Don't give Belgium too much credit in WWII. Two things about their ignominious King Leopold III:
In 1936, Leopold announced a fundamental change in foreign policy; Belgium abandoned its military alliance with France in favor of a return to neutrality; thwarting French efforts at self-defense by refusing admittance even to French military observers.
On May 27th, 1940, Leopold, without consulting the government (or France or Britain), requested an armistice, and on May 28th, he surrendered. The government fled to Britain and attempted to fight on, but the surrender struck a blow to the heart of Allied morale.
Oh, I don't give Leopold any credit at all. :) The Belgian army, however, fought quite well in places despite being horribly overmatched and not properly integrated with the French and the BEF.
I'm not going to get smug on this thread about us being so much superior to the Belgians on that bus who watched those "yoots" beat the man to death. You could hear a story just like this coming out of New York or Los Angeles or Detroit tomorrow. And yet there's some indefinable difference, something I can't put my finger on, about how we would react versus how the Belgians are reacting in this article. I can't help but think that here, there'd be less hand-wringing. The police in almost any American city would react, and react quickly. They'd investigate aggressively, they'd get tips from the 'hood, they'd be able to find the perpetrators without being run off by "dozens of youths."
The difference, I guess, is that here, a bunch of Crips or Bloods that beat a bus driver to death wouldn't have a support system outside their gang, or maybe their families. Society would ostracize them. But as for the Belgians...these punks are *empowered* by militant Islam. They aren't observant Muslims, I'd be willing to bet. But the Muslim immigrant community in Belgium will defend them--out of respect, our of fear, out of tribalism, whatever--and has their backs. They have an entire subculture of hundreds of thousands of people who will stonewall the authorities, who will hide them, who will praise them for what they've done. That's the biggest difference.
These scum aren't doing what they're doing in the name of Islam. But Islam is making it possible.
}:-)4