Learning From the Real Battle of Algiers
by Robert J. AvrechFade In:
Intertitle: Movies Are a Moral Landscape
The Battle of Algiers, (1965) directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, a perennial favorite on college campuses, is hailed as a modern classic. Certainly the skillful use of black & white cinema verite is highly effective, making the viewer feel as if he’s been plunged into the heart of the Algerian maelstrom. The scenes of torture and terror are stomach churning and bring chills to any civilized viewer.
But let’s be clear, the film is a work of leftist propaganda, beautifully crafted, to be sure, but a film that seeks to justify Islamic terror by proposing that the French were so brutal that the Algerians had no choice but to resort to unrestrained terror.
Sound familiar?
You better believe it.
When homicide terrorists first struck in Israel, spokesmen for Fatah, Hamas, Hizbullah and the slick terrorist network, Al Jazeera, immediately claimed that the, ahem, powerless Palestinians, had no choice against the brutal and inhuman Israelis.
In short, Jewish victims—the murdered, the maimed and the psychologically broken—were blamed for the bloody Islamic atrocities.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo was an assimilated Italian Jew from a wealthy family. But like so many secular Jews, he was drawn to the fanatical religious cult of Communism. The Battle of Algiers is his penultimate work of cinematic propaganda. It’s right up there with Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s fawning documentaries Triumph of the Will and Olympia, which elevated Hitler and Nazism to the status of pagan Gods. Riefenstahl’s finely crafted films helped set the stage for the Holocaust by promoting the notion of a Aryan master race destined to cleanse and rule the world.
But now, let’s examine the real Battle of Algiers, free from the powerfully romantic, but deeply dishonest imagery presented by Pontecorvo where Islamic terrorists are accorded heroic and mythic status. In truth, they were a bunch of sharia-spouting thugs, oppressors of women, and virulent Jew haters—your basic, blood-thirsty Islamofascists.
The finest source for the history of the Algerian conflict is A Savage War of Peace, Algeria, 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne.
It is the definitive account of, undoubtedly, the dirtiest colonial war of the 20th century. We tend to think of the French as a bunch of pussies, their tanks and troops welded into reverse gear, but in Algeria, the French were determined and unbelievably ferocious. Once the Algerians revolted, the French army and especially the French Foreign Legion—including numerous German POW volunteers, plus several Nazi war criminals escaping persecution—followed a scorched earth policy.
In 1954, the Legion was deployed from Indochina to Algeria. The shock and humiliation of the defeat at Dien Bien Phu was fresh in the minds of the proud Legionnaires and they were determined to erase that shameful episode. But the Legion were not the only troops ready to sacrifice and claim victory.
“…the [French] army, incorporating Sengalese units legendary for their ferocity, subjected suspected Muslim villages to systematic ratissage—literally a ‘raking over’, a time-honored word for pacifying operations. This involved a number of summary executions. Of the less accessible mechtas, or Muslim villages, more than forty were bombed by Douglas dive-bombers…”
And this was just the opening salvo of the battle. It got worse. Much worse. The level of ferocity—on both sides—almost unimaginable.
Interpolation: Because Yours Truly Sees Connections Between Past & Present
The Palestinians are a lucky people.
Because their enemies are Jews.
Any other foe, especially other Arabs, would have wiped them off the face of the earth a long time ago.
Item: In February 1982 the Syrian regime, feeling threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood, committed a massacre of over 25,000 men, women and children in the town of Hama, where the Brotherhood was centered. Scores of young girls were gang-raped by the Syrian soldiers and then shot in the public bathroom ‘Hamam Alsadia.’
If Israel is foolish enough to surrender Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, as she did with Gaza, then Jordan will have to square off against Hamas and Hizbullah who will step into the vacuum, for the Palestinians will certainly move to overthrow the detested Hashemite Kingdom. Payback for the 1970 Black September.
Anyhoo.
If that happens, buckle up for some old fashioned blood-letting. You can bet that the Jordanians will not use targeted assassinations like the Israelis. Uh-uh, it’ll be mountains of Palestinian corpses choking the River Jordan. Or the conflict will spell the end of the Jordanian state—created by Winston Churchill—and you can just say, “Howdy” to a completely insane Iranian proxy state.
