Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
I "recalled" the same "memory", but the "halibut" was not "recalling" in which SWC thread. Initially, France's war in Algeria: telling the story, seemed the likely candidate - it begins with A Lesson About Torture, Half Century On. Your comment caused me to read through the thread (only 7 pages), which includes for 2010 over a dozen posts by each of such as Wilf (William F. Owen), JMA and jmm99 - some have actually stood the test of time.

The thought occurs that compilations of some "interactive" SWC threads (which often involve "peer review" plus) would be more useful to the practitioner than an equal number of SWJ articles - but, I digress (well, not too much).

"Alas", in the Algeria thread, I found no idiot ("useful" or otherwise) whose equation was "French resort to torture in Algeria = Nothing to be learned from that conflict".
Spent a good few minutes looking for that offending post myself. Closest I came was this one in the Journal:

Galula Relevant Anymore?

My comment was:

by JMA (not verified) | November 16, 2010 - 8:42am
Why the attempt to narrow the field of study? If anything students of war should widen their area of study and absolutely resist the temptation of hooking onto one particular view. Earlier we saw an attempt to to write off lessons from Algeria because the French used torture (so there, I guess, goes every war). Open minds must function like sponges there can be not limit to what can be studied.
Not sure how much earlier that was... clearly before November 2010.