From Algiers to Baghdad

A column in the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon’s special operations chiefs have decided to screen The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 classic film of urban terrorist insurgency, for Pentagon employees. The decision to show Algiers, David Ignatius writes, is “one hopeful sign that the military is thinking creatively and unconventionally about Iraq.”…

The Battle of Algiers was the premier political film of the 1960s. It was studied by the campus left for its lessons in revolutionary-cell organisation and was obligatory viewing for Black Panthers. The first part of the film depicts the campaign of terror launched by the National Liberation Front (FLN, called ‘‘the organisation’’ in the film) against French colonial rule in 1954. The story is built around a criminal-turned-revolutionary known as Ali La Pointe, and it details his political epiphany and his terrorist career. The movie’s second half concerns the reaction by the French military, which consists primarily of a campaign of torture and murder, and focuses on the leader in charge of that campaign, ‘‘Col. Mathieu.’’ Mathieu is by far the best-realised character in the film; his is the only role filled by a professional actor.

From its first release, the film was extremely controversial: When the film was finally shown in France, theaters were bombed. In Italy, viewers were attacked…

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At one point Mathieu challenges the hostile French reporters with a question of his own: ‘‘Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer ‘yes,’ you must accept all the necessary consequences.’’ Mathieu might as well be addressing the American military and the American public. Is the United States to remain in the Middle East? If so, what are the ‘‘necessary consequences’’? Do they include working with former members of the Baathist secret police, as recent news stories have suggested? Do they include the night-time invasion of Iraqi homes and the inevitable shooting of innocent civilians? To raise such issues is not necessarily to condemn the continued presence of troops in Iraq; there would be disastrous ‘‘necessary consequences’’ to an American withdrawal, too. But moral compromise, according to the film, was inherent in France’s position in Algeria… to listen to Mathieu is nevertheless to be challenged on whether moral compromise is also inherent in the American role in Iraq.

(From an article by Charles Paul Freund at http://www.slate.com)