End Interpolation: Now You Know, There are Worlds Within Worlds
The leaders of the Algerian revolt kept telling one another and their cadres to have patience. Democracies, they lectured their followers, cannot stand long wars; democracies have a built-in weakness: elections. And wars are bad for elections. Democracies demand immediate results.
“We can hang on forever,” Ahmed Ben Bella explained to his men, “we can fight and fight, whereas democracies like France have to go to their citizens and explain why their men are dying. And sooner or later, they will grow sick of it. Democracies are inherently weak for they have no patience.”
This theme rises again and again in Horne’s amazing book, and though the French fought in Algieria for eight long and bloody years, Ben Bella was right. In fact, the Battle of Algiers almost brought revolution to the streets of France, and mutiny in the French army.
Now, let’s be clear, the current wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and a dozen other shores where the Islamists sow their bloody work, are not colonial wars. The French had a million citizens in Algeria living as privileged subjects. The wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, etc., are wars of liberation against fanatical, sharia-yearning terrorists who are part of a worldwide caliphite pansurgency. The war in Iraq was a war to overthrow one of the worst dictators this planet has ever seen. Plus: Saddam Hussein was actively supporting Mideast terror. Let’s not forget that he was paying $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
But the idea about the lack of patience in democracies is lodged in my cortex like a steel spike. Everywhere I go I hear people lamenting: “How long is this war going to take?” As if they are standing in line at MacDonald’s.
Perhaps we are too used to instant solutions in our lives.
And the Islamic terrorists know it.
They count on it.
This is not The Battle of Algiers, and this is not Viet Nam. If we had pulled out of Iraq before the successful troop surge—opposed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden—well, no ally would trust us ever again, and the terrorists would have won an enormous victory.
And that would have been disastrous.
Truly, we need to learn patience.
Dissolve:
One could easily argue that Al Qaeda and the worldwide Islamic terrorist pansurgency has its roots in the Algerian War.
The Algerian insurgents were, at the beginning, a mix of westernized intellectuals and Muslim fundamentalists, but soon enough the Islamic jihadists took control. Simply put, they were merciless, willing to commit the kind of atrocities that placed them in the vanguard.
It is vital to understand that what’s going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines and, of course Israel, is part of an old and reliable guerrilla playbook. If you don’t understand Islamic terror and it’s parallel political stages, then you are fated to be crushed beneath the wheels of the Islamic fascists. There is nothing improvised about the daily homicide and roadside bombings. It is a carefully constructed tactic that is part of a grand strategy aimed at the soft heart of the western middle class.
And the Battle of Algiers is where the terrorists first perfected, well, terror.
The strategy for modern terrorism was well defined by the Brazilian guerrilla leader, Carlos Marighela, before he was hunted down and killed:
“It is necessary to turn political crisis into armed conflict by performing violent actions that will force those in power to transform the political situation of the country into a military situation. That will alienate the masses, who, from then on, will revolt against the army and the police and blame them for this state of things.”
Marighela’s philosophy is simple: using terrorism will inevitably provoke the forces of law and order to strike back with overwhelming force and repression, thereby alienating the hitherto uncommitted native population. The idea is to polarize the situation into two extreme camps and make impossible any dialogue of compromise by eradicating the “soft center.”
Wrote Marighela:
“The government can only intensify its repression thus making the life of its citizens harder than ever… The population will refuse to collaborate with the authorities, so that the latter will find the only solution to their problems lies in having recourse to the actual physical liquidation of their opponents. The political situation of the country will become a military situation…”
It was along this simple but effective doctrine that the Algerians started their war against civilians—without mercy, without quarter.
The opening attack came in a small hot place called Philippeville.
Establishing Shot:
Philippeville was a small mining center of about 130 Europeans and about 2,000 Muslims, who for years had coexisted amicably. Apparently, labor relations were extremely good with a rare degree of equality between Muslim and European.
It appears that the whole Muslim community was aware of what was about to happen on August 20, 1955. A number of Muslim families even left town.
