Four entire families had been wiped out to the last member; only six who had barricaded themselves in a house in the center of the village and had held out with sporting rifles and revolvers survived.
Men returning from the mines had been ambushed in their cars and hacked to pieces. Altogether thirty-seven Europeans had died, including ten children under fifteen, and another thirteen had been left for dead.
The reaction of the French army was immediate. Out in the streets they found”…bodies literally strewed the town. The Arab children, wild with enthusiasm – to them it was a great holiday – rushed about yelling among the grown-ups. They finished off the dying. In one alley we found two of them kicking in an old woman’s head. We had to kill them on the spot: they were crazed.”
The reprisals were severe. The Algerians claim that as many as 12,000 were killed by the French. The French say 1,273. We will never know the truth. But the Philippville Massacre had its intended impact. The polarizing effect Marighela spoke of immediately occurred. The Battle of Algiers went on for eight bloody years, and the brutality on both sides was unspeakable – for there was a burning river of blood between the French and the Algerians after Philippville.
In Iraq right now, the terrorists are working from the exact same playbook. They are murdering innocent civilians indiscriminately. The hope is that the Americans will clamp down with even greater ferocity and the population will turn against the liberators. For make no mistake about it – the average Iraqi is relieved that Saddam and his gang of torturers, rapists and killers are gone.
So far, the Americans are playing it smart. They are reacting calmly and professionally. The terrorists are getting desperate, thus the recent attack on the Golden Mosque in an attempt to spark a civil war.
But on the home front the mainstream media have not a clue as to the grand strategy the terrorists are using. They see car bombs, body parts, and chaos and assume that all is lost. They do not understand warfare; worse, they do not understand evil.
In fact they enable evil with their foolish dispatches.
But there are some of us who understand jihad, some of us who understand evil and can comprehend that this is a hundred-year war that will be fought on a hundred far shores. We must be patient and, yes, steadfast. It takes time and blood to defeat evil, but it can and must be done or we will be thrown back to the seventh century and its barbarian masters.