David Tenner
2018-02-24 06:10:17 UTC
The failed Algiers putsch against de Gaulle in 1961
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961 did not lack American
admirers. From an editorial in *National Review*:
"Maurice Challe -- now portrayed as "reactionary," "fascist," thug and
gangster by the FLN and our journalistic scavengers -- has been, for France,
the highest living embodiment of the ideal of the soldier: absolute in
courage, skill, dedication, loyalty, self-sacrifice. Like Raoul Salan --
France's most decorated hero, almost mythical figure of the Resistance,
victor over Nazi armies, one who endured in Vietnam -- Maurice Challe has the
further attribute that France expects of her great soldiers, and found so
splendidly in de Gaulle himself: the strain of wide-ranging but rigorous
intellectuality.
"So far from being "reactionaries," Challe and Salan are strongly
integrationist toward Moslem-French relations, and have always insisted that
the military side of the war in Algeria is insoluble without a vigorous
program of land reform and economic and social improvement. They are
strategists and students of history, and they therefore know that the
northern coast of Africa is Europe's southern flank. They know that
throughout history, the fate of Europe -- of the West -- has time after time
been decided in North Africa: by what happened in North Africa to
Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Ottoman Turks -- and in modern times, by what
happened to Nelson and Napoleon, Rommel and Montgomery and Eisenhower. They
know that, with the Western guard withdrawn from the Suez gate, the great
enterprise now based in the Eurasian heartland is thrusting into and across
North Africa, in order to outflank Europe and paralyze her ability to resist
a direct drive on the eastern front. They know, finally, that the FLN -- even
if this is not the deliberate intent of all its leaders -- must succumb,
exactly as Castro's movement has succumbed, to the Communist embrace.
"These soldiers and their associates were the men who brought de Gaulle to
power in 1958, because they believed -- and had good reason to believe --
that he thought as they did. With what seems an almost obsessive and robotic
rigidity, de Gaulle destroyed and betrayed their hope. All normal and legal
means having been exhausted, these soldiers -- in the most tragic decision of
their lives, more tragic infinitely than the death that each has faced
serenely a hundred times -- placed their duty to their country, their
civilization, and their God above their duty to their commander in chief. By
sheer interposition of their united will, they made a desperate and supreme
attempt to block the enemys advance, and thus save France and Europe, and
the Free World from a mortal danger."
What if people who felt this way controlled the US government--and the US
supported the coup attempt and in a way making "plausible deniability"
impossible?
(Of course in OTL there were allegations that the CIA did help, but this
seems to have been disinformation--and surprisingly, it may have been not KGB
disinformation but French conservative disinformation prompted precisely by
resentment of JFK's and the CIA's sympathies with Algerian anticolonialists!
https://books.google.com/books?id=f1HwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA124 )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961 did not lack American
admirers. From an editorial in *National Review*:
"Maurice Challe -- now portrayed as "reactionary," "fascist," thug and
gangster by the FLN and our journalistic scavengers -- has been, for France,
the highest living embodiment of the ideal of the soldier: absolute in
courage, skill, dedication, loyalty, self-sacrifice. Like Raoul Salan --
France's most decorated hero, almost mythical figure of the Resistance,
victor over Nazi armies, one who endured in Vietnam -- Maurice Challe has the
further attribute that France expects of her great soldiers, and found so
splendidly in de Gaulle himself: the strain of wide-ranging but rigorous
intellectuality.
"So far from being "reactionaries," Challe and Salan are strongly
integrationist toward Moslem-French relations, and have always insisted that
the military side of the war in Algeria is insoluble without a vigorous
program of land reform and economic and social improvement. They are
strategists and students of history, and they therefore know that the
northern coast of Africa is Europe's southern flank. They know that
throughout history, the fate of Europe -- of the West -- has time after time
been decided in North Africa: by what happened in North Africa to
Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Ottoman Turks -- and in modern times, by what
happened to Nelson and Napoleon, Rommel and Montgomery and Eisenhower. They
know that, with the Western guard withdrawn from the Suez gate, the great
enterprise now based in the Eurasian heartland is thrusting into and across
North Africa, in order to outflank Europe and paralyze her ability to resist
a direct drive on the eastern front. They know, finally, that the FLN -- even
if this is not the deliberate intent of all its leaders -- must succumb,
exactly as Castro's movement has succumbed, to the Communist embrace.
"These soldiers and their associates were the men who brought de Gaulle to
power in 1958, because they believed -- and had good reason to believe --
that he thought as they did. With what seems an almost obsessive and robotic
rigidity, de Gaulle destroyed and betrayed their hope. All normal and legal
means having been exhausted, these soldiers -- in the most tragic decision of
their lives, more tragic infinitely than the death that each has faced
serenely a hundred times -- placed their duty to their country, their
civilization, and their God above their duty to their commander in chief. By
sheer interposition of their united will, they made a desperate and supreme
attempt to block the enemys advance, and thus save France and Europe, and
the Free World from a mortal danger."
What if people who felt this way controlled the US government--and the US
supported the coup attempt and in a way making "plausible deniability"
impossible?
(Of course in OTL there were allegations that the CIA did help, but this
seems to have been disinformation--and surprisingly, it may have been not KGB
disinformation but French conservative disinformation prompted precisely by
resentment of JFK's and the CIA's sympathies with Algerian anticolonialists!
https://books.google.com/books?id=f1HwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA124 )
--
David Tenner
***@ameritech.net
David Tenner
***@ameritech.net