Monday, March 06, 2006
The talkies: What are the best counterinsurgency movies?
. It is in some ways the grittiest and most realistic counterinsurgency movie I have ever seen, even if it lacks the gore of more modern productions. My son had seen it in school, and reported that the Pentagon had screened it for officers going to Iraq. Indeed, it did, as reported in this article from Slate a couple of years ago. Charles Paul Freund wondered -- presciently, I might add, since he was writing in August 2003 -- whether the American military would draw the right conclusions from this forty-year old French film about Arab terrorism:
What does any of this have to do with Baghdad? Terror. The Mideast learned the efficacy of insurgent terror from Algeria. The PLO, Hamas, and other groups are indebted to the Algerian strategy of so-called "people's war." Its lessons are now apparent in Iraq, too. Yet the film treats the Algiers terror campaign as a failure: Its later bombings and shootings are made to appear increasingly desperate and strategically pointless. "Wars aren't won with terrorism," says one key revolutionary. "Neither wars nor revolutions." But that depends at least in part on how the other side reacts to terror, whether the other side is France in Algeria or the United States in Iraq. Wars may not be won with terror, but they can be lost by reacting ineffectively to it.
This is where The Battle of Algiers is potentially most valuable and most dangerous as a point of comparison for the U.S. military. While The Battle of Algiers has next to nothing to say about overall French strategy in Algeria, its most obvious military lesson—that torture is an efficient countermeasure to terror—is a dangerous one in this particular instance. Aside from its moral horror, torture may not even elicit accurate information, though the film seems to suggest it is foolproof.
The French military view of torture is articulated by Col. Mathieu in the course of a series of exchanges with French journalists. As reports of torture spread, the issue becomes a scandal in France. Mathieu, however, is unwavering in defense of the practice: To him it is a military necessity. Informed that Jean-Paul Sartre is condemning French tactics, for example, Mathieu responds with a question that would warm Ann Coulter's heart: "Why are the liberals always on the other side?"
One is almost forced to wonder whether French cinema has influenced American policy for the worse. Rent or buy The Battle of Algiers
, and form your own conclusions.I've been interested in counterinsurgency movies since college, when the great Australian film Breaker Morant
inspired my undergraduate thesis, "The Possibilities For Clean Counterinsurgency". That movie portrayed the moral confusion of irregular war as well as any yet produced, perhaps because we have enough historical distance from the Boer War that it is no longer grist for political or policy argument.These are surely two of the best movies made about counterinsurgency outside of Vietnam. Are there others? Your nominations in the comments are most welcome.
There is a timelessness to this sort of struggle that makes one wonder whether Hollywood will find the courage to produce a great film about Iraq, parsing the complexity of that struggle with the subtlety of Breaker Morant and The Battle of Algiers. Very few people in Hollywood -- other than director Clint Eastwood (hint, hint) -- could make that film without it seeming like a propaganda piece for one side or the other. Some day a serious Iraq war film will be made, but how many generations will have to elapse before an honest one will be?
3 Comments:
By 
sunguh5307, at
Mon Mar 06, 01:32:00 PM:
I think 'Battle of Algiers' is an excellent movie for examining counterinsurgency. Of course, you have to prepare yourself for it as an example of how the insurgents win, and the 'oppressors' lose, despite their devious methods. And aware of the historical inaccuracies covered up in the period between 1954 to 1962 when the French eventually left.
With those omissions in mind, it shows how the insurgents seek to divide and polarize their support base against the alien oppressor by taking away their connections to the community. Eliminating those who profit from cooperation with the 'oppressors', just as mentioned, Al Qaeda seeks to undermine the existing Iraqi government by their existence and support from Sunni neighborhoods. All variations of 'People's War' with differing local characteristics and goals.
I will have to see this 'Breaker Morant' film, as it was before my time. I find myself seriously wondering if Western countries fighting 'irregular' actions, such as the current unpleasantness in Iraq, are possible with our current understanding of 'human rights' and a 'free press'. I am very displeased to say that, despite amazing leaders and ideas, it seems possible we might still lose this thing due to the agitprop of Anti-American elitist influence. And I can think of few other explanations that could explain why we let it happen.
I hope dearly my pessimism is unwarranted...
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Mar 07, 05:01:00 PM:
By 
, at
Tue Mar 07, 06:40:00 PM:
I am an active duty Army officer, and currently a student at the Command and General Staff College in KS. We have screened The Battle of Algiers in class (I've actually seen it twice in two different classes) and I must say that the conclusions we have drawn differ significantly from those of Charles Paul Freund. Let me also say that we have also used other sources to discuss the French experience in Algeria, but I will try to limit my comments to the film.
First of all, the French solution to the insurgency is purely a military one. Col. Mathieu and his paratroopers are brought in and are expected to root out and defeat the insurgency, without any other response from the French government. The insurgency had a cause, as outlined early in the movie by the insurgents themselves. France chose to ignore the insurgents and attempt to keep the status quo, i.e. Muslims as second-class citizens. Col. Mathieu was very, very effective in what he did. In short order the insurgency was eradicated. His methods, say what you will about them, allowed him to win the battle.
But here's the point. While the French clearly won the battle of Algiers, they lost the war. The root causes of the insurgency were never dealt with, and still simmered even after the active insurgents were all confined/killed/tortured by Col. Mathieu. Military victory in an insurgency does not amount to a complete victory. Defeating an insurgency requires the use of all the elements of national power, and ultimately requires assimilating the insurgents into the political process (as apposed to killing them all).
An insurgency is mainly a battle of ideas, depending upon what type of insurgent group you are dealing with. A typical Maoist insurgency seeks to replace a corrupt government with one "of the people." There was always a brighter day on the horizon and the idea that the insurgents could do a better job of governance than the current officeholders. It is this idea that has to be countered, not necessarily the insurgents themselves. Our job in Iraq, and I think in places we are doing it quite well, is to counter the insurgent's ideas about the future of Iraq, some if not most of them religiously based. We have presented them with a better idea (to a Westerner anyway) and are now working to make that a reality. Once more and more people in Iraq figure out for themselves what we already know, democracy and capitalism work, the insurgency will become less and less relevant.
This is the ultimate lesson of the movie, from my perspective. The military can win battles, but cannot win the overall insurgent war without a coordinated effort from the other branches of government, using all elements of national power.
As an aside, I recently saw Red Dawn for the first time in a decade, and was surprised at what I picked up about insurgencies. The problem, of course, for the Russian/Cuban forces in the movie was that the Americans were never going to buy in to their ideas about governance, having already tasted freedom. The Russians were as merciless as Col. Mathieu, shooting civilians in response to attacks. The only problems is that the Patrick Swayze-inspired insurgency should have grown, not dwindled, but then the movie had to end eventually I suppose.
