Center for a New American Security

"Hero"?! Jesus...! What that

"Hero"?!

Jesus...! What that man did in Algeria and Indochina should have led to life in prison, not to military honors.

I get that you take a professional interest in military affairs, and I'm sure he's interesting to study from a counter-insurgency viewpoint, but how does that make him a "hero"? Bigeard's claim to fame rests entirely on him ordering the death and torture of thousands of people in order to uphold white racial supremacy. If you think that's "heroic", you seriously need to check your moral standards.

He may have been a warrior

He may have been a warrior par excellence, but "crevettes Bigeard" should not be forgotten, either.

"Bigeard was a patriot who

"Bigeard was a patriot who had the misfortune of fighting for an unworthy cause"

Yeah, and so was Alfred Jodl. Either you make a moral distinction between what people choose to fight and kill for, or you do not. If you do, Bigeard will be on no sane person's list of heroes. If you don't, at least have the balls to be consistent and go celebrate some Nazis.

Donnez-moi, mon Dieu, ce qui

Donnez-moi, mon Dieu, ce qui vous reste
Donnez-moi ce qu’on ne vous demande jamais.
Je ne vous demande pas le repos
Ni la tranquillité
Ni celle de l’âme, ni celle du corps.
Je ne vous demande pas la richesse
Ni le succès, ni même la santé.
Tout ça, mon Dieu, on vous le demande tellement
Que vous ne devez plus en avoir.
Donnez-moi, mon Dieu, ce qui vous reste
Donnez-moi ce qu’on vous refuse.
Je veux l’insécurité et l’inquiétude.
Je veux la tourmente et la bagarre.
Et que vous me les donniez, mon Dieu, définitivement.
Que je suis sûr de les avoir toujours
Car je n’aurai pas toujours le courage
De vous les demander.
Donnez-moi, mon Dieu, ce qui vous reste.
Donnez-moi ce dont les autres ne veulent pas.
Mais donnez-moi aussi le courage
Et la force et la Foi.

RIP. I imagine this

RIP.

I imagine this gentlemen knew a bit more about Nazi's then others...to include fighting them. Which he did.

First of all, Bigeard didn't

First of all, Bigeard didn't just fight to keep Algeria French, he also fought to keep nine tenths of its population disenfranchised because of race/religion, and he did so by liberally dispensing electric shocks and throwing prisoners from helicopters.

Second, the most relevant "difference" here is that Jodl was hanged and Bigeard decorated. But if you don't like the Jodl analogy, pick some other clever criminal -- South African, Rhodesian, whatever catches your fancy -- and then imagine a signed photo of that "hero" on the wall of Gen. Petraeus's office.

pick some other clever

pick some other clever criminal -- South African, Rhodesian, whatever catches your fancy -- and then imagine a signed photo of that "hero" on the wall of Gen. Petraeus's office.

Peter Walls? Crap - Gen. Petraeus could get Peter Walls, himself, in his office. No photos required. In fact, it's a scandal that he hasn't. Shit, Mullah Omar would piss his pants in pure fear and turn himself in, waving a white flag in his hook.

Of course, Walls is pretty old. But he and Sarath Fonseka would make a great tag-team. Didn't the US military start out with foreign advisors? Steuben, Pulaski, Lafayette? Now, in its dotage, we need them again. Frankly, I can think of only three reasons a winner like General Fonseka isn't in the Pentagon already. Racism, racism, and racism. Aren't we open to the diverse experiences of other cultures?

Again, it's a travesty that anyone civilized enough to type on a keyboard could be proud of siding with Robert Mugabe over Peter Walls. Where's the shame, people? Isn't it enough to have destroyed the last attempts at civilization in Africa through ruthless, backstabbing diplomacy and gigantic mindless propaganda campaigns - do you have to go home and brag about it afterward?

Notice the war criminals all

Notice the war criminals all have something in common?

I wonder if we could consider Tamerlane and Chingis Khan war criminals? They make the 20th century pale in terms of ratios when you look at what they did to Iraq. Oh BTW Timur did just fine in Astan, and he was even older than the Pope.

Answer: of course not. They're not European. Or White.

So what's the problem with Sareth Fonseka? Too Burgher for you, you racists?

