Chirac Urges Calm as Rioting Spreads

Or so the International Herald Tribune announces.  Am I the only one who thinks that this is the wrong strategy?  Alienated youth are going to be contemptuous of anything the government says, and will generally try to do just the opposite.  What Chirac ought to do is urge the young to run screaming down the streets burning cars and blowing things up.  Your average Tunisian teen would probably reply: "screw that, man, I'm going to go home and go to bed!"

Les Francais used to be famous for being clever.  Of course they were speaking French, so no one could really tell.  Translated into English, Chirac sounds merely conflicted.

Chirac waded into the debate on Wednesday by calling for a firm response to the violence. But in an apparent effort to ward off criticism of police heavy-handedness, the president also urged dialogue.

Ok.  Chirac advocates a "firm response" but wants to avoid "heavy-handedness."  Maybe there is a French noun for what comes in between those genuine policy choices, and its probably twenty letters long when you write it but consists of a consonant and short, weird vowel when you pronounce it.  But I bet it doesn't help much.

At least you could expect a reasonable assessment of the Parisian situation, but that seems beyond the President as well. 

"Tempers need to cool," Chirac said at a cabinet meeting Wednesday. "We can't have a law-free zone in the Republic. A lack of dialogue and an escalation of disrespectful behavior will lead to a dangerous situation."

After seven nights of burning autos and store fronts, the rioting is spreading to more Paris suburbs.  Wouldn't it be fair to say that France is in a dangerous situation?  Frankly, an escalation of disrespectful behavior is the last thing they need worry about.  It's an escalation of molotov cocktail targeting I'd be worried about, if my derrière was in Gaul.  But then there is Abdel Srhiri's reaction.

Srhiri, 52, a Moroccan immigrant, said that when he was taking a walk with his family after dinner on Tuesday, he saw riot police firing rubber bullets at local teenagers, who in turn hurled bottles at the officers.  "Bullets were flying through the air and there was broken glass - it was war, right here," said Srhiri, pointing to a commercial center. He said in 28 years in France, he had never seen anything like it.

If Mr. Srhiri thinks that firing rubber bullets is war, well I suppose that's what 28 years in France does to one.  Most Parisians have no confidence that the government knows how to restore order.  I have no confidence that the government knows how to talk about it.