France Defies the Jihadists

France Defies the Jihadists William Pfaff

2015/1/14 | http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=710

Paris, January 14, 2015 -- The recent excitement in Paris produced an occasion of great surprise to an American observer, certainly to one who witnessed the transformation fear exacted from America’s governing elite by the 9/11 attacks in 2001. In France, the jihad killings last week produced a colossal reaction that was not one of fear at all. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys, of Americans’ past condescension, turned out by the hundreds of thousands Wednesday afternoon in Paris’s Place de la Republique and rendezvous points in dozens of cities and towns across the country to shout their defiance of jihadists, murderers, and to make it clear what should be done to the whole lot of them when caught. They applauded the thousands of policemen who suddenly appeared in the streets, barricading roads and exit/entries to Paris, and poking into the contents of cars, Metros, trains, concierge’s lodges, apartment lobbies, and the parcels, briefcases, and purses of anyone who looked funny. The demonstrators bore homemade posters declaring “We are all Charlie” — a surprisingly silly tribute to a scurrilous comic paper, relic of the sixties, which no one except giggling students reads any more, one of whose practices has been to publish obscene caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (among other dignitaries), in a country with a larger Muslim population than any other member of the European Union.http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=710