Failing to learn from the French

[question everything]

June 28, 2004

In writing about Iraq, I have on occasion referred to France's war in Algeria. The Pentagon also sees the parallel, for its interest in the film, "The Battle of Algiers," helped bring that classic back to the screens.

One theme of the Pontecorvo film is torture. The French military captures Algerian resistance (terrorist?) leaders and seeks to elicit from them information about other leaders who might be planning attacks. Col. Mathieu, the main character in the film, is a brilliantly logical torturer, someone who in civilian life might be teaching Cartesian geometrics at the Sorbonne.

In one gripping scene, Mathieu is asked by a reporter about allegations of torture. He replies: "The (rebels) want to throw us out of Algeria. We want to stay. We are soldiers. Our duty is to win. If you think we should stay in Algeria, you must accept the consequences."

The end justifies the means.

Given the similarities, it's not hard to see why the Bush administration has an ugly torture controversy on its hands not just in Iraq, but Afghanistan and at Guantánamo as well. Were it not for the Abu Ghraib photos, we still wouldn't know about these abuses.

(snip)

Goldsborough can be reached via e-mail at [e-mail].


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040628/news_mz1e28golds.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. wow great insight and good post thanks n/t

[struggle4progress]

2. Polarizing film on terrorism gets a tragic, real-life sequel

Jul. 2, 2004. 01:00 AM
GEOFF PEVERE
MOVIE CRITIC

Last August, when the war in Iraq was only five months old and few outside of Baghdad had yet heard of Abu Ghraib, an e-mail was discreetly sent by the Pentagon to certain exclusive recipients. It announced the screening of a movie to be presented by a department called Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. In part it read:

"Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare screening of this film."

For nearly 30 years now, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle Of Algiers has been inciting controversy and inviting dubious official interest from the most far-flung and polarized political quarters. A magnet for countercultural moviegoers during the mid-1960s, the film was frequently cited as essential, if dangerous, viewing for parties pressed against all sides of the barricades.
<snip>

Made by an upper-class former member of the Italian Communist party and ex-commando in the anti-Nazi resistance, financed by the Algerian government and featuring a bona fide revolutionary in one of its lead roles, this still-searing account of the violent insurgence of the Algerian FLN organization against French colonial occupying forces in the mid-1950s remains remarkable not only for its alarmingly convincing, neorealist-meets-verité docudramatic technique (it even begins with a disclaimer insisting that "not one foot" of the movie is documentary) but for its even-handed examination of the evolution of an explosive political situation that, if possible, only seems more timely now than it was a generation ago.
<snip>

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1088719827174&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630&tacodalogin=no

[dand]

3. These illiterate fools don't know the meaning of history,

every mistake that could possibly be made, has been made by these arrogant, greedy bastards.