Elf: Grandly missing the

Elf:

Grandly missing the point here, are we?

Sarath Fonseka is (a) not on a signed photo on the wall of Petraeus's office, and would presumably never be, given what the media might make of it; and (b) that otherwise excellent blogger Andrew Exum would never start a post by calling him a "hero" with no further qualifications; and (c) whatever opinions you might have of the LTTE conflict, it's a hell of a lot easier to support the basic political setup of today's Sri Lanka than that which Bigeard wanted to preserve in French Algeria.

As for the rest, well ... It does seem plausible that if Petraeus had plastered his Baghdad office with Tamerlane memorabilia, that would have been frowned upon by Iraqi visitors.

The French > FLN.

The French > FLN.

I hope he burns in hell

I hope he burns in hell

there's a certain irony to

there's a certain irony to the anti-colonialists posting here. I mean, the Arabs themselves are one of history's more successful settler populations, migrating behind the sword. North Africa was, after all, for all intents part of Europe (and the residents thought of themselves as European) say, 1800 years ago. So it's all a good bit more ambivalent and time dependent than your arguments suggest. Arguably, the 'arabisation' policies of the Algerian government (directed principally against the Berbers) reflect the contiuing colonial domination of Algeria by a settle population.

"Kindly compare the French

"Kindly compare the French Paras against your own government the last 20 years. Or if you like the French for 130 years vs your own government and your charm losing rebels of the last 20 years. The French indeed come off as more kindly."

The Algerian regime is awful indeed and it gets its counterterrorism policy from France and Spetznatz (and I know, as former conscript and soldier; we had to study French and Russian techniques and even had training from their officers when I was in the army). But it is beside the point. We are talking about France. Two disgusting regimes. Yet our government extended literacy exponential over 15 years where the French practically eradicated it over 130 years. Sure Algerians are hopeless and angry today; they were even more hopeless and angry under the French. The last 20 years has as much to do with the way the Algerian officers, trained by France and Russia (Nezzar and his clan all were defectors from the French army in the Revolution, and are Francophiles), look at their own people and how they were enabled and encouraged by France and international community to destroy social institutions and slaughter our people using largely French methods. The entire French experience in Algeria was not "more kindly" than the last 20 years in my country: we have land rights now (none under the French), citizenship (barely subject status under the French), for the extremely ambitious mobility to the upper class (none under the French), we can be full officers in our own genocidal military (hardly under the French), we live where we want in our own country (not under the French). Algeria is not perfect at all. But there was nothing happy or kindly even in relative terms about French Algeria. This is like an American saying, but the blacks had jobs as slaves. The only people who had anything kindly in French Algeria were white settlers. Congo was at least orderly under the Belgians, wasn't it!

"And you wouldn't have been invaded in 1830 if you hadn't spent a thousand years in pirate and SLAVE raids in the Med."

You mean the Ottoman Turks in Algiers and the other coastal cities who themselves were occupiers and at that only in the cities.

"But that's OK because they were infidels and it's OK to rape, enslave and kill them, right? In fact the Koran condones and even commands it, yes? A piracy that only stopped when North Africa was conquered. "

1. The Quran does not "command" any of it -- if you want to talk about it, familiarize yourself with it. 2. Piracy that stopped after North Africa was conquered, its cities emptied of its people, its villages burned, its farmland distributed to white settlers. The invasion of Algeria was not about piracy, it was about the French emperor distracting his population from scandal and getting living space for France's overflow population.

"I think more people will mourn this soldier (to include his former Vietminh foes) than the passing of the FLN leaders, guilty of worse crimes on all counts. But as they were romanticized rebels, that's OK, right?"

The FLN gave the French what they deserved. You act as if the French gave any care for the rule of law or the laws of war in Algeria either. The average Algerian is better off with his own corrupt government than being an illiterate fifth rate subject under French colonial apartheid.

