THIRD AND LONG:

Rumsfeld's Algeria Agenda: Arms Sales and Closer Ties (DAVID S. CLOUD, 2/13/06, NY Times)

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday that he discussed possible arms sales to Algeria with the country's president in what other Pentagon officials described as a growing American effort to build a military relationship. [...]

Mr. Rumsfeld, who later flew to Morocco for talks with King Mohammed VI, is finishing a three-day visit to North Africa that also included a stop in Tunisia. [...[

Mr. Rumsfeld is the second senior American official to visit Algeria recently. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, held talks with Algerian law enforcement officials this month on counterterrorism cooperation, an official said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Mr. Bouteflika reviewed his country's decade-long battle with Islamic militant groups and offered suggestions to the United States for conducting what Bush administration officials have recently begun referring to as "the long war" against Islamic extremists.

"He described it from the inside as to what took place and how they fought off the terrorism," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters. "It's instructive for us to realize that the struggle we're in is not unlike the struggle that the people of Algeria went through."

In fact, it's best seen as the final chapter of the original Long War, with Islamicism being the last proposed alternative to liberal democracy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2006 8:48 AM