yet on damage in Paris to shops, gymnasiums, nursery schools and other targets which have been attacked around the country.

Police made 186 arrests nationwide overnight.

Shops, gyms, nursery schools, and cars. That’s a broad target list. In Torcy a police station and a youth center suffered attacks. Attacks have also been reported in Cannes and Nice– so tourists, beware.

Poverty exacerbates all problems, but poverty in and of itself does not produce violence. Migrants from France’s former Muslim colonies initially came for jobs, not to assimilate or “become French.” But the migrants stayed. Now France’s “Muslim neighborhoods” are permanent “cultural islands.” The French government’s own duplicitous policy towards Salafist/Islamist terror has backfired. France has fought Islamist terrorism. For 15 years the French government has been supporting the Algerian government’s battle against the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, the French acronym). In the mid-1990s GIA set off several bombs in and around Paris. However, the French government’s rhetoric has been appeasenik and enabling. Ah yes, the source of Muslim outrage is…America! France was following its Cold War strategy of snaking between Washington and Moscow. Remember, Reagan frightened the USSR. In 1983 Reagan was going to cause a nuclear war in Europe. Etcetera.

Appeasement and duplicity have once again failed as policy. Didn’t work for France in the Rhineland and at Munich, either.

UPDATE: A worthwhile article from Newsweek.

Here’s Mark Steyn on the “Eurarabian War” via radioblogger.

I also recommend readers look over the comments on my first French riots post. The level of denial exhibited by French readers is extraordinary…then again, perhaps it isn’t.

Here is some deep background, from the International Herald Tribune, October 17, 2005 — before the latest spate of riots. The subject: the decrepit, squalid living conditions European immigrants (legal and illegal) face.

Key graf:

In Paris, a string of deadly fires this year that killed 48 West African immigrants stunned France by revealing dangerously decrepit buildings, sometimes without running water and with hazardous electrical wiring, in the heart of the City of Light.

After fires in diplapidated housing killed over four-dozen African immigrants, the French government said it would build new homes. (This article dates from October 4 and focuses on African immigrants.)

…In the past five months, fires in crowded and dilapidated Paris buildings have killed almost 50 people, many of them immigrants and children.

…Two fires killed 24 people in derelict houses in Paris at the end of August. Twenty-four people were also killed when a hotel housing immigrants went up in flames in Paris in April.

…After the fires, the government vowed to make land available to build more than 20,000 homes and said it would provide 50 million euros to renovate decrepit buildings.

But opposition parties and anti-racism groups have said the measures will not be enough to solve the housing crisis, pointing out that the recent expulsions and strong government rhetoric on immigration only risked feeding xenophobia.

UPDATE 2: A more detailed history of General Dietrich von Choltitz’ refusal to execute Hitler’s August 1944 order to burn Paris (ie, more detailed than the one in my original “Is Paris Burning?” post.)

Key grafs:

When de Gaulle learned of the plan to bypass the city and delay liberation, he became convinced that the Americans were for some as yet unknown reason plotting to destroy his political future. Whoever expelled the Germans and freed Paris would likely build for himself in the process a power base with which to dominate the entire country in years to come. De Gaulle estimated that the Communists had 25,000 armed men in the city (if this figure was accurate, they outnumbered the Germans); he ordered the cessation of all Resistance-bound arms drops into the area. While Eisenhower brooded in his gloomy headquarters, de Gaulle was in Algiers, busily sending trusted subordinates to the City of Light to do everything in their power to head off any premature insurrection that might well sow the seeds of a civil war. France, drained by four years of Nazi occupation, was in no condition to endure such a calamity.

An intro to von Choltitz:

After three years of distinguished service on the Russian Front, Maj. Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz was brought west by Hitler. Since the July 20, 1944, bomb attempt on his life, the Fuhrer had had little faith in his military commanders’ trustworthiness; yet in Choltitz he believed he had found his man for a monumental task. Choltitz’s family heritage of generations of Prussian militarism left little room for an independent spirit. He had been raised to do as he was told. When he led the German invasion force into Holland in the spring of 1940, he commanded the bomber formations that pulverized Rotterdam before the city had a chance to surrender. During the gory July 1942 siege of the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Choltitz’s 4,800-man regiment was so decimated that he decided to force Russian POWs to carry shells and load the big guns being used against their comrades. While Choltitz suffered only an arm wound, all but 347 of his soldiers died in action. Transferred to Army Group Center a year later, he obediently followed the Fuhrer’s scorched-earth policy, making sure the advancing Russians found nothing but smoldering rubble in the wake of the withdrawing Wehrmacht.