"there's a certain irony to the anti-colonialists posting here. I mean, the Arabs themselves are one of history's more successful settler populations, migrating behind the sword. North Africa was, after all, for all intents part of Europe (and the residents thought of themselves as European) say, 1800 years ago. So it's all a good bit more ambivalent and time dependent than your arguments suggest. Arguably, the 'arabisation' policies of the Algerian government (directed principally against the Berbers) reflect the contiuing colonial domination of Algeria by a settle population"

With all respect, as a Berber myself I find this argument specious and offensive. At least a third of Moroccans are Berber and Over a quarter of Algerians. North Africa was never "a part of Europe" and its "residents" were always aware of that. Especially in Algeria, our ancestors faught all invaders, Romans, Carthaginians, Arabs, French and the rest. Simply because Romans occupied the cities did not mean that the hinterlands were pliant. And the Arabization policy is about literacy and not "directed principally against the Berbers" -- it is directed to produce a common lingua franca, because many people were in the past educated in French (because the French attempted to exterminate Arab culture and language). There is no written Berber language that predates the 1980s, and at that there are 5 or 6 Berber languages in Algeria. It makes no sense to try to use all of them. And there is no Arab "Settler population"; the Arabs in Algeria are of Berber background and Arabic language because Arabic is the historical language of literacy and high culture. Without Arabic there is no way to read Algerian history before the French invasion, because all Algerians who could write did it in Arabic (again, "Berber" is a group of languages and ethnicities). And the most vocal advocates and administrators in Algeria have historically been...Berbers themselves and poor rural people (who are as likely to be Berber as Arab.

"With all respect, as a

"With all respect, as a Berber myself I find this argument specious and offensive. At least a third of Moroccans are Berber and Over a quarter of Algerians. North Africa was never "a part of Europe" and its "residents" were always aware of that. Especially in Algeria, our ancestors faught all invaders, Romans, Carthaginians, Arabs, French and the rest. Simply because Romans occupied the cities did not mean that the hinterlands were pliant. And the Arabization policy is about literacy and not "directed principally against the Berbers" -- it is directed to produce a common lingua franca, because many people were in the past educated in French (because the French attempted to exterminate Arab culture and language). There is no written Berber language that predates the 1980s, and at that there are 5 or 6 Berber languages in Algeria. It makes no sense to try to use all of them. And there is no Arab "Settler population"; the Arabs in Algeria are of Berber background and Arabic language because Arabic is the historical language of literacy and high culture. Without Arabic there is no way to read Algerian history before the French invasion, because all Algerians who could write did it in Arabic (again, "Berber" is a group of languages and ethnicities). And the most vocal advocates and administrators in Algeria have historically been...Berbers themselves and poor rural people (who are as likely to be Berber as Arab."

In the process, you accidentally proved his point. You're not an Arab, you're a berber in a nation that was colonized by Arab conquerors.

Or, as a basic textbook describes it:

"The Muslim Empire, as it took form in the early period, was an Arab military state. Under capable administrative leadership, the Arab conquerors instituted orderly process for collecting revenue and for distributing it by means of the army register. Conquered people were guaranteed their civil and religious freedom (to some degree) as dijimmis in return for their submission to Muslim rule and taxation. The Arabs themselves lived in garrison towns segregated from the conquered populace; they had no intention either of blending into the local life or of inviting their new subjects to become like that. Forced conversion of the djimmis was rarely an issue because the Muslims considered their religion, their Arab background, and their privileged status as conquerors and tax recipients to be inextricably connected."

Since then, of course, much happened, and assimilation occurred in both directions. But the original Muslim Crusader state was an Arab empire, one of the most successful ones in history.

Over the centuries the Arabs have simply blended in to the point they're no longer recognized as foreigners.

How's that for offensive?

The biggest wonder is how they did such things for so long without PC COIN.

The biggest wonder is how

The biggest wonder is how they did such things for so long without PC COIN.

Visitor, you owe me a new keyboard.

1. Oh no, he googled

1. Oh no, he googled something and turned into an Algeria expert!

2. The pretty seafront your author describes is the French area of town, which btw still stands. The "snow-white mosque" is probably the Jamea El Kebir and the "arabesques" are probably at Grande Poste. If you imagine ordinary Algerians were living there or in "splendid villas" by 1910, you're only demonstrating how little you know about the subject. They were mostly stowed away in the Casbah, slum sections and the surrounding villages, under oolice/military watch, in extreme poverty and with nary a French teacher in sight. There were undoubtedly some prospects for social advancement, such as from peasant to shoe shiner, but most did not seem to consider it quite worth the price of several 100 000 dead and being treated as subhumans in their own country. And just to recall the subject at hand: that's the situation your hero Bigeard decided it was worth killing an additional half million people to preserve...