But no one warned the Europeans.
Montage:
Shortly before noon, four groups of fifteen to twenty Muslim men attacked the village, taking it completely by surprise. They were led by Muslim mineworkers who knew each house and their neighbors. Intimately.
Telegraph lines were cut, the emergency radio transmitter was found to be “out of order” and the village constable who was equipped with warning rockets had “disappeared.”
The Muslim attackers went from house to house, slaughtering all the European occupants: men, women, children, and infants. All the time egged on by Muslim women with their eerie ululations. From the Mosque came exhortations to slit the throats of women and nurses in the cause of jihad.
It was not until two o’clock in the afternoon that a French Para unit managed to reach the town. An appalling sight greeted them. In houses literally washed with blood, European mothers were discovered with their throats slit and their bellies slashed open by billhooks. Children had suffered the same fate, and infants in arms had had their brains dashed against the wall. A mother disemboweled, her five-day old baby slashed to death and replaced in her open womb.
Four entire families had been wiped out to the last member; only six who had barricaded themselves in a house in the center of the village and had held out with sporting rifles and revolvers had survived.
Men returning from the mines had been ambushed in their cars and hacked to pieces. Altogether thirty-seven Europeans had died, including ten children under fifteen, and another thirteen had been left for dead.
Not surprisingly, Pontecorvo did not include the Philippeville massacre in his film. Dramatically, it would have shredded his carefully constructed thesis.
The reaction of the French army was immediate. Out in the streets they found:
“…bodies literally strewed the town. The Arab children, wild with enthusiasm—to them it was a great holiday—rushed about yelling among the grown-ups. They finished off the dying. In one alley we found two of them kicking in an old woman’s head. We had to kill them on the spot: they were crazed…”
Wide Angle:
The reprisals were severe. The Algerians claim that as many as 12,000 were killed by the French. The French claim, 1,273. We will never know the truth.
But the Philippeville Massacre had its intended impact. The polarizing effect that Marighela spoke of immediately took place. The Battle of Algiers went on for eight long bloody years, and the brutality on both sides was unspeakable—for there was a burning river of blood between the French and the Algerians after Philippeville.
In Iraq/Afghanistan, Israel, etc., the genocidal terrorists are working from the exact same playbook. They are murdering innocent civilians indiscriminately. The hope is that the governments will clamp down with even greater ferocity and the population will join the terrorists.
With General David Petraeus, his updated Counterinsurgency Manual, and the successful surge, the Americans are playing it smart. They are reacting calmly and professionally. The terrorists are getting desperate, thus the horrific and futile use of homicide bombers, the majority of them outcast Muslim women and young children, many mentally challenged.
But on the home front, the mainstream media, and especially Hollywood, have not a clue as to the grand strategy the terrorists are using. They see car bombs, body parts, chaos and assume that all is lost. They do not understand warfare.
Worse, they do not understand evil.
In fact too many journalists enable evil with their foolish dispatches. And Hollywood strengthens the bloody hands of the Islamic terrorists with a shameful parade of anti-American movies—all which have failed miserably at the box office.
But there are some of us—yes, in Hollywood—who understand Islamic terrorists, some of us who understand evil, comprehend that this is a long war that will be fought on a hundred far shores. We must be patient and yes, steadfast. It takes time, blood and treasury to defeat evil, but it can and must be done or we will be thrown back to the seventh century and its barbarian masters.
FADE TO BLACK:
Exciting Coming Attractions: Don’t miss Part II where we will meet the, er, colorful leaders of the Algerian terrorists, and explore the tragic fate of Algeria’s ancient Jewish community.
© Robert J. Avrech
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41 Comments
Absolutely excellent article.
Thank you.
Does anyone think that if the IDF were to kill as many civilians as the French did in Algeria that France would say ‘we understand’?
Ha! Only Israel must defend itself by not killing any civilians. Even when those civilians are purposely placed in the line of fire.
People don’t seem to realize just how restrained the Israeli’s are(or the US forces are for that matter).You can win by using the most brutal tactics,history has many examples.The Israeli’s choose not too for more reasons than just media scrutiny as do our own military.
