Watched this classic film last night and was struck by so many connections to our foray into Mess-O-Potamia.
Now I had seen some stories about how the military was having the officers watch this film to gain insight yet I suspect that the leadership viewed it with Bully Cowboy bias glasses on. The film is well done and outlines many things as will follow; our leaders I suspect though discounted all the warnings in the film since it was a "Frog Film".
The things I took from this film were;
o An insurgency has time on its side if its aim is to free the nation from those who are considered invaders and occupiers (130+ years and the French were still viewed as invaders/occupiers)
o Killing the #3, #2, or even the #1 "evil leader" will not stop the insurgency, it only delays it and shifts it to newer, possibly more radical leadership.
o Home grown revolts against invaders will arise almost spontaneously; no outside influence is really needed.
o Religous overtones of an insurgency will make it more violent, more steadfast, and over time less compromise can happen (God/Allah/Yahweh is on our side, death will just speed out reward).
o Restrictive group punishment actions such as bombing areas, locking down cities/sections of, and then attempting to control movement will not stop the insurgents for any length of time. It will unite all the people being punished against the authority which is oppressing them and improve recruitment for the insurgents. Fallujah, our Gurnika, was and is group punishment which destroyed a city killing hundreds of innocents and only altered the direction and methods Arab nationalists, Jihadists, and other groups will use in the future. It did nothing to "stop" the insurgents/patriots and is/was a recruiting tool for various groups opposing us and what is viewed as a puppet government.
o All people, children, women, men, of any age can and will become the "enemy" over time with primary ingredients for making them so being causing shame to them or "collateral damage". Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Uncles, Aunts, Grandfathers will become our opponents over time as we cause death to occur just by being there, as we continue to ham handedly shame people (boots on the necks of innocents -- who last filled this image?), as we continue to violate the rights of the native people (rule of law does not appear to apply to our troops anywhere in the world anymore -- I sorry, wrong is wrong no matter how many nukes you have), as we continue to view the Iraqi people as "less than human" and our troops state/view "They are less than the shit on my boot soles" (Actual quote from a soldier on another board who is rotating back to Iraq).
o Even a clear destruction of a major organization and all its members is futile if the underlying root causes of the anger are not addressed; "The Battle for Algiers" pointed out the influence of nationalism, the hatred caused by colonialism, the attitude of superiority by the invaders to the natives, and religious suppression by the French as factors which were never resolved.
Interesting film, worth seeing.
md