Getting Saddam

THE war against terror is swinging round the points of the compass. The needle shows Yemen, apparently, Somalia (again), and Sudan. This is reminiscent of earlier international wars waged against slavery and piracy, when the British navy took the lead bombarding harbors and attacking ships in various waters, off black Africa, and the Barbary Coast and the Pirate Coast, otherwise known as Algeria and the Gulf. Nationbuilding was not in the order of the day. How the various African and Arab potentates organized their affairs was up to them, so long as they accepted what were already becoming international codes of decent conduct. Some still did not fall into line until the redcoats marched up to their citadels. Had rulers on all continents synchronized efforts to eradicate barbarism, there would have been no colonialism.

Mr. Pryce-Jones, an NR senior editor, is the author of The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, just reprinted by Ivan R. Dee.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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THE war against terror is swinging round the points of the compass. The needle shows Yemen, apparently, Somalia (again), and Sudan. This is reminiscent of earlier international wars waged against slavery and piracy, when the British navy took the lead bombarding harbors and attacking ships in various waters, off black Africa, and the Barbary Coast and the Pirate Coast, otherwise known as Algeria and the Gulf. Nationbuilding was not in the order of the day. How the various African and Arab potentates organized their affairs was up to them, so long as they accepted what were already becoming international codes of decent conduct. Some still did not fall into line until the redcoats marched up to their citadels. Had rulers on all continents synchronized efforts to eradicate barbarism, there would have been no colonialism.

Mr. Pryce-Jones, an NR senior editor, is the author of The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, just reprinted by Ivan R. Dee.