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Ed Morrissey @ Hot Air on Obama getting himself a meager French personal guard of 300 gendarmes when he's asking for a serious NATO commitment in Afghanistan. That'll teach him to bring us crappy DVDs.
Notice that those gendarmes are to be specifically deployed in places where Jihadists are absent, and law enforcement is therefore not needed.
I beg my American readers and nevertheless friends not to take this as another example of French perfidy: this is actually the standard procedure for our gendarmes. You will frequently find them standing idly on the roadside with various photographic devices, taking picture of cars and drivers passing by, and keeping safely away from those troubled and predominantly Islamic suburbs that grabbed the headlines during the hot winter of 2005.
It's just how our elite gendarmerie is trained.
Nothing personal.
Comments
Comments thread (14)
4025 - Instinct
Instinct San Francisco, CA
adagioforstrings, you're right about LA and no offense taken, sorry if it seemed that way. The police there seem to only really be able to maintain the status quo and not really change anything.
I blame a lot of that on all the activist groups that start screaming any time the police actually DO something to clean up a neighborhood and arrest all the crooks. Apparently, in Los Angeles, arresting drug dealers and gang members is only OK if they are of a certain ethnic background that could be compaired to wonder bread.
So, the war zones stay that way, the minorities bitch that the cops don't do anything and refuse to do anything about the problem themselves. A screwed up situation if there ever was one.
4029 - privatei2
privatei2
DF - I tried to spank the monkey, but something is wrong. I don't think I'm playing it right. I'll try it again.
40-60 cigarettes a day! Yikes! You are now my inspiration whenever I start feeling sorry for myself.
Okay, I'm off to try to spank the monkey again.
4030 - privatei2
privatei2
Ha! I finally figured out how to spank the monkey. I wasn't dragging the hand the right way! It requires a special touch. My score was 219. Need to work on that...
4237 - DGB
DGB
DF,
Came to this --late! -- by way of Hot Air. My only quibble is the gendarmes have spears. An accurate depiction would show them armed with nosegays or swag bags with complimentary Hermès toiletries to pacify the Taliban.
The truth is Afghanistan doesn't need 5 or 500 or 5,000 Euro-peacekeepers. It needs soldiers. Guys with guns and mission. Europa of course has precious few soldiers, but plenty of peacekeepers with, in the case of the Belgians, toy guns.
DGB