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Here are the last two paragraphs, and they are doozies. These Le Monde guys are as crafty and subtle as I remember them to be over a decade and a half ago when I lived in France.

Read these paragraphs and I will summarize what they are saying afterwards.

Beyond their apparent murderous folly, these culprits are nevertheless captured by a way of thinking. It is evidently a barbaric way of thinking, one of nihilism which is rejected by a great majority of those who believe in Islam, a religion which no more favors suicide than does Christianity; let alone suicide coupled with the massacre of innocent people. But it's a political way of thinking which, by going to extremes, forces muslims to "pick a side", against those who are often referred to as "The Great Satan". In so doing, their strategy could well be to cause an unprecendented crisis in the entire Arab world.

In the long run, this attitude is clearly suicidal. Because it attracts lightning. And lightning can strike them without discrimination. This situation requires our leaders to rise to the occasion so that their people (us) can avoid what the terrorist warmongers want, our entry into their suicidal way of thinking. For we can say with fear: modern technology enables our leaders to go even further. Madness, even in the face of despair, is never a force that can rebuild the world. That is why, today, we are Americans.

When I was in France and discussing translations over way too much alcohol with the father of a French student I knew, we came to the conclusion that you just couldn't understand everything unless you knew a gzillion languages and you knew them fluently. Here's a great example of why.

The writers at Le Monde used two words separately in this editorial in a way that conveys what they mean precisely, but you wouldn't know it unless you knew something of French history over the last 40 years.

The two words are "frappe" and "force". Separately and literally these words mean "strike" or "hit" as in, "the terrorists struck at the symbols of American power"; and "force" as in "Madness is never a force that can rebuild the world".

What they don't need to tell their French readership is what they are referring to when they use "force" in this context and what they really mean by "madness" or "folie". After WWII when France almost ceased to exist as a separate country, Charles de Gaulle realized that (in addition to having a century-long inferiority complex with respect to the British) the French needed to have an independent nuclear force in case the U.S. should ever return to its pre-war "isolationism".

Well, Charles de Gaulle coined a term for their nuclear weapons capability which was "force de frappe". I would translate it as meaning "strike force".

Le Monde, in their way too subtle French way, is advocating that the U.S. (and its allies), not use nukes in their battle with bin Laden. They start out by sympathizing, and almost empathizing with how everyone is angry, but they want cooler heads to prevail before we turn the Middle East or Afghanistan into a hot zone.

And I must say that, as long as the nukes are tactical, I completely disagree. We are the only country to ever fire a nuke in anger. We fired them "to prevent thousands of American deaths", but also to avenge the deaths of servicemen and women at Pearl Harbor. We've done it once before. We can do it again, especially if it means that we can save American lives by doing so. And this time there are civilian lives to avenge, including at least one 2 and one 4 year old on Flight 93.