The French government has promised a “pitiless” response to the terrorist attacks on Paris. And it has dropped a few dozen bombs and kicked down some doors. But this crisis requires more than theatre. It requires genuine resolution, which must begin above the neck before radiating down through the spine.

To be fair, French President François Hollande seems to be trying to assemble an international coalition to go after ISIL on the ground, despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s no-boots pledge. But the issue is the West’s overall willingness to defend itself military and intellectually. And here the indications are troubling.

Among Hollande’s announcements after the Paris attacks was freezing the decline in French military personnel temporarily. If that’s his idea of mobilization for total war, he’s not serious. Nor was he in announcing this spring that instead of sliding to 1.2 per cent of GDP, French military spending would hover briefly around 1.4 per cent, well below NATO’s two per cent pledge. If you add pensions, the number rises to 1.8 per cent. What kind of defence department sees almost a quarter of its spending go to pensions?

Answer: the military in a welfare state. Which is also the answer to an even more problematic question: how can any country bring in enormous numbers of culturally hostile immigrants to “reverse” its economic and demographic decline, then leave them to fester resentfully on handouts in squalid suburbs?

The French police are now carrying out hundreds of raids on known “militants.” But if they knew about them, and arrests worked, why not act before the slaughter? The raids may impress law-abiding citizens, but they basically pointlessly disrupt the lives of people who already had nothing better to do than sit around despising the infidel society that shelters and subsidizes them, while occasionally plotting mayhem.

The search for perpetrators of the Paris attacks has included the radical Muslim Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, an infamous incubator of terror within easy reach of glittering cafes and EU headquarters. The Belgian prime minister just sighed, “There is almost always a link with Molenbeek. That’s a gigantic problem, of course.” So is sophisticated resignation in the face of known facts, including the long-standing funding of radical Wahabi mosques in Molenbeek by our Saudi “allies,” who forbid construction of churches in their country.

We are not suggesting banning radical speech or sermons. Open societies win the battle of ideas … but only if they engage in it. And it is not enough to know what we are fighting against. We must know what we are fighting for.

A real response would certainly include rearming militarily instead of clutching Uncle Sam’s pant-leg. France has carried out some 200 air strikes against ISIL since September 2014, barely one every two days. And its task force, centred on the currently operational aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, consists of some three dozen planes. That’s not an air force, it’s a few squadrons. And it’s not a war, it’s a public relations exercise.

The United States, by contrast, has carried out nearly 6,400 air strikes in its half-hearted, unfocused intervention. And after Paris, it went after hundreds of trucks carrying ISIL oil inside Syria, something the French, or Canadians, literally could not do. The United States is the only Western nation to maintain a real military, though small by historical standards. It is also, not by coincidence, the only Western country to retain robust pride in its heritage and a birthrate that does not spell demographic decline.

America has its problems, to be sure. One currently occupies the White House. President Obama famously sneered at American exceptionalism, saying it was just like everyone else’s. But it’s not. America is the land of the free.

So what is France? Its intellectuals and politicians may take perverse pride in their cultural differences from “Anglo-Saxons.” But France is part of the West, an inheritor of the Roman tradition of the rule of law and the Christian notion of individual dignity that, historically, produced open societies.

It cannot survive as merely a collection of hedonists who sip wine in cafes, listen to rock music and welcome tourists to the Eiffel Tower. It must be a vital, vigorous part of the West, seeking immigrants who share Western values. Where is the “fraternité” of Muslim immigrants who, we are assured, mostly reject terrorism but have for some reason made their grubby neighbourhoods no-go areas for kuffar police and firefighters?

We do not accept respected historian Niall Ferguson’s vision of the last days of Rome in the streets of Paris. ISIL is considerably less competent or vigorous than the barbarians who overwhelmed Rome and the West has deep reserves of strength. But defeating the jihadi cause is going to take a lot more than self-indulgent Facebook images, soppy songs and tricoloured lights, political bluster and a few dozen well-publicized air raids.

ISIL’s ideas are repugnant. But they are simple, giving them great appeal to people who are repugnant and simple. And even a bad idea can defeat no idea.

To win this long war, the West needs spines connected to brains, a strong military defending a strong sense of self. We are not there yet by any means.

National Post