Why the French don’t fight

A reader offers a disturbing theory as to why it’s not only French elites, but ordinary Frenchmen, who are not resisting the Muslim uprising:

I wanted to say one small thing in defense of the French people. Not all of them, of course—their government and pampered elites can go to hell—but those tasked with the dirty work of containing the Moslem rioters, and those civilians who might be inclined to fight back on their own, but so far haven’t. In much of the Internet commentary on the riots, we have called the French people “surrender monkeys” and expressed utter amazement at their docility in the face of their country’s conquest. It’s no surprise that the Rive Gauche intellectuals give up, but our amazement is that everyone else seems to have also. I think I know why they (the patriotic French) don’t fight: because they understand deep in their gut that while the French state may be ambivalent, confused and/or deluded about the need to resist Islam, it has no such uncertainty about responding to those who threaten its core premises of secularism and multiculturalism, especially when they are “guilty” whites who lack the excuse of foreign ethnicity and culture. It will smash them utterly.

Jean Raspail’s prophetic book includes the following relevant exchange between Colonel Dragases and undersecretary Perret:

“But Colonel,” Perret interrupted, “the real enemy is in front of you, out on those boats. It’s not that gang of loudmouths behind you!”

“Oh, you think so, monsieur?” the colonel objected. “I can see you’ve never done much fighting. In war, the real enemy is always behind the lines. Never in front of you, never among you. Always at your back. That’s something every soldier knows. In every army, since the world began. And plenty of times they’ve been tempted to turn their backs on the enemy—the so-called enemy, that is—and give it to the real one, once and for all. In the good old days you could even see two armies at each other’s throats, in some stupid war or other, and all of a sudden they’d call it quits, and each one would pull a coup and take over at home. I’m sorry I wasn’t around to see it! … No, my friend, in war the soldier’s real enemy is seldom who you think.” [ellipsis in original]—The Camp of the Saints Chapter 39

You know the denouement: the colonel and other holdouts are strafed by French planes “still [with their] original markings” doing willingly to their own what they could not even conceive of doing to invading aliens.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 12, 2005 04:44 PM | Send