In the spring of 2003, it was reported that Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 film, “The Battle of Algiers,” was being shown to the American military intelligence officers who would be involved in planning and carrying out the interrogation of suspects and other counterterrorist activities in Iraq. One can only speculate as to what lessons those watching the film were expected to learn, but the Pentagon announcement claimed that the film showed how the French plan for Algeria had succeeded “tactically” but failed “strategically.”1 It would be interesting to know specifically why Pentagon strategists thought that France’s overall strategy had failed, even though the French counterterrorist tactics in general and the systematic torture and summary executions of suspects in particular were successful in the short term and resulted in the elimination of the FLN terrorist network in Algiers and a victory for the French army in the Battle of Algiers. Why did they feel France lost the war in spite of their victory in this crucial battle against terrorism?
For those responsible for the Pentagon announcement, it would seem as if the “successful tactics” of the French against terrorism, which in fact solidified opposition in both Algeria and France to continued French control of Algeria, had no role in their ultimate defeat and no effect on the French soldiers participating in the torture and executions, not to mention the horrible suffering of the Algerian people. But, at the very least, by deciding to show “The Battle of Algiers” to Pentagon strategists, the very people responsible for planning and implementing America’s counterterrorist war explicitly linked the French counterterrorist actions taken against FLN terrorists in Algeria and American counterterrorist tactics in the United States’ “global war on terrorism.”
It is unfortunate that, after seeing the film, Pentagon strategists did not also read Camus’ essays on Algeria, especially those that denounce the criminal nature of both terrorist and counterterrorist activities. Reading the essays in which Camus repeatedly denounces the use of violence and terror against civilians and his remarkable short story, “The Renegade,” in which he depicts the escalating cycle of terrorism/counterterrorism as an absolute form of madness, one is led to question all justifications for both terrorism and “wars on terrorism” that use and justify the use of torture and other extreme counterterrorist tactics to combat terrorism. Camus’ criticism of the crimes committed by both sides during the Algerian War was not intended to support or advance the cause of either, however, but rather first and foremost to save innocent civilian lives. Saving lives, he repeatedly argued, had to be given priority over any cause, even over the cause of justice itself. This meant that no armed struggle for independence and no promise of justice for the future could ever justify the murder of civilians or the use of torture in the present. Given that the armed struggle for Algerian independence used terrorism against innocent French Algerians to advance its cause and the French army tortured and executed Arab, Berber, and even French suspects to defend Algérie française, Camus refused to take either side.
For Camus, the question was never whether to oppose colonial injustices in Algeria, but how best to do it; never whether to work for the demise of the colonial system that produced, institutionalized, and thus “legitimized” discrimination and oppression, but how to do it without inflicting further injustices on the Algerian people. In the pursuit of any just cause, but particularly in the struggle for justice, he insisted that the means used could never be separated from or at odds with the end being pursued, since the means used to eliminate injustice would ultimately determine whether the cause being pursued was indeed just. Not only, then, would the victory of the French in Algeria and thus the continuation of colonial rule be unjust and unacceptable, but independence achieved through terrorism would be as well.
As The Rebel and other political essays written during the cold war clearly indicate, Camus was a relentless opponent of ideology in general, whether of the revolutionary Left, the extreme nationalist Right, or even the democratic Center, and thus his opposition to third-world nationalist revolutionary ideology, especially as concerns his “true country” Algeria, should have surprised no one. But as I have argued in various chapters, only if one accepts that there were in fact only two diametrically opposed positions on Algeria to choose between once the war began—a third-world, revolutionary, anticolonialist position and a reactionary, procolonialist position—is it possible to characterize his attacks on the FLN’s terrorist tactics as constituting in themselves a defense of the colonial status quo in Algeria and therefore a justification for the continuation of Algérie française and the perpetuation of colonial injustices. Camus himself simply refused to accept that stark ideological oppositions ever determined all alternatives, whether during the Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, the cold war, or the Algerian War. His way was always the search for a “third way,” a way that promised no political redemption, no definitive, total cure for the different varieties of the plague of oppression, but that accepted the limitations of politics, of what could and should be done in pursuit not just of freedom but of justice as well.