Fantastic. I hope you do make this movie as a commentary on the war on terror.
The Algerian insurgents were, at the beginning, a mix of westernized intellectuals and Muslim fundamentalists, but soon enough the Islamic jihadists took control. Simply put, they were merciless, willing to commit the kind of atrocities that placed them in the vanguard.
“westernized intellectuals” = Mensheviks
“muslim fundamentalists” = Bolsheviks
That turned out well..
Someone should post this article in every newspaper in america. It’s scary to think that hollywood sees american conservatism as the greatest evil in the world. How any religion can justify such barbarity towards men, women, and children is beyond insanity. When tax cuts supercede live decapitations as unforgivable sins it has become a dark day for humanity.
Excellent article. I only have one complaint, the use of the term “homicide bomber.”
I understand why people want to use that term rather than suicide bomber (the problem with these people isn’t that they are “committing suicide,” it’s that they are murdering innocents), but “homicide bomber” is ultimately non-descriptive. Pretty much all bombers are looking to commit homicide.
[...] new Big Hollywood blog has a discussion of the Battle of Algiers, both the movie and some of the issues behind it. This is one of those [...]
Excellent piece, sir.
For years, I read how this film was accurate in its depiction of its events. When I finally got it via Netflix, I wasn’t surprised that the French were the white Empire-builders encroaching on the lands of the plucky little freedom-fighting Islamists.
It’s a well-crafted film, which makes the propaganda even more disturbing.
In the 90’s our military were great, we had Sheryl Crow and Hillary traveling together to entertain the troops. I hear that Sheryl taught Hillary how to properly dodge sniper fire, but I digress. Who wants to bet that 6 months from now (or less) we hear all kinds of great news about our progress of “liberating” Iraq and that Obama sure is a great Commander in Chief.
Excellent article. Actually learned more about Algeria from this small piece than all my years of college, or perhaps I should say – my years under socialist indoctrination.
Robert,
This is a fantastic article. It took me three hours to read because I kept going to other sites to get parallel information as I read yours.
Very thoughtful and thanks to A. Breitbart for developing BIG HOLLYWOOD.
Jim
Wow.
Great Article. Met one of the Algerian cameramen while working in Moscow – can still remember his name – Shareef Bensai. Interesting note. When Abdul Aziz took over Saudi Arabia in the late 1930’s – the fanatics (Ikwhan) who fought by his side made trouble for him by demanding he cut off all communications with the West. Mecca and Saudi Arabia were holy lands – no infidels. Aziz tired of this quickly and turned his armies on the Ikwhan – slaughtering tens of thousands. The only survivors fled to the Empty Quarter.
I think it’s a knee-jerk reaction to describe BATTLE OF ALGIERS as “a work of leftist propaganda…that seeks to justify Islamic terror.” Its purpose is not to justify terror, but rather to show the complexities of employing conventional military tactics to combat terror. There’s a reason the Pentagon’s special operations chiefs decided to screen the movie to employees.
Fantastic article, illuminatinig purposes behind the movie, as well as well researched history.
The Left must always present its version of history to justify its actions. The fact that the French lost Algeria not because it lost on the battlefields but because of craven politicians should have taught Americans to be wary of its media. We did not and got Vietnam as a present and the MSM treatment telling us daily we couldn’t win. This is why our schools do not teach history and why so many Americans know nothing of civics.
Dont believe we ask your kids to name two supreme court justices, their two senators, what does the first amendment say about the seperation of the church and state? Did American states ever have restric6tions based on religion regarding voting and office4 holding? Did states have official religions?
So we get generations who believe the pap that leftwingnut sell as history. Ever seen the Burt Lanscaster as the Birdman? What a bunch of fertilizer. But that’s how the left presents history.
“But the idea about the lack of patience in democracies is lodged in my cortex like a steel spike. Everywhere I go I hear people lamenting: “How long is this war going to take?” As if they are standing in line at MacDonald’s.
Perhaps we are too used to instant solutions in our lives.
And the Islamic terrorists know it.
They count on it.”
