For many, the Frenchman Maximilien Robespierre, now more than two centuries dead, is a two-dimensional character who ruled over the chaos of revolutionary France with the guillotine. By contrast, the Jordanian Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh (aka Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), the founder and leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, against whom we waged a bitter, blood-soaked campaign, seems to fit the context of our times. We reviled Zarqawi’s tactics, but we came to grudgingly respect his effectiveness and commitment. And as we studied Robespierre in history and Zarqawi in hindsight, the very real complexity of
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