In a series of essays Camus wrote in 1946 entitled “Neither Victims nor Executioners”2 and as he would also do at greater length five years later in The Rebel, Camus attacked not only the ideologies of the extreme Left and Right, but those of the political Center as well—not only communism and fascism, but also what could be called the ideology of imperialist democracy. As we have seen, he referred to the postwar period as an “age of terror,” given that the contending ideologies allowed for no middle ground, no room for dissent, and no alternatives to the “Truth” each proposed and claimed to defend. In an age of terror, you are either with us or against us, friend or foe, a believer or an infidel, either on the side of Good or the side of Evil. Ideologies, for Camus, because they demand blind faith in an absolute Truth, thus inevitably provoke religious wars or political crusades of one type or another, in which the end being pursued justifies the use of whatever means are deemed necessary to achieve it.
Ideological conflict has of course not disappeared today, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the disappearance of the Iron Curtain once separating the communist “East” from the democratic “West.” Although the victory of one side over the other in the cold war (and even the “end of history”) has been triumphantly declared, ideological terror and counterterrorist “wars on terror” have certainly not come to an end. The world remains divided among violently opposed ideologies, which although they may differ from those of the cold war era, continue nevertheless to demand faith in a dominant Idea, to silence dissent, and to support increasingly violent “holy wars,” with each of the opposing sides seeing itself as engaged in war against “evil.” In a war conceived in such terms, it is difficult if not impossible to restrict the means used, since all means must by definition be “good” if they serve “the Good.” This is precisely the logic of “political realism” that Camus deplored and repeatedly attacked.
During the cold war, Camus argued that it was just as necessary to continue to struggle against the reign of ideological terror after the defeat of Nazi Germany as it was before and during World War II. For him, independent political leaders, journalists, and intellectuals had the obligation to analyze critically and speak out against the dogmatism and terror not of one of the ideologies engaged in deadly combat, but of both or all of them. The choice of the “lesser evil” in the name of either an abstract ideal or simple political efficacy in his mind could not fail to perpetuate further injustices. The climate of terror itself had to be destroyed, as did the dogmatism of all sides in the ideological struggle; unacceptable alternatives had to be refused, even if they appeared to serve a good or, at least, a better cause than that of the other side. Limits, especially in the pursuit of justice, had to be acknowledged and respected.
As alternatives to ideological terror that would not themselves be counterterrorist forms of terror, Camus, however, had very little to propose: critical reflection, dissent, and dialogue as forms of resistance and rebellion. If no existing state of injustice, no matter how severe, justifies the use of terrorism, torture, or murder to bring about justice, if true justice cannot be rooted in a system that privileges some at the expense of or to the exclusion of others, and if justice for one people can never depend on the oppression of another, then actions taken in the name of justice for one people but that result in the segregation, oppression, exploitation, degradation, or destruction of another people are in fact the antitheses of justice. Having no faith in ideology and only disgust for all forms of terrorism, what has recently been called Camus’ “rebellious politics”3 consist rather of critical reflection, active dissent and resistance, and finally dialogue as the only means that can be used in the unending struggle for justice that have a chance of not perpetuating further injustices and crimes.
In a scene from The First Man that was discussed in chapter 7, Jacques Cormery, Camus’ fictional double, responds to the anger of a French Algerian who has just witnessed the explosion of a terrorist bomb in the streets of Algiers. The worker, seeing the number of dead and wounded who had been attacked while waiting at a bus stop, directs his despair and hatred at an innocent Arab who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time: “Filthy race [sale race],” the French worker screams. “You’re all in it together, all you fucking sons-of-bitches [bande d’enculés]…. We should kill them all.”4 Cormery’s (Camus’) response is to save the innocent Arab from the crowd’s desire for revenge and quietly to urge the worker to “think it over [réfléchis].” The worker shrugs his shoulders and refuses, telling Jacques that he should first “go over there and see what you say after you’ve seen the mess.” The last words of the scene speak of the “cries of anger or suffering, you could not tell which,” (76 [88]) coming from the victims in the café, to which there is no response.
