Sarko's in, How Will France Deal?

Sarkozy is not Jean-Marie LePen, but he is "tough on crime" as they say in the states, and generally critical of the current state of France's immigration policies (despite being the son of a Hungarian immigrant). The largely immigrant suburbs have already said how they plan to respond. It's clear that things will likely get worse in France before they get better, but the reason why Sarkozy is not as loved by the right as LePen was has to do with his involvement with the formation of the Conseil français du culte musulman, an organization founded to give French Muslims a political voice.

As I've said before, the level of violence and unrest in France, while the result of deeper causes that need to be addressed, must be dealt with on the surface as well. I'm open minded about Sarkozy, and hopeful that he will bring the hammer down on the riots and violence, but worried that his attitude and inflammatory talk of "racaille" will undermine more cool-headed efforts to deal with the social problems that have caused these riots in the first place. He has made efforts to reach out to the Muslim community, and if there is ever a hope if assimilating Muslims into France, he will need there help.

Clearly My Knowledge of the Legislative Process Is Sorely Lacking

An interesting article in the New York Times, outlines the various proposals Democrats are now mulling over to get the troops out of Iraq. Looks like they have a few interesting options.

Hillary Clinton and Robert Byrd are proposing to "repeal President Bush’s war authorization" that "would require the president to seek new authority from Congress to extend the conflict beyond Oct. 11, 2007." The article doesn't explain, exactly how this could be done. Would they do it in the form of a bill? If so how could they keep bush from vetoing it like he did the last bill, and if not, how could this be done?

Even Horowtiz Is Sick of Auster's Lunacy

Thanks to an article on The Huffington Post, David Horowitz is no longer allowing Lawrence Auster's openly segregationist and sometimes outright racist rants on FrontPage.

This isn't the first time Auster's browbeating has gotten him in trouble with his fellow right-wing crazies. Michelle Malkin used to have him on her list of blogs, but took him off a few months ago and refused to explain why. If you read his stuff, though, it becomes pretty clear.

Now if only people would realize what a creep this guy is.

Can't Wait to See the Polls After This

Rudy Giuliani has long been the front-runner on the Republican side of the presidential race. I'll be watching to see how much they like him after the bible-bangers see this.

Woops

I had forgotten that the President's veto can be overriden if two-thirds of the Congress vote in favour of troop withdrawal. That would mean that the Democrats need to rally another 15 or so votes to get the bill through. That sounds tricky, but I think this is what they should be fighting for right now. If they keep sending the same bill to be vetoed while the troops go without funding, I don't think Americans' confidence in the Democrats will stay as high as it is.

Squeamishness Is Our Weakness

In pondering the current situation in the Middle East, I came upon the realization that it would very easy for the Iraqis to drive the Americans out of Iraq and the Palestinians to drive the Israelis out of Palestine, because of a weakness that most Westerners seem to share, one that seems linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition. That weakness is squeamishness. Most Westerners see violence and carnage and either become afraid, or disgusted. This does not seem as common outside of the West.

Westerners generally don't like violence and will only condone its use if they believe it is necessary to prevent more severe violence or protect their safety. The US got away with horrible violence against countries that were very peaceful largely because the American people were convinced that it was necessary to protect them from the Soviet Union. When the American people stopped believing this during the Vietnam War, they stopped supporting it.

This isn't just true of Americans. The British pulled out of India because they saw what their own military were doing to these people that posed no threat to them. The British lost in India and the Americans lost in Vietnam because they saw and read the things that were going on and were grossed out. Eventually they were convinced it wasn't worth having to see all that nasty blood and gave up.

Trying to fight the West with violence is doomed to fail as long as the West is better armed. A far more effective strategy is to fight the West by exploiting their weak stomachs. If Arabs want to defeat their aggressors, they need to do two things: they have to show the people of the West the brutality of their treatment, and, more importantly, they need to convince Westerners that they are no danger to their physical safety.

Incrementalism Is Often the Only Way

The NDP has single handedly propped up the Harper government by voting against the Liberals' Afghanistan withdrawal bill. Layton says that he has another date in mind that would get the troops even sooner. He's awfully ballsy to think that he can get this passed before 2009. Ballsy or stupid.

It would have been much safer for Layton to take an incrementalist approach to vote in favour of the 2009 withdrawal and then pushed for an earlier withdrawal date. In fact, this seems pretty obvious. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but to put who knows how many more Canadian lives at stake to gamble on getting a sooner withdrawal date is careless and irresponsible.