Ever since its emergence a few months ago, the declared ambition of the startup caliphate of the Islamic State has been to “wipe out every trace of I… - Amir Taheri

Many Frenchmen see their society as drifting in uncertain waters without an anchor. They are concerned by increasingly powerless elected governments, distant bureaucrats who intervene in every aspect of people’s lives, and an economic system that promises much but delivers little. The advocates of Western decline claim that Europeans no longer believe in anything and are thus doomed to lose the fight against homegrown Islamists who passionately believe in the little they know of Islam. A note of comedy is injected into this tragedy by people like President Hollande who keep repeating that the terror attacks had “nothing to do with Islam.” Is Hollande an authority on what is and what is not Islam? Talking heads repeat ad nauseam that France is not at war against Islam. OK. However, part of Islam is certainly at war against France, and the rest of the civilized world, including a majority of Muslims across the globe. One’s enemy is not whom one wants him to be but whom he wants to be. The Charlie killers saw themselves as jihadis, and it is only in seeing them as such that one could start dealing with them in an effective way. In designating them as Islamists, one is not “at war against Islam.” Millions of French are expected to take part in marches across the country today to pay respect to the 17 people, including 10 journalists, who were killed in the attacks. There is going to be just one slogan: “We are all Charlie.” Do they believe it? The French would do well to remember that, once all is said and done, they still live in one of the few countries in the world where they can think and say what they like, a state of bliss a majority of Muslims across the globe could only dream of. And, the prophets of decline notwithstanding, that is something worth living and fighting for.

When it comes to the Middle East, Trump again has the advantage of being an unknown quantity. Although he has talked a lot of nonsense about foreign policy, he has also insisted on a valid point: the current US policy simply doesn’t work. That, in turn, might persuade him to look for something different, creating at least an opportunity for repairing some of the damage done by Obama’s wayward policies to peace and stability in the Middle East. Clinton, in contrast, already has a record. She backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt before Obama decided to ditch them. She was co-pilot in Obama’s disastrous policy in Libya. On the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict, she did the hoola dance choreographed by Obama, going round and round and getting nowhere. Clinton was also in the driving seat when the US launched secret talks in Oman with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a textbook example of diplomatic chicanery that led to the great swindle known as “the Iran Nuclear deal.”

The Syrian Ba’ath Party claims to have 2.3 million members — but most of that consists of people who need membership to get a job or be promoted. Leaving aside a few thousand top cadre (mostly from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs), the Ba’ath Party is no more than an empty shell.