This is so true. Western societies cannot fathom (or choose to ignore) the daily threats the Israelis must endure. How many Americans can imagine going to the grocery store or the mall and having to watch for a suicide bomber, or checking to see where the best cover is in your immediate vicinity. We can’t imagine riding the bus to work or school and contemplating if the trip will be marred by terrorists bombs or sniper attacks — yet this is the way Israelis have lived for years.
One of my greatest concerns is the western reaction — I can’t tell you how often I heard (otherwise) rational people say we should “nuke the Arabs” after 9/11. There is a certain sense of invulnerability in being able to push a button and send a large missile to a foreign nation and knowing that they cannot retaliate in the same manner.
In reality, the threat to the west is the slowly-creeping, civil insurgence of the Sharia Law into our system of social government.
A very well written and informative piece, Robert. Thank you!
Joe
1. So if the Israelis killed 25000 Palestinians and crushed the insurgency, what would be the outcome? A pacified population living on reservations or a state of Palestine in control of its own borders?
2. The French in Algeria, like all colonial powers, have only one place to go – back home. Whereas the indigenous inhabitants have no choice but to stay. It’s hardly interesting that the indigenous population have more staying power – they have nowhere else to go.
3. Sure the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria may have been defeated by killing thousands of them. But at the end of the day they were Syrians in Syria with no territorial claims. Not hard to defeat civil war by massacre.
Wait, you forgot to add the part where the French kill half a million Algerians, the French military tries to stage a coup, the French government COLLAPSES ENTIRELY (imagine if we had to dissolve Congress and rewrite the Constitution, basically), and then they LOSE THE WAR.
Everyone should read Horne’s book. It’s one of the best and most exciting war books I’ve ever read. But please, please, do not listen to the knucklehead who wrote this article.
1) A safer Israel!
2) In terms of Algeria and colonialism, I agree. That is not what’s happening today in the Gaza Strip.
3) One would be incredibly naive to call the Arab/Israeli battle simply a territorial dispute… which is what you’re implying.
Sorry, my comment above was in response to Ivan Pope…
[...] is worth a look. A different telling of the Algierian campaign.. the Real Battle of Algiers Now back to reading while Mother [...]
Joe, William Perry believes Iran WILL get nukes.
So now Iran has the ability to nuke NYC out of existence.
The Battle of Algiers is coming to a street near you. How much sense did Bombay make? Yet factions in the Pakistan Government did it anyway, with nuclear armed and much larger India having far less restraints than the US or France.
Technology favors for now, whoever can show the most determination to use brutality to terrify and subdue through intimidation. Terrorists, nearly all of whom are Muslim, believe that enough will-power and brutality will cause Western surrender.
In a nuclear age of proliferation, with Iran having nukes, this will mean inevitably a Western city will die because of a cartoon, or failure to submit to Sharia, or some other “provocation” that “enrages” Muslims.
Muslims are not fighting for Muslim rule over Muslim lands, they are fighting to install Sharia in the UK, in Germany, in Italy, and Spain. Along with the US.
This means the Battle of Algiers will go on. And on. And on. Given the weakness of the Gentry, their hatred of their fellows who form competitive threats to them, and a desire to submit to Islam anyway (to destroy the native middle class) this only encourages more Bombay style attacks on the low end to nuclear style attacks on the high end.
Eventually Westerners will tire of the Gentry who allow terror attacks, and wipe out a goodly portion of the World’s Muslims. This will be the natural outcome, if places like China or Russia are not attacked first. Don’t forget that AQ and native Islamists attacked places in Beijing in the opening of the Olympics there. It’s entirely possible Islamists could target Shanghai instead of NYC first. Rest assured the Chinese would have no trouble halving their own Muslim population AND that of the world’s at a moment’s notice. When survival is at stake.
Algiers was “Solved” by the French leaving Algeria. But the French are not leaving Paris, nor the Brits London, as Choudary demands (he predicted Southwark will the new capitol of Britain when Islam takes over “soon” and demands and end to … Christmas because Muslims are offended).
