Re: bottom line is France got their butts kicked and kicked out of Algeria..... France ...lose, lose.....
Tsk, tsk! You won't hear of it, will you? I told you that, at the end of the day, France salvaged its democracy and avoided civil war... Do you remember the US civil war? Here's a little reminder:
Narrator: Today, on A Biography of America, "The Civil War".
Miller: When William Tecumseh Sherman heard that South Carolina had seceded, he knew it meant war. At the time, he was retired from the army and was running a military academy in Louisiana. Sherman was a native of Ohio but he loved the south and had no quarrel with slavery, believing, in his words, that the black man should "be subject to the white man."
But secession was another matter. He considered South Carolina's break with the union an act of treason and reckless insanity. As he told an instructor at the academy, "You Southerners underestimate the people of the North. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail."
But because of the intensity of secessionist sentiment, Sherman knew this would be a long, brutal war. Sherman left Louisiana before the attack on Fort Sumter. He returned two years later with Ulysses Grant to crush secession. And, because the war had changed by then, slavery itself.
In 1861, most Northerners believed, as Sherman did, that this must be a war to restore the union, not to end slavery. But unlike Sherman, they anticipated a quick Union victory with little bloodshed. No one could have imagined how horrible this war would be. By the time it was over, three million men had fought and there were one million casualties; one million men killed, wounded, or missing in action.
620,000 men died. Think of it. 680,000 have died in all the other American wars combined. In a single, one-day battle at Antietam Creek, Maryland, 23,000 men fell. That's nearly four times the number of American casualties on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
[...]
learner.org
Bottom line: the Civil War ranks as the US's bloodiest conflict so far --you don't want a reprise, do you? So, you'd better clean up your act --and Israel's-- in the Mideast before it's too late... for you!
As for France having lost anything or everything in Algeria, here's a report on Chirac's last visit to Algeria:
Chirac wraps up 'triumphant' Algeria visit
By Elizabteth Bryant UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
French President Jacques Chirac ended a triumphant three-day visit to Algeria on Tuesday, where he was saluted as a Middle East peacemaker and forger of new ties between France and its former French colony.
Chirac spent his last day in the northwestern city of Oran, where he called for stepped-up democratic reforms in Algeria.
"Make the ideas of liberty, tolerance, justice and fraternity live," he said.
Chirac also reiterated his mantra of recent weeks - calling for the Iraqi crisis to be resolved diplomatically.
Chirac managed to conquer much of the Algerian press. A slew of articles during his visit ran similar to the daily Errai, which concluded that Chirac's visit afforded the opportunity to "get over the wounds of the past".
But many of the joyous crowds that flocked to greet the French President in Algiers and Oran mixed their calls of "vive Chirac", with "visa, visa".
[...]
metimes.com
Also: weekly.ahram.org.eg |
