FRANCE, POOR FRANCE

A year after gangs of Muslim marauders tore through Paris and much of France for nearly three weeks setting fires and overturning vehicles, Muslim youths again hit, this time forcing passengers off three buses before torching the latter overnight in suburban Paris, raising tensions again.

The head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge. "Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned," he said in an interview. Larger, more mainstream police unions sharply disagree that the suburban unrest has any religious basis. However, they do say that some youth gangs no longer seem content to throw stones or torch cars and instead appear determined to hurt police officers—or worse.

"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."

One of the three officers needed 30 stitches to his face after being struck by a rock.

The attack was one of at least four gang beatings of police in Parisian suburbs since Sept. 19. Early Friday, a dozen hooded people hurled stones, iron bars and bottles filled with gasoline at two police vehicles in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a flashpoint of last year's riots, said Guillaume Godet, a city hall spokesman. One officer required three stitches to his head.

Minority youths have long complained that police are more heavy-handed in their dealings with them than with whites, demanding their papers and frisking them for no apparent reason. Such perceived ill-treatment fuels feelings of injustice, as do the difficulties that many youths from immigrant families have finding work.

Distrust and tension thrive. Rumors have flown around some housing projects that police are hoping to use the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week, to round up known troublemakers, on the basis that fasting all day will have made the youths weaker and easier to catch.

Police say that suggestion is ludicrous. However, they are on guard ahead of the first anniversary this week of last year's riots. That violence began after two youths who thought police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted to death.

Police unions suspect that the recent attacks may be an attempt to spark new riots.

"We are getting the impression these youths want a 'remake' of what happened last year," said Fred Lagache, national secretary of the Alliance police union. "The youths are trying to cause a police error to justify chaos."

Turf-conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages threatening to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. These are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths.

France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police cruisers are pelted daily with stones and "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles with burning wicks that explode on impact) and Mr. Thooris said cops assigned to what was rapidly degenerating into "free fire zones" should be protected in armored vehicles. Entire tall buildings empty into the streets to chase police and free an arrested comrade.

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," Mr. Thooris told journalists. Mr. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and tear gas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime." In one recent clash 250 cops dispersed a 100-strong Muslim gang armed with baseball bats.

The chaotic conditions in suburbs like Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil and St. Denis have progressively worsened since the nationwide Muslim riots last November that torched 10,000 vehicles.

Well, duh. I am astonished at how vigorously the French rallied to preserve their culture from McDonald's, a damned burger joint, as well as other perceived invasions by American capitalism, yet, do nothing about this REAL threat to their culture but as the examples above illustrate, most of the mainstream still continues to talk about appeasement. And there seems to be no end in sight to this nonsense.

The other day I came across a global map of all the hotspots where Islam is violently pushing the indigenous populations into a cowering stance in nearly every case. I wish I had bookmarked that site now. It was a real eye-opener to see the visual depiction of Muslims not getting along with Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and secular progressives on every continent, including South America.

Certain polls demonstrate that 70% of Americans believe we are in the early stages of a "long war" with Islamic fascism if for no other reason than we take the Muslim spokemen at their word when they have over and over again declared their intentions; most the mainstream media are in the 30% who believe we are attacking Islam for no good reason, that our offensive acts in Iraq are immoral and unjustifiable. To these sublime doves, the United States and western capitalistic aggression is the enemy.

Let me be frank. I was against the invasion of Iraq from day one. I knew it had to do with oil, and none of those other reasons that have been thrown out at the American public since then, but I also believe an all-out war with Islam is inevitable.

Allow me to pose to the "peacemakers" and "appeasers" a question. Isn't war inevitable when inevitably war is thrust upon a nation? Was not there a vital need to fight and win World War II, even though American entry into that war was delayed for several crucial years because of strong opposition by those who supported Nazi Germany.

But America survived that controversy. Because after Pearl Harbor, those who opposed the war had the grace to be silent. A moral and ethical opposition to the war must require announcing one's reasons for such opposition and endeavoring to convince the country that the war is an error and the course needs to be changed.

I also believe the Bush administration has failed in Iraq, and that American troops should be pulled back to a neighboring country, perhaps to Ethiopia where Somalian jihadists have now invaded. But I also believe an all-out war with Islam is inevitable.

And that is my singular political stance. We must prepare for war. We must prepare ourselves stateside. We must not allow ourselves the luxury of falling asleep like Europe into the spiraling deathtrap of political correctness forever. We must awaken before it is too late to recover.

I would also rather history prove me wrong—that war is not inevitable, that we can all just get along.