Wednesday, October 24, 2007
The Plight Of The Baghdad Taxi-Driver
The excellent Belmont Club provides historical perspective:
Imagine that you are in the year 1958. Instead of Baghdad the city is Algiers. Instead of being herded into supervised villages as historically occured, the 2 million villagers themselves have become French allies. They themselves are helping to hunt down the FLN. A dispirited Ahmed Ben Bella has just released a recording, from his hideout in a cave in Pakistan, begging all Muslims to unite against France due [to] his recent reverses. And to top it off the Algerian taxi drivers are beginning to complain that the killings are so few that almost nobody goes to the morgue any more.
Algeria marked the beginning of the modern period of terrorist warfare. It was a form of warfare that many have called unstoppable. The Battle of Algiers purported to show how hopeless it was to face this faceless enemy. So the question is: why are taxi drivers at the Baghdad morgue cooling their heels?