Either Muslims rule London (and Britain) or the British do. Right now Brown wants to surrender and has implemented Sharia law already in Britain. But the trapped Brits are likely to lash out on their own with their own brutality. We might as well talk of the Battle of London. Only this time the brutality will be of European natives fighting Muslim colonizers. It will not be pretty.
Several of the leading neo-nazi web sites are linking to this article in glowing terms.
“Bravo Bravo, at last someone understands”.
Mr. Avrech,
As someone who teaches several courses on film analysis, I’m curious as to why you felt this film had a pro-terrorist agenda (I’m always hearing multiple interpretations of a single film from my students, and I like to engage them on why they interpreted it the way they did). Since there’s more than one way to analyze and interpret a film, your take on it can’t be considered “right” or “wrong” – nor can anyone else’s – but in case you read the comments to your post, I’d appreciate you going into more detail as to why you see this movie as rooting for the terrorists.
I’ve seen “Battle of Algiers” several times, and I always came away with it thinking that, at best, it had a Buffalo Springfieldist attitude: “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong,” and that neither side behaved like the good guys at times. Still, I’ve never seen a bias in favor of the terrorists who plant bombs and shoot down kids in the street, no matter how many times I’ve seen the film. The character of Ali La Pointe, for example, when we’re told about his life and how he came to join the terrorists, he’s not some happy-go-lucky kid who’s been victimized – he’s a petty thug whose natural aggression turns him towards violence, and right away, I seem him as such. Colonel Mathieu, the French commander, isn’t some racist thug or fanatical warmonger – he’s a guy doing his job to shut down a terrorist insurgency, and he’s pretty level-headed about it. He says at one point, “There are 80,000 Arabs in the Kasbah. Are they all against us? We know they’re not. In reality, it’s only a small minority that dominates with terror and violence. This minority is our adversary and we must isolate and destroy it.” The interrogation techniques he uses are used for the sole purpose of getting info, not out of “MUAH HA HA HA HA HA!!! I’M AN EVIL COLONIALIST! MUAH HA HA HA HA HA!!! TORTURE TORTURE TORTURE!!!” At terrorist leader Ben M’hidi’s press conference, he never seems apologetic or regretful for the innocent people his minions have killed, which pretty much kills any sympathy factor as far as I’m concerned.
The only people the film ever made me feel sorry for are the innocent victims of terrorism and violence, the people caught in the crossfire or the kids at the cafe deliberately targeted. I never felt like I was being made to sympathize with the terrorists in this movie.
So again, if you’re able and willing to respond and go into more detail on why you felt the movie was supporting terrorism, I’d appreciate it. I always enjoy debating films like these and what the message was.
Mr Priest,
I haven’t seen the film. It seems to me though, that your reaction that the central message of the film is that “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong” has the ring of truth to it. In Mr Avrech’s defense he mentions that it is in the ’sins of omission’ wherein he believes the films bias lies.
Be that as it may, the premise itself of “Nobody’s right if Everybody’s wrong” applied to Islamic terrorism is quite revealing, for it (and you) imply EQUIVALENCE between the two sides. That the same methodology, whether action or reaction, makes the sides equally wrong.
That I categorically reject. NO justification is possible for what the Muslims did at Philippeville, it was murder most foul, genocidal in nature and EVIL. No other definition or characterization is possible because no other would be accurate. Evil MUST be destroyed.
The Nazi’s and the Allies both engaged in brutal, uncivilized acts but there is NO moral equivalency between the two sides. To claim otherwise would be to reveal oneself to be a moral idiot.
In Algeria, the French could leave and that is what perhaps they should have done immediately. Today, such a course of action is not possible for the West…
As ‘Whiskey’ above so presciently put it, “It will not be pretty.”
Mr. Britain,
I’ve never agreed that the “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong” message of the film implies equivalence. There are degrees of wrong action, and for the reasons stated above, the film does not say the two sides are equal. In the film, the French don’t deliberately target innocent civilians as the terrorists do, in accordance with Colonel Mathieu’s orders in the quote I cited. The French cross the line at times, and that is not portrayed as a “good thing,” but the film does not consider them to be “just as bad” as the terrorists.
Two sides can both be wrong without both sides sinking to the same depths.
