The dirty little secret of Europe, and France especially, is not just the failure of assimilation addressed by Francis Fukuyama (my piece on it from yesterday is here), but the corollary of that failure. The French have gradually been ceding sovereignty over swaths of their country. Scores of the Muslim ghettoes have been no-go areas where the authorities have basically abandoned the responsibilities of government, creating little emirates where the Islamic leaders hold sway.

Which is to say this could get worse, and even if they manage to calm it down, that could just be a lull before the next rounds.

It’s hard to get civil control back once you let it go. The Giuliani experience in New York shows it can be done (and AG Ashcroft – with predictable criticism from the usual quarters – adopted a similarly effective “spit on the sidewalk” approach to terrorism after 9/11).

That’s why the below account from the Times of London (sounding eerily like the Times of New York) is so disheartening. Jonah and his correspondents have been focused on the suppression of the Muslim angle in the Telegraph. (As Michelle Malkin demonstrated at great length, we saw the same thing during the DC sniper story not so long ago.) But when they do decide to wade into these PC areas, the MSM now doesn’t report. They presents a narrative. In this one, the guys responsible for the dangerous state of affairs in France (Chirac, de Villipan, etc.) are painted as the enlightened heroes, while the guys doing the real-world grunt work needed to restore order (Sarkozy, etc.) are the Yankee cowboys. All italics are mine:

The defiant anti-government talk of [young Muslim men threatening civil war, aka “angry youths”] is the norm among the disaffected Muslims of the estates. After a seventh night of destruction, however, it was clear that they had a point.
M Sarkozy’s provocative tactics and his feuding with Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, appear to have fed the unrest in districts that are permanent cauldrons of anger.
As Mohamed [one of the “youths”] offered his analysis in “le Neuf-Trois”, as the troubled département is known from its police designation, President Chirac broke a week-long silence. Addressing the Cabinet in the Elysée Palace, only five miles but a world away from “le 93″, he called for calm and implicitly pointed the finger at the Interior Minister, who is a foe as well as leader of his centre-right UMP party.
The President said that he understood the “profound frustrations” of the immigrant districts. “The absence of dialogue and escalation of disrespect would lead to a dangerous situation,” he said. The message was aimed at M Sarkozy’s “zero tolerance” law enforcement, a fierce approach that community leaders and some of M Sarkozy’s own colleagues regard as counter productive. M Sarkozy, an iconoclast whose star status is on the wane, has offended immigrant groups and the Left by using gunslingers’ language, promising to “hose down” immigrant estates that have turned into havens for crime and drug dealing. He has caused anger by branding as la racaille — scum or rabble — the small-time lawbreakers who hold sway in les cités, the big run-down estates.
M Sarkozy was attacked this week by Azouz Begag, Minister for Equal Opportunities, for using “warlike” language. “Order is re-established by fighting the discrimination that victimises youths,” M Begag said.
The Interior Minister hit back yesterday, saying that people were weary with politicians who blurred reality with euphemism. “I use real words. When someone shoots at policemen, he is not just a ‘youth’, he is a lout, full stop,” he said.
M de Villepin has called for understanding of the estate residents’ plight and held a meeting with the parents of Ziad Benna and Bouna Traoré, the dead teenagers.
Insiders say that M Chirac told M de Villepin to let M Sarkozy handle the riots alone in the hope that he would damage his chances in the race for the 2007 presidential elections.