Wizblog

France Tough on Terrorists

No, there's no punch line ...

Since 1995, when an Algerian Islamist group called GIA killed eight people with a nail bomb in the Paris Metro, there has not been a single terrorist incident in France. This is not because Jacques Chirac's government takes an obsequious line toward Yasser Arafat, or because it did Saddam Hussein's bidding at the UN, or because it undermines US foreign policy at every turn.

Rather, it is because the French fight Islamic militants in ways that would make Israeli Shin Bit chief Avi Dichter proud and US Attorney General John Ashcroft envious.

Deportation, imprisonment for years without trial, torture. I must say I wasn't aware that the French had a reputation for being that tough, what with all the Euro-whining about Guantanamo.

Bret Stephens explains by making some interesting observations about the disconnect in France (and elsewhere in Europe) between the attitudes of its citizens, and the policies of its government:

If, for instance, America feels strongly enough about human-rights abuses in China, it can take measures – trade sanctions, arms sales to Taiwan, etc. – which the Chinese are bound to feel keenly. For the better part of past 50 years, neither the French nor Europeans generally have had this luxury. The average Belgian may feel quite strongly about human-rights abuses in China. But the chances that his attitude will translate into some kind of meaningful policy are effectively zero.

The result is what one might call attitude inflation, which in turn arises from the de-linking of attitude from policy. That is, if you don't actually have to do something about your attitudes you're likelier to have more of them, and they are bound to be both more extravagant and more unrealistic. People who are in no position to end world hunger and bring about peace in the Middle East can endlessly carry on about ending world hunger and bringing peace to the Middle East. Doing so means only that they're declaring themselves the sorts of folk who deplore hunger and war. But statesmen who must actually wrestle with issues of cost, capacity, local difficulties and unintended consequences tend to have more realistic, and therefore restrained, attitudes.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)