CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

The WaPo reports this morning that while various European countries are treating returned citizens who've experienced, er, Gitmo hospitality in a fashion one might refer to as coddling (or even feting) the French are having none of it:

Armed with some of the strictest anti-terrorism laws and policies in Europe, the French government has aggressively targeted Islamic radicals and other people deemed a potential terrorist threat. While other Western countries debate the proper balance between security and individual rights, France has experienced scant public dissent over tactics that would be controversial, if not illegal, in the United States and some other countries.

It's why I've argued before that the suggestion that the war in Iraq would somehow interfere with our ability to cooperate with other countries on intelligence at the ground level on the War on Terror is ridiculous. They may not have supported the war in Iraq, may not have believed it part of the GWOT, or necessary, (or may have been on Saddam's payroll), but it just doesn't matter. When it comes down to it, and it's time to catch Islamists running loose, the cops in Europe, the counterterrorism officials, get it, and they're going to play.

And, oddly, that's especially true of the French. Their metro was bombed in the '90s. Their elite troops stormed a hijacked jetliner on the ground, a jetliner the terrorists wanted refueled so that they could fly it into the Eiffel Tower and send burning debris all over downtown Paris.

Say what you will of the French (and, ahem, I have) cop to cop, this just isn't going to be a problem.

And they're starting to realize that their decades long non-policy of ignoring the Muslim immigrants in their midst, making no effort to truly integrate them into their society and truly make them "French" in the same way that immigrants here become American, assimilated to a set of ideas, has had consequences -- bad ones.

French authorities have expelled a dozen Islamic clerics for allegedly promoting hatred or religious extremism, including a Turkish-born imam who officials said denied that Muslims were involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Since the start of the school year, the government has been enforcing a ban on wearing religious garb in school, a policy aimed largely at preventing Muslim girls from wearing veils.

Of course, they think their approach at home shouldn't be replicated abroad.

Hell, they're doing things at home American officials would never try.

Just coupling it with a softer touch abroad.

French counterterrorism officials say their preemptive approach has paid off, enabling them to disrupt plots before they are carried out and to prevent radical cells from forming in the first place. They said tips from informants and close cooperation with other intelligence services led them to thwart planned attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, French tourist sites on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and other targets.

"There is a reality today: Under the cover of religion there are individuals in our country preaching extremism and calling for violence," Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said at a recent meeting of Islamic leaders in Paris. "It is essential to be opposed to it together and by all means."

Thomas M. Sanderson, a terrorism expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said France has combined its tough law enforcement strategy with a softer diplomatic campaign in the Middle East designed to bolster ties with Islamic countries.

"You do see France making an effort to cast itself as the friendly Western power," as distinct from the United States, he said. "When it comes to counterterrorism operations, France is hard-core. . . . But they are also very cognizant of what public diplomacy is all about."

France has embraced a law enforcement strategy that relies heavily on preemptive arrests, ethnic profiling and an efficient domestic intelligence-gathering network. French anti-terrorism prosecutors and investigators are among the most powerful in Europe, backed by laws that allow them to interrogate suspects for days without interference from defense attorneys.

In other words, their policy is centered on being hard core, cooperating with us, but bashing us whenever for public consumption.

The nation pursues such policies at a time when France has become well known in the world for criticizing the United States for holding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo without normal judicial protections. French politicians have also loudly protested the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, arguing that it has exacerbated tensions with the Islamic world and has increased the threat of terrorism.

Despite the political discord over Iraq, France's intelligence and counterterrorism officials say they work closely with their American counterparts on terrorism investigations.

Sweet, huh?

In fact, despite the controversy over "renditions," the United States sending suspects to third parties to be arrested, it appears that's what other Western nations are doing with France. If they don't have enough evidence to arrest someone, they arrange a flight with a layover in Paris.

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