Paris riots: the aftermath and the future

I love Richard Brookhiser. In the NY Observer:

...Like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, the French leadership shines and stinks. Dominique de Villepin, with his pompadour and his potted biography of Napoleon; Jacques Chirac, protected only by the presidency from the slammer — these jewels in the crown of Gallic civilization thought they could earn the affection of their Muslim helots by truckling to Saddam Hussein: you’ll love us, even though you chop wood and haul water, because we take oil for food bribes.

But now, after more than a week of arson and uproar, it turns out that France’s Arabs don’t like France any more than we do. Now maybe Froggy knows what we feel like: we liberated them, and were rewarded by 60 years of ingratitude. They kissed Saddamite ass, and are being rewarded by son et lumiere.

It deserves to be read in its entirety.