The rhetoric of the “long war” against terrorism is back. So is Western military involvement in yet another region. About fifty of the more than eighty people killed in the Algerian siege were foreign and local Arab hostages, captured in the country’s vast southeastern desert.

On the surface, it was difficult to agree with the Algerian government’s assertion, greeted by reluctant nods in Western capitals, that the military operation by Algeria’s special forces was a success. All except a few militants were also killed, but almost certainly they had gone there to die, and kill as many of their hostages as they could to gain worldwide publicity.