I WONDERED ABOUT THAT, TOO

Mark Kleiman wonders (with Mickey Kaus) about precisely what lesson the Pentagon folks who watched The Battle of Algiers took away from the movie:

Mickey Kaus suggests that the film can be read another way: as endorsing the view that torture is a necessity in counterinsurgency operations.

No doubt that wasn't the intention of the filmmaker. Perhaps it wasn't the intention of whoever arranged the screenings. But it might have been the lesson taken home by some of the viewers.

I wondered about that, too. Unfortunately, I don't have at hand my copy of Howard Simpson's excellent memoir Tiger in the Barbed Wire. Simpson was in French Indochina as an unwelcome American advisor in the 1950s. As he saw the French defeat and escalating American involvement in the area, he came away with the impression that the Americans had steadfastly refused to learn from the French failures. After all, we had helicopters and they didn't. I hope that folks who watched Battle didn't take away the lesson that we have resolve and moral authority and the French didn't.

Simpson also wrote a gripping account of the siege of Dien Bien Phu (subtitled "The Battle that America Forgot). This year was the 50th anniversary of the French defeat. See this NPR report.