these people are delusional, and it's never really been clear how high up this stuff goes. sometimes, it's just a crazy person, and it's obvious. sometimes, you wonder if somebody quite powerful is legitimately trying to turn the clocks back, as though they think france and austria are front lines in a conquest they never completed. never mind the centuries of reversals, napoleon or the wars of independence in eastern europe - that never happened. let alone charles martel, or the reconquista. instead, they have their own manifest destiny to finish the conquest of rome and convert the infidels once and for all. it has no existence except in their warped minds, but they can't see beyond it, either.
they lose every war they start - in syria, in libya, in afghanistan, etc. but, they keep launching them because they have so much cash, and i guess that if they can't defeat syria then they'd might as well pick an easier target, like france. right?
regardless of whether this is organized or random, this is increasingly sustained, and some kind of regional response is increasingly necessitated.
the french once had to invade northern africa to stop the arabs from raiding the coast. one would think that sort of thing ought to be behind us, but...