For those of you who have an old url for this story, here it is again:

PUBLISHED in the Washington Times (11/7/07)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051106-102157-1970r_page2.htm

re "Muslim youths battle Paris police" (Washington Times, 11/4/05)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051103-111739-3190r.htm

To the Editors:

The French government, after conspicuously pampering Muslims worldwide and allowing 10% of their own population to isolate themselves based on their Muslim religion, is now reaping the whirlwind of their own policies.

To be fair, economic issues are a real part of the rioters’ grievances. But a major contributor to unemployment in the Muslim neighborhoods is the community’s separatist tendencies, intentionally seeing themselves as almost anything but French.

By making decisions aimed at snubbing the United States and at selling more weapons and technology to Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries, France abandoned any pretense of protecting their domestic tranquility with this week’s terrible consequences following necessarily.

Even now, the second loudest noises after the gunfire is French politicians squabbling for political advantage. Nero would seem to be Dominique de Villepin’s political role model.

I can not say I feel great sympathy for the French government or for the isolationist Islamists who are burning their own neighborhoods. They deserve each other. But Paris is one of the world’s great cities…maybe its greatest. It deserves better than this.