And as for this parenthetical comment here: “for it (and you) imply EQUIVALENCE between the two sides.” My comments on the film merely represent what I perceive the film’s message was – they do not represent my view on terrorism or the historical events in Algiers. I hope you’re not making the mistake of thinking that I consider the French and the terrorists to be equal (in real life, at least), especially in light of the entirety of my comments on the film.
My apologies. After rereading your comments its apparent that neither the film nor you equate the two sides as morally equivalent.
That said, your comment,”Since there’s more than one way to analyze and interpret a film, your take on it can’t be considered “right” or “wrong” – nor can anyone else’s…” does appear to assert that moral relativism is the best that can be ascertained. That no judgment can be rendered, as “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”. Is that a fair assessment of your view? Or do I misunderstand?
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[...] Learning from the real Battle of Algiers [...]
Total and complete crap.
You miss the main point in that, despite a hard fought campaign the French still ended up having to leave and left to their own devices the Algerians still made a mess of their country. Now THAT is what is really similar to Iraq. Any other population on earth would have taken the gift they were given and made a working society. Arabs, because they have no tradition of working for themselves and are tied to a useless religion will fail every time.
No matter what we do.
Plus you ignore the fact that Algeria was French Territory and was a department of France. The French were fighting to retain what was theirs. Iraq on the other hand was an unprovoked invasion of an already established nation to change its government-and then once begun was badly bungled in the follow through.
In one regard France and the US are alike-their involvement in wars overseas, cost them dearly at home and forever after hampered their ability to achieve things on a level that they could have achieved had they not fought the conflicts.
You also ignored one major factor too, by 1961 the French people were sick of the whole thing-the clock had run out on French patience, just like the clock has run out on American patience with the misadventure in Iraq.
Thanks so much for all your comments. I’d like to wait to answer questions until Part II is published. Hopefully, this will clarify my entire thesis.
Wow, such an incredible load. Your knowledge of the Algerian conflict and in particular the Philippeville/Skikda massacres could not fill the head of a pin. Relations between the locals and the occupied in Phillipeville were never known to be good. Labour relations were never known to be good. You are confusing the port of Phillipville with the nearby pyrite mining town of El-Halia; where Pied-Noir and Algerian collaborators were butchered by the FLN after the total war declaration. This declaration was a direct result of French mismanagement of Algerian Independence. Rather than support the moderate UDMA faction’s vision of peaceful withdrawal, the French dithered and refused to come to terms with the fact they would eventually have to quit Algeria.
This misstep almost identically parallel’s Israel inability to come to terms that they will have to allow Palestine to rise from the ashes. Had Israel cut a deal with the secular PLO in the 90’s, Tel-Aviv would have a pliant, manageable mini-version of the neighboring corrupt “moderate” arab states. But rather Israel chose to vacillate and know they must deal with Religious nutters(both inside and out). Should Israel squander the chance to cut a deal with Hamas and bring them out of the orbit of Teheran-Damacus-Beirut-Baghdad alignment then it is safe to say the Israeli experiment is over. A nuclear Iran will never have to use the bomb in anger to destroy Israel; demographics and migration to Europe, America and Australia will make Israel disappear with a whimper not a bang. Is it not ironic? A gifted and talented people like the Jews are cursed, cursed with a biblical disease: really sucky leadership.
Why must the French-Algerian war be compared with the Israeli-Arab conflict, which is the epitome of good vs. evil?
Israel is often accused of killing civilians, even when it is obviously only collateral damage. Hamas sends rockets specifically targeting civlians. Moral equivalence? Come off it.
When Israeli civilians die, especially women and children, and most especially pregnant women and babies, Arabs pour out into the street in celebration, hugging each other, firing guns in the air and distributing sweets. Ever see Israelis do that? I haven’t. Ever wonder why?
Nobody connected to Israel had anything to do with the 9/11 murders. Does that tell you anything?
[...] Learning From the Real Battle of Algiers [...]
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[...] winning non-Council post was Big Hollywood’s post, “Learning From the Real Battle of Algiers”. Second place honors went to Frontpage [...]
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