Mark Steyn sounds the Dogs of War!

Mr. Steyn has a message for the Continent across the pond: Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands.

He hates being right all the time:

Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''

''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

And how has France's fabulous government risen to the occasion? By contributing napalm to the growing blazes across the nation: they continue business as usual.

In the no-go suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.''

What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.

Let's see: "Youths" burn over three-hundred cars and several suburbs; Mr. Chirac calls for "a spirit of dialogue and respect." Yeah, that'll show 'em. I'm sure they can't wait to put out those torches and come to the table. Right.

French society can't stop looking at this crisis through the contradictory perspectives that they've cultivated for far tool long. Their secularism won't allow them to grasp how islamic fundamentalism refuses to surrender to commercialism. The Post-Christian aroma of modern French society will not seduce radical islamists out of their religion. The multi-culturalism today's France praises has no answer for a minority despising everything they themselves praise. To make matters worse, their sense of ethnic identity will not allow them to recognize foreignors as French--even if they're born in France. There's simply no room at the Chateau unless you and you're family have spoken French since Charlemagne. The government's inadequate response reveals just how deeply they don't get it. The islamists within the islamic communities long ghettoized by French society have launched their first intifada on European soil.

Meanwhile, Captain Ed sees coordination a la islamo-fascist terrorists at work:

On October 19th, John Ward Anderson reported to American readers that the Islamists had recruited French citizens for Middle East training in jihad, with the intention of having them initiate warfare within France:

French police investigating plans by a group of Islamic extremists to attack targets in Paris discovered last month that the group was recruiting French citizens to train in the Middle East and return home to carry out terrorist attacks, sources familiar with the investigation said.

One French official said the extremists were using a virtual "underground railroad" through Syria to spirit European and Middle Eastern citizens into and out of Iraq. A senior French law enforcement official, who declined to be quoted by name because he was speaking about classified information, said French citizens had undergone terrorist training at camps in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

"There's always been an enormous jihad zone to train people to fight in their country of origin," the official said. "We saw it Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and now we're seeing it in Iraq."

That prelude certainly seems more than a mere coincidence to me. Within six weeks of the GSPC announcement, we see a massive and coordinated uprising originating from the ghettoes in which Algerian and other Muslim refugees and their families live. The "riots' have sophisticated coordination between cell leaders, using the Internet and instant messaging as well as cell phones -- an odd tool for a spontaneous demonstration where one neighborhood would hardly have those phone numbers at the ready. (Emphasis mine.)

France in particular, but Europe in general, still refuse to grasp what's become clear: islamo-fascists will manipulate the islamists to secure geo-political goals. But the true crisis for Europe remains the death knoll of their civilization combined with the increasing populations of islamists bent on instituting Sharia. How do the powers-that-be in the continent respond? By calling the world a cruel place because of the Catholic Church:

Dr. Emmanuel D. Bezzina of Malta said, "It is a cruel world that we live in. Cruel because the Catholic Church is enshrined in the Maltese Constitution. Hence the power of the Catholic Church in Malta is tremendous. See for yourself, we could not even send one Maltese woman to speak here because had anyone come they would be terrified should publicity be given in Malta and they be seen as promoting abortion. . . . And we have an arrogant Prime Minister and an arrogant party in government who flirts with the Catholic Church."

Another parliament member, Sarah Ludford of London, wrote in a column prior to the meeting that abortion should not be left in the hands of individual nations. "The intention of the conference, to put the issue of women's reproductive health firmly in a European dimension, is entirely legitimate. It is no longer good enough to say that the question of women being denied access to such abortion services is purely a matter for national governments and is nothing to do with Europe. . . . If Euro-silence prevails about the continuing tight restriction or even prohibition on abortion that persists in several member states, we are complicit in women's lives being threatened or destroyed because of excessive deference to the notion of 'subsidiarity'."

How to overcome the principle of subsidiarity was among the topics addressed at the meeting. According to one observer present at the meeting, a representative of Catholics for a Free Choice said, "Well, subsidiarity can change just as did other things. But we keep putting forward our agenda."

The enemy has rooked Europe between the islamo-fascist fanatism of one agent and the absolute secular fundamentalism of the other. The Reasonable European Elites have time only for business-as-usual. Their condescension of reality may cost Europeans the civilization they've lived in all their lives, and that the world has known for centuries. Their collective hubris has made them a contemporary Oedipus. And like the tragic King of Thebes, they'll realize the error of their excessive pride when it's too late.

The Bed's burning! Get up and put it out! But do I truly expect them too?