is the War in Iraq similar to the French Algerian War ?

[JI7]

does anyone know much about the French-Algerian War. i don't know much about it. at least not details. but those who do say that our current war in Iraq is more similar to the French Algerian war than Vietnam. Vietnam touches us more personally though so it's used more often. most don't know much about the French Algerian war.

[UndertheOcean]

1. The French-Algerian war is unique..

in a way its similar to the Israel/Palestine sitiuation or Boer/African case in south Africa.

In both cases civilians settled in those regions and oppressed the native population.

All three cases represent Occupation with civilian settlement. But the French-Algerian case differed in that the french settlers still mantained a very strong tie to france and were controlled by the french government.

This is not happening in Iraq , so I'd say the Iraq war does not resemble the French-Algerian war at all.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. You're right - it was unique

There were about 1.3 million Europeans living in Algeria and about 11 million Arabic-speaking peoples. The French settlers were not just "controlled" by the French government. Algeria was not considered as just a colony and it had a very special status. It was considered a formal, legal part of metropolitan France the same as Corsica or Normandy, or Hawaii for the United States.

[UndertheOcean]

5. The difference is that the arab speaking people had no voting rights..

not the only rights they didn'y have.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Actually Arabic-speaking people did have the vote

but you are correct in that the vote essentially didn't count and therefore didn't exist in fact. From what I recall, there was an Algerian National Assembly comprised of two houses, one with representives from the French-speaking part of Algeria and the other from the Arabic-speaking part. The result was that both Houses theoretically had the same power but one represented approximately eight times the size of population of the other. And in local elections, there supposedly was a great deal of voter fraud and voter suppression. I'm not defending the way Algeria was run by the French, no more than I would defend the way the U.S. ran the South. I'm just agreeing with the point that it was a unique situation that we can't compare to Iraq.

[Toots]

2. It is almost impossible to compare what is happening in Iraq to any previous war

Iraq is not a "war". Just because we have American troops over there killing civilians does not make it a "war". It is a killing field for sure, a slaughter we created, but it is not a "war". This will not be recorded in history as one of America's shining moments..It could possibly be compared to Cambodia shortly after the North Vietnamese reunited with the South Vietnamese. The NVA invaded Cambodia and started killing "insurgents" and then "insurgents (Khmer Rouge)" started killing civilians. It also was a killing field created by an invading army.

[UndertheOcean]

3. Tip of the hat,

n/t