Algeria War 1954-1962

Modern Times ^ | 1983 | Paul Johnson

[aculeus]

Wretchard is linking to this thread.


http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/?aspxerrorpath=/blogs/the_belmont_club/default.aspx

[aculeus]

Ping.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[xJones]

I also heartily recommend the whole of Paul Johnson's book "Modern Times". You can buy it quite cheaply from Amazon at the link provided. There is as much important detail in it, 70 times over, on other events.

I will second that recommendation MOST strongly. "Modern Times" is a fascinating read, and Johnson's ability to pull together countless sources to create an historical tapestry is unsurpassed.

[dennisw]

yeah!!

[dervish]

Paul Johnson is first rate. History of the Jews is an incredible read as well. Thanks for posting.

"Moral clarity, good intel, and careful aim at the guilty - that is the recipe. It is not easy."

That recipe is applicable to Empire. Different concepts apply when the goal is not ruling but deterrence. Then a certain degree of indiscrimination may be more effective.

[JasonC]

Completely false. War is not a negotiation. It works only when it removes real political and military capabilities from the enemy side, not by trying to persuade him he'd be better off leaving you alone. When you target indiscriminately, you do not deter anybody. You just give those who would prefer not to fight you no place to stand. They get killed by your indiscriminate targeting, unless they win instead. Therefore, their only path to safety is to fight as hard as they can. It may still fail, if you annihilate them, but it is the only thing they can try. You can't convince them to make peace by not making a distinction between how you treat the ones who want peace, and the ones that want war.

Justice is the standing policy of all leading states for a reason. It works better as a means of power accumulation. Indiscriminate injustice is a tool reached for by weak and failed actors, and it keeps them weak. There is no extra power to be had from it. The belief otherwise is a superstition, and in fact the superstition that has kept the Islamic world a powerless basket case for several centuries. And that completely wrecked leading powers in the first world, that departed from the standing policy of justice. It does not remotely work better - and it only works at all when indulged by its opponents, in the contagion of evil I describe above. Men with terminal cases of the "evil stupids" keep trying it anyway, and it keeps wrecking everything it touches.

We don't need to become as stupid as they are to defeat them. We just need to understand their strategy, how they hope it can work, and balk it where it is vulnerable. Frankly, we've already passed the hardest test, which was the recent election. That was their best hope, and while it was closer than I would have liked, we beat them there.

[Tares]

bttt for article and posts 11, 14, 15, 35, 40, 43, 51, 55, 107

[Van Jenerette]

...class reading list.

[Tares]

bttt