Algeria, Mali, and why this week has looked like an obscene remake of earlier Western interventions

Robert Fisk is still living in an alternate reality,

 "Syria, please note, is temporarily in a different category, since our desire to destroy Bashar al-Assad allows us to turn all his victims into honorary Westerners. Odd, that. For among the rebels facing the ruthless Assad are folk very similar to Mr Belmokhtar and his merry Islamists, the very men who rouse the anger of Crusader Kouchner."