Dietrich von Choltitz was indeed an able city destroyer, but by the time he arrived in Paris as its new military governor, he had had a couple of encounters that changed him radically. He had first met Hitler at a summer 1943 conference on the Russian Front, and though shocked by the Austrian peasant’s table manners during a luncheon, he was captivated by the powerful personality and contagious confidence of the Fuhrer. When he arrived at the Fuhrer’s headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia, a year later, however, he was in for a shocking disappointment. Hitler’s health had been wrecked by the incredible pressures of his life, the previous month’s attempted assassination and, some doctors suspected, Parkinson’s disease. After a rambling discourse on his career and the war, Hitler concluded with a shrieking diatribe against the Prussian officer corps. Finally, he told Choltitz he would be Befehlshaber, fortress commander, of Paris and should “stamp out without pity” all civilian acts of disobedience or terrorism.

The Germans prepared for a “scorched earth” retreat from Paris:

Upon arrival at his new command, Choltitz was informed by Generalleutnant Gunther Blumentritt of the dreaded expected orders for a scorched-earth withdrawal should the Germans be unable to hold the city. Soon the 813th Pionierkompanie (Engineer Company) began the strategic placement of explosives. Electric and water facilities were given the greatest priority, but the first structures mined were the centuries-old bridges spanning the Seine. Without these bridges, the broad, meandering loops of the river would be a troublesome obstacle for an advancing army. On August 16, Hitler had ordered the Gestapo and noncombat administrators to evacuate the city. The previous day, eight Germans had been killed in an ambush in an adjoining suburb. There was no doubt that things were about to get hot. But by telling the Wehrmacht Western Front operations chief, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, that the preparations were not yet completed, Choltitz managed to hold off any blasting.

The drama unfolds:

A tunnel beneath the city was filled with U-boat torpedoes that, if ignited, would produce a titanic explosion and tremendous devastation. On August 17, the busy general received at his headquarters Pierre Charles Tattinger, the mayor of Paris. The mayor was alarmed at all the explosives being deployed throughout the city and asked the German for an explanation. He was shocked by Choltitz’s response: “As an officer, Monsieur Tattinger, you will understand there are certain measures I shall have to take in Paris. It is my duty to slow up as much as possible the advance of the Allies.”

Although he was a collaborator, Tattinger was understandably aghast at this revelation. How could even the Nazis consider such an atrocity? Suddenly, Choltitz was seized by one of his periodic attacks of asthma and went into a fit of uncontrollable coughing. Leading him onto the balcony for some fresh air, Tattinger looked down on the lovely sculptured garden of the Tuileries and had an inspiration. Gesturing at the captivating vista, he made his point. Below them a lovely young girl was riding her bicycle on the Rue de Rivoli; on the manicured grounds of Le Notre, children played by the pond with their sailboats; across the adjacent Seine was the glittering dome of Les Invalides; and beyond that stood the landmark of the City of Light, the Eiffel Tower.

The Frenchman’s appeal was powerful: “Often it is given a general to destroy, rarely to preserve. Imagine that one day it may be given you to stand on this balcony again, as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments to our joys, to our sufferings, and be able to say, ‘One day I could have destroyed this, and I preserved it as a gift to humanity.’ General, is not that worth all a conqueror’s glory?” Choltitz looked silently to his left at the Louvre and to his right at the Place de la Concorde and replied: “You are a good advocate for Paris, Monsieur Tattinger. You have done your duty well. Likewise I, as a German general, must do mine.” Would he?…

Read the entire article.

UPDATE 3: Wretchard at The Belmont Club discusses the French riots and offers several trenchant observations about rioter tactics. Wretchard says attacks on cars indicate the rioters are practicing brinksmanship– not going too far. But there is the report of the attack on the police station and now reports of schools burning. ANother tv report says 30 policemen have been injured in a riot at Grigny.