3. Let's hear your enlightened views on the re-enslavement of African-Americans while you're at it. The drug problem seems to have increased since the 1850s, perhaps a good crack of the colonial whip could solve that too?

Well Tewfik, I'm not

Well Tewfik, I'm not actually defending French colonization of North Africa. However to read graffiti at a soldiers wake blog because he was ruthless in war from people who do know better and worked for people who've done as bad or worse gets on my nerves. You notice the Viet Minh foes of his were more gallant. And the FLN were pretty ruthless to Algerian's before they came into power, were they not? I'm not counting pied noir as Algerian here, BTW. However don't get the idea that defending the French or the European colonial powers is my gig..no..

I'm certain you know your own history better than me (except for piracy in the Med which was going on well before the Turks). So let me get to my main beef besides the glass house stone throwing in para 1. It galls me no end when brutal and violent peoples and nations cry victim. And in the case of Algeria, that's their own. Or Iran, or Burma, or...

Enough with the passive/aggressive tough guy whining about Human Rights violations to the point where they actually believe it. It's one thing as stratagem - which was how we employed it against the USSR - although it's role in bringing down the USSR is overplayed. It's another when people apparently begin to believe their own bullshit. HAMAS comes to mind. Please take a page from Saddam's book, he reproached his executioners for being unmanly by taunting him. Which they were. I really wish Human Rights as a talking point would go away, and my country's mistaken embrace of it beyond our borders. Statecraft is not a morality play. Never will be.

I do acknowledge that my country is most annoying on this point. I wonder if we look as bizarre as Libya heading up the UN's Human Rights committee. Or Turkey complaining about 9 deaths. They'll kill that many today.

America frankly, as one of the few nation states left and certainly the strongest, should in it's own self interest lead a moral crusade to restore the International Law of Vattel and the nation state order as the strongest real bulwark against tribal and religious and ethnic chaos. We don't invade anyone, we just make it our policy that our Constitution stops at our borders, we deal with the government in power, and pursue our own interests. The Great global wars of ideology are really over, there is no likely global threat, let's return to the nation state system. International and Transnational systems merely undermine nation states and replace them with - nothing but fantasy. That's the UN, and at the first crisis the EU.

The best we can really hope for is indeed a return to the 19th century - quite stable and prosperous you know, and compared to the wars of revolution and Napoleon which preceded it and World Wars that followed it - quite peaceful.
I'll take the Gilded Age back. Don't worry, the Europeans aren't likely to colonize you. More like the other way round.

Especially compared with the likely alternative of what's happening now - a replay of what preceded the nation state's establishment in 1648, just on a Global Scale. A bunch of 30 years wars all over. For a preview of that scenario, you can review Iraq 06/07. I've called it a Cannibal Zombie movie with guns and RPG's before. I can't really sum it up more pithily.

Here's to back to the past!! Lets just make it 100 years instead of 400.

MM: "Charles Thomas-Stanford

MM:
"Charles Thomas-Stanford saw French Algeria with his own eyes. I haven't."

Thanks for confirming, but I had begun to suspect as much.

"Does the phrase primary source mean anything to you?"

Yes, but not "some random text I googled up a moment ago to prove a bizarrely far-fetched point about a country I know absolutely nothing of, have never visited or read a single book about".

Elf:
I'm not disputing that he was a "great warrior", if that means "smart and effective". I'm saying it's sort of sick that he's called a "hero", and particularly "hero of Dien Bien Phu and Algiers", since those were battles his side waged to enslave other peoples. And I'm saying it shows the extent of the post-colonial problem if his picture can hang on the wall of the US commander in Iraq with no reaction from within military ranks or the media. As for him being dead, well boohoo. If he'd done so in mid-1945 he would indeed have died an honorable soldier, but he unfortunately chose to spend the rest of his career fighting for the wrong side.

Now I'm done with this debate. Please sputter on.