Words and reflection can never measure up to the anger of witnesses to the suffering of innocent victims of terrorism—or counterterrorism. And yet, since each side justifies its actions as necessary reactions to the injustices and crimes of the other side, producing a potentially infinite cycle of unrestrained violence, Camus refused to abandon “reflection.” “Think it over”—before, during, and after acting as well—not instead of acting, but in order to act differently, more humanely, and in the long run more effectively. And think not exclusively about ends, but first and foremost about means, about how not to be in the place of either victim or executioner. Thinking it over will never be enough to eliminate the plague of terror completely, but it could lead to containing it and in this way succeed in eventually breaking the terrorist cycle, which counterterrorist tactics only exacerbate. And is there really any other acceptable, any other just alternative?
In the face of the loss of innocent lives and the suffering and anger terrorism causes and is meant to cause, “to think” does not seem like much at all. To refuse to act in anger and out of a desire for revenge and, above all, to refuse to indict a people or “race” (or religion) for the acts of criminals or political extremists—whether they be isolated groups, a network of terrorists, or soldiers obeying orders from military or political leaders, and even whether the acts are committed to advance a legitimate cause, the freedom of an oppressed people, for example—is clearly no match for the violence itself. And it is true that Camus’ writings were unable to bring about any change in the terrorist tactics of either side in the face of the fears, hatred, and continually escalating violence of the Algerian War. The Algerian pied-noir community for the most part considered him a traitor, Parisian intellectuals on the Left opposed him or simply ignored what he had to say, and members of the FLN either severely criticized him or at best expressed regrets that he refused to actively support them and the cause of Algerian independence. In spite of his political failure to positively affect the outcome of the Algerian War, this entire book has attempted to think about the elements in Camus’ work that are the most critically successful and that we could most profit from thinking about again today—especially given that religious/ideological divisions have made it once again increasingly difficult to think at all.
I do not believe it would be an exaggeration to claim that today we are once again living in an “age of terror,” which in its general ideological configuration could be compared to the climate described by Camus during both the cold war and the Algerian War. In this age, we are once again being given the choice of being “for” or “against”; the voices of moderation, voices that include both sides in their dissent and all sides in their concern for justice, voices that refuse to accept that the lives of innocent civilians should be sacrificed for any cause, are once again being ignored, rejected, or treated as traitorous. If this is the case, it is all the more reason to listen to a voice like Camus’ again, not because he was always right or had all or even necessarily the best answers for ending the injustices of colonialism or other forms of political oppression—he was not and never claimed to be a sophisticated political theorist—but rather because he steadfastly refused to accept the unacceptable, even in the name of justice.
Instead of showing the film “The Battle of Algiers” so that Pentagon officials could learn about how France succeeded “tactically” but failed “strategically” in Algeria, it would have been better for all of us, but especially for the civilians who have died or been horribly maimed in “the war on terrorism,” if the Pentagon, the president, and all the president’s men had studied the effects on both the Algerian and French participants in France’s “dirty war” in Algeria and thought about the long-term consequences of France’s allegedly “successful” counterterrorist tactics. It would have been even better if those involved in the counterterrorist “war on terrorism” had read and discussed the work of Albert Camus, if they had taken seriously his denunciation of both terrorism and torture and had been sensitive to the anguish his later work expresses, if they had “thought about it” more and differently than their subsequent actions revealed that they did. If they had listened to rather than ignored or suppressed dissident voices within and outside the administration. If they had understood and accepted that no end justifies the use of criminal means, no matter how atrocious the acts committed by the “terrorists” on the other side. If they were incapable of this kind of critical reflection, or, more likely, if they refused even to consider it, then oppositional politicians, the press, the intellectual community, and citizens of this country and other countries who were still capable of “thinking” needed to have done more to oppose the means being used to counter terrorism, and opposed it sooner and more effectively. That little if any of this happened does not prevent us from doing now what was not done before. Camus’ writings on Algeria, both his political essays and his fictions, dramatically show how terror is a trap for both sides in any conflict and why justice demands the recognition of limits and a respect for human lives that must come before the pursuit of any cause. Even before the cause of freedom, even before justice itself. For to defend life before justice as a general principle is in fact to defend justice itself.