D.G. Myers is right that French authorities bungled badly in the affair of Mohamed Merah who was on a terrorist watch list but was allowed to roam freely. That terrible mistake was obviated somewhat by the swift and massive French response after the terrible shootings at the Jewish day school; Merah was identified and cornered within two days of that attack and stopped before he could kill again.
But whatever the French did wrong in this case — and there is no doubt that a terrible oversight occurred — on the whole French counter-terrorism is a success story. I recommend reading this 2008 article by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Gary Schmitt that calls France “the European country most serious about counterterrorism.” The secret of French success has been their willingness “to grant highly intrusive powers to their internal security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), and to their counterterrorist, investigative magistrates, the juges d’instruction” — powers that far exceed any authorities given U.S. government officials even under the Patriot Act. With those powers, French forces have done an impressive job of stopping terrorist plots of which there is no shortage because of the large number of marginalized and aggrieved Muslim immigrants living there. Indeed France’s real mistake is not doing more to assimilate Muslims which ensures a constant supply of plotters; the blame is more on society and government as a whole than on the security forces which are on the whole quite effective.
The Toulouse tragedy merely goes to show that any system, no matter how vigilant, cannot prevent all terrorist attacks. As the saying has it, the security forces have to be right all the time; the terrorists have to be right only once. The real test now for the French authorities will be how they conduct their “lessons learned” exercises and what they do to patch the holes uncovered by Mohamed Merah.
Someone please enlighten me (or Mr. Boot): wouldn't the better option be to deport non-citizen muslims who subscribe to militant/wahabbi/islamist ideals (i.e., that sanction violence against infidels)? n nI realize that Europe has an "assimilation problem" with its muslim immigrants. A lot of that has to do with the bothersome fact that a great many muslims have no wish to assimilate. They feel that Islam is far superior to Western culture and they are determined to eventually force the West to assimilate to *them*, not the other way around. Indeed, we already see this happening all across Europe where governments and private individuals must walk on pins and needles to avoid offending muslim sensibilities. Given the muslim birthrate in Europe and immigration rates, political power alone will soon ensure that muslims will be forcing infidels to accommodate Islamist practices. n nIn any event, it is troubling that Mr. Boot neglects to mention that the price of French success against Islamist terror is intolerable levels of government intrusion and power. At some point, I would think the French (and the West in general) would realize that fundamentalist Islam is not compatible with Western democracy and the Islamists unwilling to embrace Western ideals need to leave.
"Indeed France’s real mistake is not doing more to assimilate Muslims which ensures a constant supply of plotters" n nFrance is doing all it can do. The problem is, the degree a professed Muslim assimilates to civilized society is the degree he is no longer an authentic Muslim, which speaks to the fallacy of trying to distinguish "moderate" Muslims. n nAlas, the evil genie is out of the bottle. The criminal stupidity of politicians' opening Europe to mass Muslim migration — based on mistaken assumptions about the American immigrant experience and on the fatuous sentiment that living in civilization would civilize them — has placed Europe on a one-way street to extinction.
The terminology may not be fully developed, but can there be any doubt that there is a distinct group of people who would check an identifying box as "muslim" but do not practice the faith? Perhaps the term should be "nominal muslims." Every religious creed is a continuum of adherence: from fanatics to purely cultural/nominal. I have personally known people who consider themselves "muslim" but do not practice the faith in any meaningful way, just as I know jews and christians who behave the same way. It is human nature. Recall, too, that for a long period of time, muslims in the middle east thought of themselves in nationalistic terms primarily and not religious terms. This is where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ayatollahs have had their greatest impact: by radicalizing large segments of an otherwise indifferent muslim population. n nI suppose if we wanted to be picky we could say that those people are not *really* muslims (or jews or christians) but the fact that they refer to themselves in that manner forces us to classify them in some fashion. Failing to account for this population of Nominal Muslims is self-defeating: it makes the problem appear bigger than it is which demoralizes us and it deludes us into thinking that there is no way for a "muslim" to fit into a pluralistic society.