Pentagon viewing movie to get hints of what to do with Iraq (for real)

[donsu]

From Algiers to Baghdad Pentagon officials are watching a 1965 classic for insight into urban terror

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=30461

A column in the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon’s special operations chiefs have decided to screen The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 classic film of urban terrorist insurgency, for Pentagon employees. The decision to show Algiers, David Ignatius writes, is “one hopeful sign that the military is thinking creatively and unconventionally about Iraq.”...

-snip-

At one point Mathieu challenges the hostile French reporters with a question of his own: ‘‘Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer ‘yes,’ you must accept all the necessary consequences.’’ Mathieu might as well be addressing the American military and the American public. Is the United States to remain in the Middle East? If so, what are the ‘‘necessary consequences’’? Do they include working with former members of the Baathist secret police, as recent news stories have suggested? Do they include the night-time invasion of Iraqi homes and the inevitable shooting of innocent civilians? To raise such issues is not necessarily to condemn the continued presence of troops in Iraq; there would be disastrous ‘‘necessary consequences’’ to an American withdrawal, too. But moral compromise, according to the film, was inherent in France’s position in Algeria... to listen to Mathieu is nevertheless to be challenged on whether moral compromise is also inherent in the American role in Iraq.
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I'm speechless

[gratuitous]

1. Why not?

I mean, this corrupt administration has its economic advisers reading fairy tales out of the Chicago School of Economics to determine their fiscal policy, what's the matter with the Pentagon looking for pointers from old movies?