What If France Had A Spine?

What if France were honorable? What if it had a national spine? What if France had stood by our side to bring down the despotic Baathists and start a wave of democracy in the Muslim world?

It's just speculation, but I think there would have been no riots, not more riots.

The Muslim thugs who spent three weeks planning the riots knew their enemy is a weak-willed hand-wringer that would be crippled by its inability to make the right decision about right and wrong.

This increased their anger at their country, as it made them aware at how vulnerable France would be to their insurrection.

If France had a spine, the riots' leaders might have been angrier, because there would have been a bitter irony in France fighting for Muslim democracy in Iraq while being a bunch of beret-wearing bigots at home.

But they would have also seen a country not afraid to stand by principle.

They would have known the French would not stand for Muslim riots at home while their boys were dying to bring freedom to Muslims abroad.

And if the French were noble enough to understand and support the cause for war in Iraq, they would be noble enough improve the lot of their Muslim minority, giving the rioters less reason to riot.

Largely stripped of a Judeo-Christian justification for equality -- the justification that has expanded black wealth and opportunity in America dramatically since the civil rights movement shook us out of our complacency -- France has had no moral reason to confront the difficulties inherent in addressing its social dysfunction.

Hollow platitudes from an earlier revolution are not enough to drive a country to the moral high ground, as France is discovering.