WTH?? Pentagon Screened 'The Battle of Algiers' in 2003?

[leftchick]

and not surprisingly didn't get it......

http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/common/imageViewer/0,1445,258684,00.jpg

MISUNDERSTOOD MOVIE? A scene from Gillo Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers' courtesy of Rialto Pictures

<snip>

The woman, Zohra Drif, knew there would be victims as she left, unnoticed thanks to her European looks, to take refuge in the Casbah old quarter minutes before the early evening blast.

What she could not have known was that her actions and those of her colleagues in the 1954-62 independence war, instead of fading into history, are the subject of unprecedented scrutiny among counter-terror specialists around the world.

The renewed interest is thanks to a decision by the US military in 2003 to screen the classic 1965 film about the war, The Battle of Algiers, for officers preparing for duty in Iraq.

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas," read a flyer for the film, a dramatized reconstruction of episodes in one of the world's bloodiest post-colonial wars.

If the idea was to understand why people rebel against occupation, Drif now says, the Pentagon's move was a failure.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3816042a12,00.html

[WCGreen]

1. I watched that movie to see how Iraq would turn out....

Remember, the French experienced about a dsecade of turmoil back home with riots, bombings and kidnappings....

[leftchick]

3. I am sure that is what the pentagon is counting on

here. :(

[endarkenment]

2. I believe that many officers do get it.

There are lots of them who are bright - real bright - and they get it indeed. However the military is not about bright officers, it is about chain of command and executing the plan. Even if many in attendence 'got it' there is little they could do to change what we did and what we are doing.

[SharonAnn]

4. We have civilian "control" of the military. President and congress decide