Is Paris Burning?

Jacques-Marie Bourget

Let’s put our head in our hands. This position serves to think as also to cry. The talk show anchors who are showing us the war, the ones in Paris, forget to explain why France finally came to that. Looking at them, listening to them, one has the feeling that, born of a spontaneous generation of jihadists, they are like chestnuts fallen from a tree, or fruits fallen of street lamps. No one comes to remind that this battle started in 2003, when the war criminal Georges Bush and his gang of neoconservatives decided to 're-draw' the Middle East, or in other words, to transform Iraq, and then Syria, into a handful of confetti. You point out that France did not take part in the dawn of the disaster, and you are right. But afterwards, it made up very well up for lost time. Just so as to negate Chirac's "dullness", Sarkozy did everything, and the worst, to make Washington appreciate them.

Iraq being pulled to pieces by the USA, an intelligent foreign policy from Paris would have been to do everything possible to prevent Syria from being smashed to pieces as well. Nicolas Sarkozy did the opposite. And if today, the jihadists entered into Paris, it is the simple and logical consequence of the choice made not long ago by Carla's husband, in 2010. That year, suddenly inspired by his friend the Emir of Qatar, who was his real "Minister for Arab Affairs", Sarko started all of a sudden to cold shoulder Bashar al-Assad. A friend till the other day whom Sarko had adulated so much that he invited him to co-chair a 14th July procession in Paris.

Why so much hatred? Well! One has to know, Bashar had to be punished for having refused to make way for a Qatari oil pipeline across Syrian land. Then, making things worse for himself, for having refused to buy 23 Airbus from the same Qatar. Oddly, al-Assad found it more logical to buy the planes from the countries that produce them, France and Germany. The useless fool didn't realize that his double refusal would deprive a handful of "intermediate" sycophants of a shower of dollars. For this crime of refusing Doha and for the sorrow caused to Sarkozy, Bashar had to be punished. No doubt his iron policy, his inhumanity, his Pharaonic personality cult gave very few arguments to his defenders. At this point, it is good to remind that without Stalin, France would today express itself in German, and that in foreign policy, the good choice is the choice of the lesser evil that is probably the best, as it avoids the worst. Today, everybody knows that Bashar and his shoes were really better for France than AI-Baghdadi and his fascist jihadists. Doing a kindness to the "brother", Nicolas Sarkozy's Qatari friends, mano-a-mano with those have also destroyed Lybia, have for years fed and armed these fanatics, from Mali to Iraq, from Libya to Syria. Indulging in one-upmanship, the Saudi Arabians gave them a hand. Experts in democracies, wouldn't like the two dictatorships of the Gulf launch the blossom of "spring" in Damascus? Paris, using Fabius as spokesperson, even encouraged the foot soldiers for their "good job". Sarkozy is responsible for the chaos. But, at the double, Hollande came as a fireman spitting fire with a score written by Netanyahu in his pocket. Acting with a steel hand pretending of doing it in accordance with Human Rights, which is okay at the Café de Flore, but not always applicable as a plaster to the rest of the world. By the way, France, having its all-for-Refales policy, is not dissatisfied with the disappearance of Iraq and Syria, as they are State too often grumpy. These countries transformed into an ethnic-religious patchwork would take a far better form for their small neighbour, the Israeli friend.

But we also know France, in this blindfolded race, have provided arms to men who were our own people, and who knows if it is not their brothers who shot the martyrs of the Bataclan. Jean-Yves Le Drian, wonderful hardware dealer of our military arsenal told us a few days ago that our Rafales "had destroyed in Syria" the base where Daech "was preparing the attacks that were to be carried out in France"... Obviously, it's missed! And let's notice with a certain sadness that our wonderful agents, unable to detect commandos' presence in France, must be quite in a predicament when it comes to track them down in Rakka where the French soldiers very often put their heavy boots. Since it was good for the sale of Dassault's fighters and for the unemployment, Hollande, Fabius, Le Drian, started to " hit" like mad, from Mali to Iraq, there they are, bombardiers without borders. Forgetting that we are not in the era of colonial gunboats anymore and that this policy has a consequence waging war out there is waging war here. The days are over when the USA could unload tons of bombs cushy on Vietnam, and France on the Aurés.

Our planet is a unique world and our leaders and opinion makers should know that, between the citizens convinced by the cause, the sympathisers or convinced crackpots, our country includes a troop of 30,000 men and women indoctrinated after being ghettoised, persuaded that jihad is the good solution. The good choice "to take revenge on humiliations" and give victory to real Islam over Salafism. In other times, while evoking those men and women, those, children, we would have talked of "internal enemies"... No doubt, worn-out words will come back and the racist attacks started last Saturday in Pontivy during a demonstration led by Breton neo-Nazis. They talk about putting under house arrest anyone, inevitably Muslim, who would present a "risk", all this in the absence of judicial charges. Why not detention centres, camps? Finally, let us note that our Foreign Affairs Ministry also ignores that the world in now one, that the bombs in the souks of Bagdad, in the suburbs of Beirut or in the baggage holds of the Russian flight of Sharm el Sheikh are made of the same gun powder that was used by the slaughterers of Bataclan. It is henceforth impossible to bombard with Rafales, far away, very far away and then go back home to sleep the sleep of the just. Those terrorists of this Friday the 13th are the warriors of a new era.

PS: It has to be noted that the claiming of Paris attacks by Daech passed through the intervention of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, a television channel which finds again itself again in the role it played not so long ago with Al-Qaeeda. Let's specify that on the screens of this channel, not a word has been said by the Emir, or others, to condemn the attacks.

(Published in Le Grand Soir, 17 November 2015)
(Translated from French by Julie Robert)

Frontier
Vol. 48, No. 26, Jan 3 - 9, 2016