Director's Cut

I'll be wandering around various upscale DVD stores in the near future, looking for The Battle of Algiers (or, hell, maybe I'll go ahead and order it from Amazon), which Barbara Keenlyside reviewed here. The three disk set has plenty of extras, and one scene described by Keenlyside is recounted in my summer reading project--which has carried over into fall.

I've already posted a progress report on Horne's account of the Algerian conflict--once again, I don't feel like fishing around through my archives--but I continue to see enough parallels between our misadventure in Iraq and the Algerian war to merit a comparison. Right now, the biggest similarity I see is the willingness of both sides to engage in increasingly violent acts. And such actions will work against the United States, being as how we truly are outsiders in the Middle East (in contrast, the French at least had some support among the pied noirs, or Algerians of European heritage).

As long as the Bush plan for Iraq continues to be the model, there WILL be regular acts of violence. It won't matter whether or not US troops are wounded or killed in such actions. Our presence in Iraq is supposedly to "keep the peace," and if there is no peace, then we WILL be blamed. Just as the French in North Africa ultimately paid the price for, as much as anything else, their INABILITY to stop random acts of violence.

To be sure, the various elements comprising the Iraqi resistance lack the FLN's level of sophistication and organization. But one thing they do have is a surfeit of weaponry. Our dash to Baghdad meant that large supplies of explosives, guns, and other such material was simply ignored. I'd like to think that, if they had a chance to do it over, our military would plan things differently--even if Bush can't bear to admit that there were any mistakes.

It's ironic that, of all countries we could've really learned a lesson from, France was the best model (and I'll add the USSR/Russia as an honorable mention, based on their Afghanistan misadventure). But I guess in the heady days of early 2003, when there was a fever-pitched hatred of all thing French, there never was a chance we'd catch the message...