Mencius Moldbug: "How much

Mencius Moldbug:

"How much of what you know about the past of your country comes from the same nationalist regime that leaves you "hopeless and angry?" Don't you think the FLN and its friends might have an incentive to select details that makes the regime which preceded them, which they destroyed in a vicious war which killed hundreds of thousands of both Arabs and Berbers, look even worse than them? "

Please, with all respect, do not patronize me about the history of my country. Most of it comes from my parents and grandparents and neighbors who live it and fought it themselves. But I also read in English and Arabic and French and German and Russian, and I am aware of selective historiography. The fact that an Algerian who speaks only Arabic or Berber can hardly find a decent job in our country if he learns French says quite a lot. There were Algerian who committed atrocities just as there were Frenchmen who did so. Bigeard was one of them. I suggest you do more google research on the history of my country which I have studied and lived for 40 years. I am from the south of Algeria myself but I lived in the north after my military service. I have spoken to many people who witnessed the French bombardments in 1945 and had relatives lynched by settlers and who were tortured by French soldiers. Not FLN militants, farmers and street children at the time. These are primary sources you may want to investigate at some point.

"So, naturally, what this country needed was civil war, revolution, death, destruction and never-ending tyranny. You'd have to be on crack to think Algeria was better governed in 2010 than 1910. Or that the peddlers of worldwide revolution, who were not Algerians, did your country a service. Thanks, Frantz Fanon! At least our president is a fan.
Frankly, if I could vote to have the French colonialists of 1910 invade San Francisco, take away my vote, teach my daughter French, and govern me with its earnest committees and wide, modern streets, I'd sneak back into the booth and vote three times. Mission civilizatrice for me! Unfortunately, it's not an option."

Except that they wouldn't teach your daughter how to read French and they would put you into a camp and build modern streets for French settlers. And they would impress your sons into their army to go and "civilize" some other part of Francophonie. But the discussion as I have understood it here is not about how well the French governed Algeria or how badly our Micky Mouse regime does it today. It was that this Frenchman Bigeard does not deserve to be regarded as his his hero and his cause deserves to be condemned as Americans, presumably would condemn their "red coats". They made the wrong choice and suffered because of it; I refused orders and lost my rank because of it. This is the way life works -- it is not beautiful.

"Bigeard didn't start the war. France didn't start the war. Not even the Arabs started the war. Decolonialization started the war. Decolonialization was a policy from Washington. There's blood on the hands of the people who made the war, and blood on the hands of the people who apologize for it today - as you do. BTW, for every rebel the paras killed in war, the FLN murdered ten ex-harkis in cold blood - and you know it."

There would not have been decolonization without colonization itself. As for the harkis their story is quite sad. Like that of all collaborators, even the "loyalist" proto-canadiens -- tarred and feathered -- and the Vietnamese collaborators too. And of course, the French were so gracious with them when they left them behind to be murdered or put them into camps and discriminated against them and their children afterward.

"Arguably, the Civil War meant a better life for the children and grandchildren of the former slaves. Unlike the war in Algeria, of course. But the 1860s and 1870s were not good times in the South - whether you were black or white. Read any of the slave narratives lately? I have. I likes dem primary sources."

The average Algerian peasant or farmer or city dweller is better off than his grand and great grandfather. He is healthier (and taller because of it), he is literate, he has civil and legal codes that apply to everyone equally unfairly and he can find a career or education if he works hard enough (Algerians were banned from professions in French Algeria except for very few exceptions, single digits by the time of the Revolution) -- and he must work hard. None of that was normal or likely in French Algeria.

I recommend you read the book Modern Algeria by John Reudy (American author), A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne (British), and all the books of John Entelis on Algeria and North Africa if you are interested in Algeria today compared to the colonial period. Also in French and English there are the histories by Benjamin Stora which are very accurate on these subjects. Mouloud Ferraoun also wrote very nuanced and clearly on the violence problem, as well.

Elf: "I hope we can find

Elf:

"I hope we can find agreement on this Tewfik: CNAS needs to upgrade the server. Upgrade the server...Upgr..."

This we do agree on!

"I do acknowledge that my country is most annoying on this point. I wonder if we look as bizarre as Libya heading up the UN's Human Rights committee. Or Turkey complaining about 9 deaths. They'll kill that many today. "

I will say as a citizen and former soldier in the army of a human rights violator: I have never understood American outrage at the composition of the UN Human Rights Council. No government that violates human rights see it as anything more than a formality (the Libyans probably enjoy it for their own humor). It means absolutely nothing in the life of a person "on the ground". All governments are hypocritical. Algerian politicians complain about Americans or Russians killing Muslims in Iraq or Chechnya. Then they send us to staff schools and paratroop or artillery courses in...Russia and America. And they accuse the French paras of genocide and send us to para courses in...France. When they felt righteous they sent us to Germany.

