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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-11-08

Find The Commonalities

What do these two stories have in common?

A. France declared a state of emergency Tuesday to quell the country's worst unrest since the student uprisings of 1968 that toppled a government, and the prime minister said the nation faced a "moment of truth" over its failure to integrate Arab and African immigrants and their children.

Rioters ignored the extraordinary security measures, which began Wednesday, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralyzed France's second largest city's subway system with a gasoline bomb.

The measures, valid for 12 days, clear the way for curfews after nearly two weeks of rioting in neglected and impoverished neighborhoods with largely Muslim communities.
[emphasis mine]

B. Senator Harry Reid today:
"The manipulation of intelligence, to sell the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney is involved in that. The White House energy policy, that puts Big Oil ahead of the American consumer, Vice President Cheney is behind that. Leaking clasified information to discredit White House critics, the Vice President is behind that. Halliburton, contracting abuse, the list goes on and it goes on. Certainly America can do better than that."
Which was met with silence from the White House.

Okay, I might have tipped my hand a little bit with that last editorializing, but perhaps not.

NO, I am not trying to equate overheated rhetoric from Democrats to violent outbursts from unassimilated youths in densely packed urban areas (which, by the way, has its own set of lessons for America).

What I am pointing out is that both instances of what some of us see as over-the-top behavior is in many ways enabled by, encouraged by, and the natural result of nonexistent, weak, and/or completely ineffectual response by the governments in power.

Never, in a million years, did I think I would be equating, on any level, George W. Bush to Dominique de Villepin. But here we are.
Posted by: Michael / 11/08/2005 11:52:00 PM

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