On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> ***** The Battle of Algiers
>
> ...2ND JOURNALIST: Colonel Mathieu....
One of the most remarkable things about this remarkable film is that the Algerian they finally catch at the end, the master bomb-maker buried in a wall, really was that guy in real life, Saadi Yacef. He played himself and consulted on the entire film to make it as true to the events as possible. In some articles about the film, he is listed as the co-director with Pontecorvo.
The character quoted here giving a positively Thucydian defense of torture, Colonel Mathieu, is transparently based on Yacef's French counterpart during the real BoA, Colonel Massu. The idea that Yacef could make a film that portrayed his enemy so sympathetically in 1964, only two years after that horrible conflict ended, just floors me. Yacef was of course tortured himself, and had three separate dates with the executioner. Massu guillotined the women he loved.
It also casts an interesting light on terrorism, for here you have not only a terrorist, but a bona fide terrorist mastermind, who is completely able to see his enemy's point of view. He is a counterexample to those theories of terrorism which presume it must always be based on some primeval irrationality. Yacef is evidence that a terrorist can be supremely objective (for how many of us can see through an enemy's eyes this clearly? And probably none of our enemies ever furnished such enormous grounds for hatred.) In some cases, the only difference between terrorist rationality and utilitarian rationality might be its relation to cruelty and death. Which it shares with the rationality of counterinsurgency.
> > We are soldiers and our only duty is to win. Therefore, to be precise,
> > I would now like to ask you a question: Should France remain in
> > Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary
> > consequences....
>
> Should the United States remain an empire?
Well, the speech you've quoted here by Colonel Mathieu casts a double light on that question. Many people have argued that torture was in fact what lost Algeria for France. People who see this movie don't always realize that it portrays how the FLN *lost* the Battle of Algiers in 1957. Militarily, torture worked. And yet, as the movie shows in compressed form, the FLN won the war years later -- in large part, so this argument goes, because metropolitan France could not bear the necessary means. In other words, it was politically consequential that liberal values were sickened.
On the other hand, some might point out that after France withdrew and foresook both the harkis and the pied-noirs, it retained (and retains) more influence in Algeria than any other European country has. This latter relation is much more like that found in the American Empire, which with some relatively minor exceptions has been neo-colonial rather than colonial from its beginnings in the 19C. (We'll leave aside the 17C and the fact that America as a whole is one big successful colony -- one of the rare cases in history, joined only (?) by Australia and Canada.)
For such a neo-colonial empire, you don't need Colonel Massus. Local colonels do just fine.
Michael