The historic city of Cologne, Germany, erupted in chaos over the weekend as 1700 anti-Islamic refugee protestors clashed with about 1300 demonstrators who support resettling Muslim refugees in Germany. Water cannon was used by police on the anti-refugee protestors.

https://youtu.be/YuAfil_nk8E

About 500 of the anti-refugee protestors originated in the European group PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), but were joined by women’s rights protestors and right wing activists to voice their rage at the attacks on German women that occurred in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve. Of the 31 men charged in the sexual assaults on German women, most were from North Africa or Middle Eastern nations, and 18 were thought to be asylum-seekers. Up to 1000 attackers are thought to be involved.

It’s not difficult to understand the wrath of native German people in response to the assaults on their women. The stories told by the victims — nearly 200 have reported assaults just in Cologne — are harrowing.

One woman reported:

“All of a sudden these men around us began groping us. They touched our behinds and grabbed between our legs. They touched us everywhere. I thought to myself that if we stay here in this crowd they could kill us, they could rape us and nobody would notice. I thought we simply had to accept it.”

Andrew C. McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted “Blind” Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in 1995 and who has written extensively on Islam, describes the M.O. of Muslim attackers on women:

The Muslim men used a tactic that has escaped the notice of fantasy Islam devotees but is well known to those of us who’ve followed the scant reports on the rape jihad as it has proceeded from Tahrir Square to Malmö to Rotherham: A group of men encircles the targeted woman or girl, trapping her while walling off police and other would-be rescuers. Knowing they are a protected class, the Muslim men have no fear of the cops — “You can’t do anything to me,” and “Mrs. Merkel invited me here,” are just some of the reported taunts. By the time “help” reaches one victim, the assailants have moved on to the next.

As a result of the protests, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party have proposed stricter laws on allowing refugees in Germany, which has already taken in 1.1 million.

But is it too little, too late? Has Germany changed irreparably?

Clearly, as one writer at Legal Insurrection put it, the refugee crisis was brought about in Germany by “a lack of foresight, leadership, and planning.” Perhaps it’s to make atonement for the guilt brought about by the crimes of the Third Reich, but it’s the need for political correctness that is driving Germany in lemming-like manner off the cultural cliff.

McCarthy blasts Merkel and other German officials — along with a compliant media — for first suppressing the size of the attacks on New Year’s Eve. He also warns that this is the first salvo in an Islamist drive for conquest of Europe: attack women and treat them as “spoils” of war in order to intimidate the non-Muslim population. And as attorney, writer, and Iraq war veteran David French notes, these refugees are pouring in from nations where the vast majority of the Muslim population believe that sharia law should be the “official law of the land.”

Oh, and by the way, McCarthy also points out that since President Obama has been in office, the U.S. has issued over 100,000 green cards each year to migrants from Muslim-majority nations. Republicans are no better; Congress is now on course to issue another 680,000 green cards to Muslim migrants over the next five years. And now Obama has invited a Syrian refugee as guest of the First Lady at the State of the Union address on Tuesday — clearly sending a message to Americans that he intends to bring in refugees despite their concerns.

WH announces that a Syrian refugee to have a seat in the First Lady's Box for the State of the Union Address Tuesday night.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) January 10, 2016

I’ve heard it said that America has been more successful in its efforts to assimilate migrants from other nations. We’re more open and less prejudicial. But Germany has opened its arms to Muslim refugees — how’s that working out?

At heart I appreciate immigrants. My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany who came to America prior to World War One. I heard their stories from my mother while growing up. I get the desire of people to escape poverty and gain a better life.

My grandparents eventually settled in Gary, Indiana, a city built on the steel mills and which then boasted a population of hundreds of European immigrants. In my mother’s neighborhood were fellow Germans, but also Greeks, Serbians, and Italians, and even an elderly woman from England. Their collective faiths may have been Lutheran, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, but their Western cultures allowed them to assimilate into American society. None were from religions that boasted of conquest of their adopted land, or the right to rape women, or establishing their own version of law. They all blended into the American culture, and the nation became the better because of immigrants like them.

I don’t know if Germany is beyond repair. I worry that Europe may eventually become “Europistan.” But seeing the chaos boiling over in Germany after its leaders embraced “Fantasy Islam” to the detriment of her social order should give Americans pause when President Obama and the Democrats try to foist poorly vetted Muslim refugees upon this nation. It cannot end well.