Mark Steyn sees more hope for political stability in Iraq than in western Europe.

So Europe's present biculturalism makes disaster a certainty. One way to avoid it would be to go genuinely multicultural, to broaden the Continent's sources of immigration beyond the Muslim world. But a talented ambitious Chinese or Indian or Chilean has zero reason to emigrate to France, unless he is consumed by a perverse fantasy of living in a segregated society that artificially constrains his economic opportunities yet imposes confiscatory taxation on him in order to support an ancien regime of indolent geriatrics.

France faces tough choices and, unlike Baghdad, in Paris you can't even talk about them honestly. As Jean-Claude Dassier, director-general of the French news station LCI, told a broadcasters' conference in Amsterdam, he has been playing down the riots on the following grounds: "Politics in France is heading to the Right and I don't want Right-wing politicians back in second or even first place because we showed burning cars on television."

Oh, well. You can understand why the Quai d'Orsay is relaxed about Iran becoming the second Muslim nuclear power. As things stand, France is on course to be the third. You heard it here first. You probably won't hear it on Mr Dassier's station at all.

He makes another point that I'd never thought of, but seems to make a lot of sense. He writes that America is a multicultural country with people from all over, while France is bicultural with basically the French and the Muslim immigrants. And when you have two cultures, you're more likely to have conflict than when there are people from Mexico, China, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Russia, Korea, etc. all mixing it up. I don't know if there is statistical evidence for this, but it sure seems true for countries that are bicultural that the majority and minority groups have longtime conflicts that have never been resolved.