The Toulouse Shootings and Ramifications

International headlines were made in France earlier this week, when this mad shooter took the lives of Jewish children and their father near a school in Toulouse, and did so ruthlessly.

It was later determined that this man, Mohammed Merah, a 23 year old of Algerian Muslim descent, had also been responsible for earlier shooting deaths of some French troopers, answering an add in the paper from one of them, who was trying to sell a scooter.

The police made the link, noticing that the same gun was used, and that these crimes were likely the product of the same gun.

Suddenly, theories went wild. It was assumed that the shooter was likely a white supremacist, and that these were racial hate crimes from an extremist neo-Nazi type of guy, or perhaps even some group.

It wound up being another kind of extremist, and a hate crime of a different sort.  Mr. Merah was an Islamic extremist, having even trained in terrorist camps, and claimed these shooting to Al-Qaeda, which he claimed to be a member of. He committed the shootings in the name of Palestine. Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, for his part, disavowed this, and condemned the shootings. This came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proclaimed this to be an act of anti-Israel "propaganda".

It obviously generated considerable attention the world over, but it was used as a political football not just internationally, but domestically, as well. It is, after all, an election year in France, and thus, something that drew this much attention would obviously be noticed and commented on.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the current President who is facing a very tough election year which he has been trailing for quite a long time, and who has low approval ratings and is often blamed for not improving, and in some cases exacerbating, France's problems, has tried to maintain calm following the incident, aiming to avert an anti-Muslim backlash.

Another French politician, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extreme rightist Front Nationale, had been quiet initially, when rumors swirled that it might be a white supremacist. It seemed at first that this was an embarrassment to the party that has often been associated with white supremacists, and so she quietly gave her condolences and showed her opposition to these crimes. However, once it was deemed that the shooter had been an Islamic extremist, Marine Le Pen gave voice to her traditionally anti-immigration stance, proclaiming that tougher measures are needed, and that this is a real problem that needs to be recognized. Having been pressured to silken initially, she was the first major French politician to speak out on the issue.

From my end, I had a sickening feeling, right away, that this would be used by many Americans to reaffirm their own prejudices towards France in general, no matter what the shooter's intentions.

Sure enough, those comments did not take long, either. A coworker of mine mentioned how he thought the French were "pussies" for not simply storming the house and forcing the surrender of the murderer, who opened fire and shot two officers in a shootout, and who later kept negotiating with police, and at some point expressed pride in his role in the shootings, claiming that he had brought France to it's knees, and that his only wish was that he could have had more victims.

It seems amazing to me that the senseless actions of a madman that everyone is trying to distance themselves from, albeit for various reasons, would end up being exploited by many prominent politicians to meet their own end, and to score political points

It cheapens the event and it's victims, and illustrates why politicians are often viewed as snakes. One might almost get the impression that these politicians were waiting around fro something to happen, for some headlines that would finally allow them to react to and possibly make headlines of their own. It did not take long. It shows that such stories are getting less and less shocking, which is to say, they are getting more and more accepted, frankly. Yes, it generates attention, but look at how quickly politicians, international and domestic, utilized this as an opportunity to forward their own propaganda, whatever position they were taking.

Add to that that common folk, such as my coworker, have to chime in and use this tragedy to confirm their own prejudices, disregarding that the shooter was acting out on his prejudices, and the whole thing was just an ugly and tragic event, from the actual actions, which were inexcusable, to the reactions, which were more often than not close to inexcusable themselves.