Bush's Savage War of Peace

During his “60 Minutes” interview Bush said Henry Kissinger recommended that he read Alistair Horne’s “A Savage War of Peace.” The story of the Algerian War, an insurgency (French occupied) that turned into a civil war, sound familiar? Now, if Bush actually reads this account of a colonial war against Muslims in Algeria he may be in for one of those "OH SHIT" moments. Things didn't work out so well in that one. It's kind of hard to believe that Kissinger read it or maybe he feels that if only the French had stayed the course they would have won. The French did eventually leave, that didn't end the slaughter however. The killing continued as it will in Iraq. From NYT Book Review: A Savage War of Peace Algeria 1954-1962 By Alistair Horne With a new preface by the Author The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, brought De Gaulle back to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and state torture. The conflict made headlines around the world, and at the time it seemed like a French affair. From the perspective of half a century, however, this brutal and intractable conflict looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one—a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad, struggles in which religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism assume previously unimagined degrees of intensity. Originally published in 1977, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace was immediately proclaimed by experts of varied political sympathies to be the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that not only does justice to its Byzantine intricacies, but that does so with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is not only essential reading for anyone who wishes to investigate this dark stretch of history, but a lasting monument of the historian's art. Previously posted at RW Research: Lessons of Military History.