NY Times Video Op-Ed: "Meeting Resistance"

[Nils Banér]

I beg you pardon if my English is not all that 100 percent, but what I want to say is the following:

It is rather obvious that both these films are more or less "historical" documents. As Mr Tequila pointed out, the last interview in "Meeting Resistance" is from May 2004, and depicts a sunni, "post-baathist" view of people that held some authority during Saddam's regime (the officers, engineers, teachers, etc). That kind of position has been largly overplayed in the course of events. The film-makers, who I have never heard about, are then using statistics polled during this Summer in order to make the statements made by the "interviewees" seem more universal, than they actually are.

One should always treat polls in a country under insurgency with a grain of salt, I beleive. In a text called Pacification in Algeria (written by the French Colonel David Galula, in 1963) he says that he didn't gave a brass farthing for general polls. The only important thing was the interrelation between his soldiers and the actual population in Cabylia... An invitation to tea, a kind wave, an imam speaking about the harvest, instead of rebellion at the Friday sermon in the mosque were the important "polls" that was taken by the soldiers every day (it is a sort of parallell to the attitude of the old German general staff, who always said that it is better if operations are reconnaisance driven, rather than intelligence driven...)

The bombmaker film is also dated in my opinion. It describes the experiences of one of these foreign AQ "operators" that had been the main reason why the local population has joined forces with the MNF in places such as al-Anbar (mentioned in the film).

If these films are presented as recent by this American newspaper, I would rather sack the editors if I was the publisher. Perhaps the journalists ought to be sacked as well, since they treat the statements of their objects in a most uncritical way, buying into some kind of heroic "narrative" that should not be unscrutinised by a real professional.

If the intention of this newspaper was to "lift the veil of anonymity surrounding the Iraqi insurrection", it failed miserably, as I see it.

[tequila]

The only important thing was the interrelation between his soldiers and the actual population in Cabylia... An invitation to tea, a kind wave, an imam speaking about the harvest, instead of rebellion at the Friday sermon in the mosque were the important "polls" that was taken by the soldiers every day (it is a sort of parallell to the attitude of the old German general staff, who always said that it is better if operations are reconnaisance driven, rather than intelligence driven...)

It should be noted that the French lost the war in Algeria, and they lost it because they lost (or never had) the Muslim Algerian population. Tolerance or acceptance of armed soldiers enforcing the peace should not be confused with movement towards what those soldiers view as an acceptable political settlement. The same goes for a population's tolerance or acceptance of an insurgent force in their midst as well.

[Nils Banér]

I was actually in the process of making a tedious and pretentious reply about the war in Algeria, and what the French did and didn't do; what worked and didn't work, etc. But what it actually comes down to, is this:

It should be noted that the French lost the war in Algeria

I have to rest my case, I'm afraid...