An American in Paris

Last night I was watching the movie, "An American in Paris," a nostalgic trip back to those giddy post-bellum times in Paris before Algeria’s silent invasion and France’s suicidal social programs. And it reminded me a little of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein song “The Last Time I Saw Paris” which lamented how Paris was before the Nazi takeover. In this movie, Gene Kelly and Lesley Carone gave us a reprise of a later peaceful Paris which, I am afraid, may not exist again for many years.

Why am I so pessimistic? Obviously the current developments in Iraq and Syria are partly to blame … but it really runs much deeper than that. Just a few days ago I viewed a video of Moroccan soccer fans chanting in favor of the ISIS barbarianism and the blooming of jihad. See the disturbing video here: CNS News. If these relatively westernized Moroccan soccer fans can exhibit such open hostility to non-Muslims, then I am afraid that we are in for a long slog back to a peaceful world.

Now, this combined with trillions of petro-dollars sloshing around the Middle East, many generations of Muslim resentment over the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the West’s attempt to atone for the atrocities of World War II with the creation of Israel, disproportionate birth rates between the Middle East and the West, generations of lax European/U.S. immigration rules combined with porous borders, and an Islamo-tropic president in the United States … all have given the Muslim world a feeling that they are destiny’s children.

And perhaps they are …

Afterthought: But two questions persist ... 1) Will these destiny's children be Sunni or Shi'a? and 2) How will Russia, China and India react to this growing threat of a world-wide caliphate?