"Well Tewfik, I'm not actually defending French colonization of North Africa. However to read graffiti at a soldiers wake blog because he was ruthless in war from people who do know better and worked for people who've done as bad or worse gets on my nerves. You notice the Viet Minh foes of his were more gallant. And the FLN were pretty ruthless to Algerian's before they came into power, were they not? I'm not counting pied noir as Algerian here, BTW. However don't get the idea that defending the French or the European colonial powers is my gig..no.."

The FLN were ruthless because the French were ruthless. Algeria and Viet Nam were different experiences and relationships with France. The Algerian situation could only produce gore because it was based on gore. It was (and is now, in my opinion) a system that rules by brutality and teaches brutality. The commanders of the FLN were French trained, even many in the maquis (there is an exception, I am forgetting his name; he was one of the commanders who was a POW during WWII and was recruited by the Germans as a spy and he got training from them but he died during the early part of the Revolution). My issue is not that in the War of Independence the French were more brutal than the FLN. It is that men like Bigeard and his contemporaries (French and Algerian) should not be considered a suitable example for people who look to improve "counterinsurgency" or who says like Mr. Exum does that the Americans "cannot kill our way out Afghanistan" as he wrote on this website a few weeks ago.

I was a soldier for 11 years before I left my country. The violence in Algeria was unspeakable from the terrorists and our side. I had commanders that ordered and did many things Bigeard would be proud of, he might even consider them innovative. They were totally unacceptable, no matter the outcome they produced. They were great warriors, sure. Were they great men? Absolutely not.

Tewfik, Sadly, it is not at

Tewfik,

Sadly, it is not at all unusual for people in the 20th century to have a very poor understanding of their country's recent history. And that certainly includes Americans. Your understanding is clearly more nuanced than I've given you credit for, but it still seems to me to reflect a lot of 20th-century nationalist propaganda. In particular, the implied view that the revolutions of the decolonialization period are of indigenous origin, rather than international (American and Soviet) inspiration, is simply not defensible. See under: "National Liberation Front." Algeria traded one master for another, as your spetsnaz training shows.

I like the "apply to everyone equally unfairly" - there is certainly no denying that the French maintained a system of classified citizenship (with Jews, wonderfully, classified as Frenchmen). And as proven in 1945, they had no compunction about a little good old-fashioned massacre. Still, it does not seem to me an improvement to replace, at the cost of enormous death and destruction, a multi-ethnic society with some hereditary social status, with a mono-ethnic society, ruled by a mafia, in which everyone is a third-class citizen except the mafia princelings. I prefer the method of Cecil Rhodes - "equal rights for all civilized men" - which was certainly the direction in which all colonial systems were peacefully evolving, before America had the bright idea of destroying them.

If you are going to criticize French government going back to the 19th century for its human-rights violations, you also need to consider the human-rights standards of the Deys. 'Nuff said. Not only did decolonialization almost always result in worse government, by any objective standard, colonialization almost always resulted in better government, by any objective standard.

Also, in particular I really disliked the Horne book, which seemed to me to very much reflect the standard American propaganda line ("the alternative to violent revolution is peaceful revolution," as RFK I think said). Au contraire. The alternative to violent revolution is no revolution at all. It is very difficult to separate the political changes of the 20th century from the technological changes - the latter would have left Algerians healthier and taller, even if they'd remained in the grip of those nasty French sanitary commissions. Still, if you'd described the second half of the 20th century to any Algerian of 1910 and asked if they wanted to go through that, only a madman would have said yes.

I would strongly recommend the Paul Henissart history of the OAS, if you haven't read it. I also consider Kedourie's Chatham House Version, although it is about the British world rather than the French, essential to an accurate bureaucratic understanding of the political process behind decolonialization. You might also enjoy Lord Cromer on the government of Egypt (vol. 1, vol. 2). It's impossible to read too many colonial sources, as our cultural prejudices against this era are so great.

