France's Impressive Counterterrorist Operation

Well, the operation looked pretty impressive when I first saw the breaking news this morning at 1:00am.

And it appears more impressive still in the light of morning, with the terrorists killed and most of the hostages released unharmed. (There're reports that some hostages were killed; more on that in later updates.)

So obviously I'm on the same page as Max Boot, at Commentary:

If early reports are accurate, the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) pulled off a an impressive counterterrorist success in Paris today, even if it wasn’t as impressive as initially reported. Its commandos raided simultaneously two locations where a total of four jihadists–two of them the perpetrators of the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre–were holed up with hostages. Apparently they killed three terrorists, while one female accomplice escaped. Sadly, early reports that all of the hostages were freed turned out to be premature; news soon arrived that a number of those held a kosher supermarket had been killed.

Sadly it is much harder to free hostages safely in real life than it is in the “reel life” of the movies and TV–especially when the hostage takers are fanatics seeking martyrdom. Under such circumstances the French forces did the best they could. It’s doubtful that any of the world’s other premier counterterrorist forces–notably SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, the British SAS, the German GSG-9, and the Israeli Sayeret Matkal–could have done any better. And others, notably the Russians, probably would have done much worse–their disregard for human life has become notorious.

The French certainly showed no lack of elan or aggressiveness. The French operators not only killed three terrorists but also the myth of France as a land of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”–a cruel and crude stereotype born in 1940 when Hitler’s panzers overran the entire country in a few weeks and confirmed, in the minds of some Americans, when France refused to join the Iraq invasion in 2003. This rather ignores some salient facts, including the fact that France showed no surrender while fighting in Indochina and Algeria in the 1940s-’50s. Although France lost those wars, its warriors fought with as much heroism as any army in the world. Indeed, it is worth recalling that prior to 1940, France was a byword for military glory stretching all the way back to the days of Louis XIV and Napoleon.

More to the point, and more recently, France has emerged as a stalwart in the war on terror...

Still more at the link.

Definitely impressive, although I'm not quite as forgiving of France's collapse in 1940 (the French general staff literally just gave up after the Wehrmacht broke through the Ardennes.)