November 11, 2005
Predictions: France as Israel
I just want to put it on the public record, so I can accurately test the prediction:
In 5 years, France will look an awfully lot like Israel today or, worse, a couple of years ago, with a state of constant internal warfare.Specifically, there will be a significant number of Muslims engaged in low-key rioting regularly, like throwing stones. Over the next few years, they are going to slowly evolve into more sophisticated types of attacks, like suicide missions, that are going to regularly rock France. The French military is going to become a constant presence everywhere in the French cities with military security everywhere. There will be regular, violent "demonstrations." France will have a civil war, but one without a clear start or end: it will be a permanent conflict, Palestinian-style.
France will win all of these battles, but - further down the road (20, 30, 40 years) - it will lose the war.
How could this end? In one of four ways.
1.) Muslim Victory: First, there is the possibility of a Muslim victory, which I think will happen a half-century from now: this is the prediction I would bet on. What France will look like then still isn't clear: at best, a multicultural, democratic country that is deeply puritanical and anti-Israel with strong Sharia-influenced laws, such as the inability to criticize the Prophet, and so forth. This will also happen very slowly, maybe imperceptibly if we don't pay close attention, since there won't be a WWII-style war, but rather a long-term series of street fights resulting in changing government policies to accomodate the hoodlums and the extremist Muslim elements. This could also take a very negative form, with a more deeply oppressive government. But I'd predict the lite form, though.
2.) Lebanon: The conflict never ends and this state of ethnic warfare escalates and continues forever. This would be characterized by constant street and military battles between different ethnic groups.
3.) Genocide: Another solution is for France to expel or murder its Muslim 10% -- and this lead to an immediate, bloody civil war. It is entirely likely that, in the elections in 2 years, Le Pen could win. He did get 20% 5 years ago, and this crisis could easily double his support, and that brings him awfully close. This, too, is a distinct possibility and not mutually-exclusive to options 1 and 2: if this happens, it will lead to option #2 (Lebanon). Indeed, if France becomes Lebanon, then this is the option under which France "wins", and option #1 is the one under which France "loses."
4.) Another solution, the one I would love to see France implement and I think is absolutely imperative, is, effectively, to become the US: to [a] have the police and military strongly enforce the law everywhere in France, Giuliani-style, including crushing the local Islamist extremists; [b] dismantle the welfare state (because people develop crazy ideologies and hate the hand that feeds them only when they're living off of someone else and not worrying about working themselves -- this explains why youth are so indulgent and radical, with their parents watching over them, and this is also the reason why the Muslim population has integrated perfectly into the US system, because here they have to concentrate on working--I'm proud of the Muslism in the USA and think they're wonderful here, and this demonstrates that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Islam itself); and [c] implement capitalism: make it easy to buy and sell and create and create businesses and make money and hire and fire people. If you implement [b] without [c], the result is poverty -- this is basically what's happened in Argentina -- which is why you need both. This solution, if implemented, would save France and it would also turn France into the USA. And France will not have the strength to implement it, until it's too late, unfortunately.
A different approach is that, to win a war, you need both physical strength and emotional willpower, and it's not clear to me that France has enough of either: heck, there is almost a 1-1 ratio of Muslim-to-Catholics among the youths of France and quickly getting even more Muslims, and wars are fought by the youth (thus it's not obvious who wins with the physical strength); and the French political and media infrastructure is responding by further appeasements, such as Villepin's offering 20,000 jobs to the rioters and Chirac and the media and politicans downplaying the severity of what's happening (thus it's obvious who has more willpower).
I want to go vacation in Paris now, before it's too late.
Posted by Morgan at 09:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
very interesting reading, i think you should forget paris for now, its too late, talk about reap the whirwind.. they love the arabs so much, they are welcome, its too late for U.K. too and it couldnt be more ironic
Posted by: morven at November 12, 2005 03:26 AM
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