ISIS has struck again, this time in Nice, when a truck plowed through Bastille Day holiday revelers and killed and wounded over two hundred people. And yet France, despite repeated attacks and a mounting death toll of innocents, has not, with a stroke, eliminated ISIS and all its works. Is it because they have the army but not the will, or because they have the will but not the army? Or is it because the modern European State is incapable of defending itself out of lethargy, ideology or worse? What are we to make of the words of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, immediately after the attack, that “France must learn to live with terrorism.” He did not say that France must fight, he did not say that France must utterly destroy the monsters, he said France must surrender and submit to children and the innocent being killed by Muslim murderers.

The French have a long military road
Of victories where marching armies strode
From ancient Gauls who sacked and burnt down Rome
To battles far and wide and close to home
Remember Austerlitz of golden sun
The Marne, and Compiegne and blood Verdun
Of Carillon and infantry in white
The golden lily banner midst the fight
Remember La Rochelle and fighting ships
And Marignano’s Austrian eclipse
And Borodino and the cry L’audace!
And the defiant words, They shall not pass!
What happened to the memories of the past
Have all resigned themselves that things don’t last
That history and honor are for fools
That battle glory is just food for ghouls
I won’t believe the French won’t rise and fight
And trample in the dust with French iron might
The murderers who taunt and rape and kill
Whose lust for Western blood they cannot fill
Destroy them root and branch, kill every one
And show them Austerlitz and blood red sun