Zarqawi and His Role Model

HISTORY NEVER REPEATS ITSELF precisely, but it often rhymes. Coalition forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a safe house just outside Baghdad. More than 800 years earlier, the life of Zarqawi’s role model, Nur ad-Din Zanki (1118-1174), came to an end in Damascus, another power center of the ancient Islamic world. The long overlooked connection between the two men should provide a note of instruction for the future in dealing with the Iraq insurgency.

Most tyrants and terrorists are inspired by a charismatic figure who triumphed in a heroic past. Hitler looked back to Napoleon and Frederick the Great. Lenin measured his achievements against the record of the Paris Commune of 1870.