User:Geo Swan/Comparison of Iraq War to the Algerian War

There have been comparisons in public debate comparing the current Iraq War (2003-present) to the Algerian War (1954–1962). Henry Kissinger advised President George W. Bush to read A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (Viking, 1977) by Alistair Horne about the Algerian War for advice on how to handle the war in Iraq. In a CNN interview aired January 15, 2007 Horne agreed to the comparison that "a major power is faced with an Arab insurgency that has targeted police, public servants, innocent civilians. All of that has preoccupied the Americans as it did the French."

Pentagon screening of The Battle of Algiers
Pentagon officials viewed on August 27, 2003 Gillo Pontecorvo 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers. In 2003, the film again made the news after the US Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The Pentagon offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:


 * "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

The 2003 screening lent new currency to the film, coming only months after U.S. President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech proclaiming the end of "major hostilities" in Iraq. Opponents of President Bush cited the Pentagon screening as proof of a growing concern within the Defense Department about the growth of an Iraqi insurgency belying Bush's triumphalism. One year later, the media's revelations regarding the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal led critics of the war to compare French torture in the film and "aggressive interrogation" of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison

Scholarly comparisons of the use of torture
Several scholars have compared the use of of torture in the two wars. Neil Macmaster, in Torture: from Algiers to Abu Ghraib wrote that, early in the Iraq war,

Robert Matthews, in Misguided wars: Comparing the lost French cause in Algeria with the US debacle in Iraq, wrote :