Why was Algiers (and possibly Iraq) different than the successful squashings of insurgencies that he cites?

Next, if we don’t wish to follow those successful but immoral tactics, where does that leave us?

Hi Shaun. Thanks for the comment. Sorry about the multiple posts…a mix of Clarke’s comment and too much coffee

BTW: I thought your review was excellent…and a very apt choice of films considering the present day circumstances. I saw this on television years ago, and was fascinated. Perhaps the best film ever done on insurgency.

I did not know it was out on DVD (in a special edition no less).

Definitely a must-see.

Thanks

Good points all. Perhaps Clarke should have said that “there are seldom military solutions . . . “

Bolsheviks faced ethnic based insurgencies across the southern reaches of what used to be imperial Russian (Kazakstan,Caucasus region etc).

Red Army units, backed by Cheka, dispersed on armored gun trains decimating the region. Those who surrendered were executed.

Insurgencies collapsed.

(Rayfield, Stalin and his Hangmen. Random House)

Seriously, I could go on and on. I am not saying the US should replicate these tactics…just that Richard Clarke is clearly wrong that “There are no military solutions to insurgencies.”

But it clearly does need to be said. Josephus, “The Jewish War” is a classic text of the defeat of an insurgency – driven by religious fervour – by military force.

No. Richard Clarke is wrong.

Classic historical examples:

(1) The Roman empire against the Jewish zealots. The war lasted for years, with the classic hit-and-run strikes of insurgency.

Rome sacked Jerusalem. Judaea was dotted with crucifixes. Ended in the 10th Legion (Julius Caesar’s old legion) under Flavius Silva laying siege to the fortress of Masada by the Dead Sea.

(2) Boer War. Britain in South Africa. Boer farmers by day, take their ponies and ride on hit-and-run strikes by night, return by day and be peaceful civilian farmers. Kitchener invented the concentration camp. Locked down the entire country. Boers driven to exhaustion.

Your standard conventional wisdom would be that guerilla insurgencies always win. That is shaped by the exception – Vietnam – in which, in fact, the insurgency did not win.

The Viet Cong were decimated in the Tet Offensive and never recovered. The South was conquered by regular army units of North Vietnam.

Nah, just a little cross post commenting. This Marley lyric surely applies to “The Battle of Algiers” and “The Mess in Mesopotamia,” which has been on top of the charts for nearly four years now.

One great Bob Marley lyric deserves another:

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned -
Everywhere is war -
Me say war.

You’re preaching to the choir, Shaun.

Incidentally, Richard Clarke notes in his interview that “The Battle of Algiers” had been used as an Al Qaeda training film. It is not difficult to see why.

Sure. With the history of the last four years in mind, watching it will lead to quite different conclusions, I’m sure.

History repeats itself over and over again.

It’s true.

and sad.

OUR bad.

I urge you to try to rent or buy the movie. It is incredibly, stomach-wrenchingly violent in contrast to the largely sanitized images that we see from Iraq.

Like I said, it’s a three-DVD set. Amazon has some slightly discounted used copies. In addition to the Clark-Sheehan interview there are interviews with French officers and a ton of historic stuff.