And I am quite confident that, however much traditional study you have devoted to Algerian history, you can learn an enormous amount about the pre-1923 era from random Google scans. I've certainly learned quite a bit about my own country from this corpus. Foreign visitors are often the best sources - for example, check out Paul Bourget's Outre-mer, a Frenchman's visit to the US of the 1890s. It conveys as no modern historian can the sheer alien weirdness of this country 100 years ago.

PS - no, I am not much more fond of the American Revolution than the Algerian. See Hutchinson's Strictures on the Declaration, for instance. There is life after nationalist origin-myth propaganda history.

Well Tewfik, I seem to

Well Tewfik, I seem to indeed be conflating my current (US vs...) conflicts with yours, apologies. I'm certain that the French were quite nasty, and that their colonial rule racist and exploitative. We are currently in a conflict where we are subject to the most ridiculous whims of lawyers, wanna be lawyers, fearful commanders "I don't want to go to jail", etc, etc. Search my comments on AM for examples. Or google free-our-fobbits. It doesn't work. Really gets annoying to have to let stone cold guilty people go....

It also gets real annoying to have the presumption of all original sin and guilt laid at your door because you are white, male, and Christian (in my case more a product of a Christian civilization than my practice). Meanwhile our own Left - a flaky annoying bunch of children - will ignore the most barbaric atrocities of their little brown pets. When that doesn't work they adopt imaginary Blue Avatar ones (AVATAR indeed). You'll notice in AVATAR it takes guilty white Liberals to save the noble Blue tribesmen. LOL.

But I am actually not in quarrel with you or the FLN, or your right of self determination. Sorry to conflate. Or alle if she's Algerian. If she's French....well...you go your own way Francois. We'll go ours.

Actually if King Dave has that picture up it's one of the more cheerful bits of news lately. Also another little clue that the COIN narrative we put out is well...a meme. The newsreels of our time! COIN for ....er....(we can't say victory)...er COIN for...acceptable outcomes based on a stable Afghan government ...er...

Actually, I am missed something. The entire problem with my CONPLAN Sareth Fonseka was...the SLA are mostly Buddhists. The Algerians also have a proven record of success and aren't Buddhists.

Constable Han? If your listening....these guys need a job.

You want a real hero to look

You want a real hero to look up to, try the (also recently deceased) Manute Bol.

Elf, The official version of

Elf,

The official version of the origins of WWII does not make a whole lot of sense, so it's not too surprising that you are a little puzzled. The best materials on this issue were written by classically trained diplomatic historians, often the same people who debunked WWI, right after WWII. They were frozen out of funding and their school disappeared.

My favorite from this school is Sanborn's Design for War. See also Charles Beard's President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. One that's online is Tansill's Back Door to War. Tansill was perhaps the leading diplomatic historian of his time.

As for decolonialization, you answer your own question. "Why should we prop them up?" The wars left the surviving European powers financially dependent on USG. As such, it left USG in a position to tell them what to do - formally or informally. You will not find a single State Department ukase ordering Britain and France to surrender their colonies (although Eisenhower's "barnyard language" to Eden at Suez came pretty close), much as you will not find an order from Hitler to exterminate the Jews. The simple direct reality was too inflammatory, at least for British and French public opinion. Nonetheless, the policy was clear and it came from Washington. The smart people in Paris and London knew to play along.

Similarly, we know Carter deposed the Shah. By asking: "why should we prop up the Shah?" Having made the Shah a dependent, failing to "prop him up" and deposing him were simply the same thing. If you're looking for a right-wing dictatorship that's genuinely independent of the US, you're looking at Nazi Germany. And the cold war between Washington and Berlin, which started in 1933, made that between Washington and Moscow look like an Ecstacy pile.

Everyone who counted in Washington after the Roosevelt revolution, even the post-WWII cold warriors, would rather have "engaged" with the Soviets than the old imperialists. The empires had no friends in Foggy Bottom. The Soviets had plenty, even after 1948. They were, after all, a wayward arm of the international progressive movement. Sure, they misbehaved. But they were family, like a bad teenager.

Ooops, Rambo is Yemenite and

Ooops, Rambo is Yemenite and works with Al Quaeda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/20/yemen-militants-attack-intel...