Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers is a classic from 1966, filmed documentary-style about the beginning of the war that kicked the French out of Algeria-a country they invaded (on a pretext) in 1830. This movie really speaks to what is happening today-it gave me a shiver when the French Colonel said that that "it's necessary to find an excuse to legitimize our intervention and make it possible. It's necessary to create this for ourselves, this excuse". Considering what is happening in Iraq-this seems extremely prescient, along with that same Colonel being forced to torture the few Algerian guerillas that they managed to capture. Another quote from the Colonel-The word "torture" doesn't appear in our orders. We've always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies. As for the NLF, they request that their members, in the event of capture, should maintain silence for twenty-four hours, and then they may talk. So, the organization has already had the time it needs to render any information useless. What type of interrogation should we choose, the one the courts use for a murder case, that drags on for months? " This could have come from the Bush government in defending torture used at Abu Ghraib-it sounds very much like the briefing written by Alberto Gonzales when he was White House Counsel-the one that defended torture (which, according to the briefing, unless the person being "questioned" dies, is not torture).

I'll close this by giving a quote (sorry, I don't remember who said it) that the Army's duty was to fight the enemy and the police's duty was to protect and serve the people-and when the Army became the police, the enemy started to look an awful lot like the people. This has more and more meaning to me as I look at various situations around the world.