Torture backfired as a boomerang weapon in the Algerian war.

Evidence

For the rest of the modern world (and not least Southern Africa), the French experience in the Algerian War — a prototype of its kind — continued to offer its compelling lessons, most of them painful, for anyone prepared to heed them. There was the failure of a materially mighty Western power to combat a civil insurrection equipped with little more than ideology, without resort to the means one condemns in one’s enemy; in Algeria, the instrument of torture, as well as being fundamentally wicked in itself, was proved to be a boomerang weapon. There was the failure of the West to comprehend Third World aspirations; and the failure of the moderates everywhere to prevail against the extremist minority on either side; the Gironde is sent packing by the Montagne. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1659

Categorization

• XREF: Ties back to the reader’s prior silenced/torture content and the classic torture-doesn’t-work argument. — connects to: Torture destroyed the Muslim third force and turned French opinion against the war; Torture was effective in winning the short-term battle of Algiers — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 608; Torture was the chief factor in France’s defeat. (+14 more)

Related

• Torture proved a boomerang weapon that undermined the power using it (similarity 0.94)
• Torture boomeranged against France in the Algerian war (similarity 0.94)
• Torture won the Battle of Algiers but lost the war for France (similarity 0.91)
• Torture more than any single factor caused France’s Algerian defeat (similarity 0.90)
• Torture destroyed the Muslim third force and turned French opinion against the war (similarity 0.90)
• Torture was the chief factor in France’s defeat. (similarity 0.89)
• Torture in Algeria threatened France with state self-destruction (similarity 0.87)
• The Battle of Algiers exposed torture as a lasting poison for France (similarity 0.87)
• Torture in Algeria left a lingering poison in the French system (similarity 0.86)
• Perpetrators of torture carried its moral damage home to France in person (similarity 0.85)
• Torture’s Nazi echoes caused France’s defeat despite its military supremacy (similarity 0.85)
• Torture was effective in winning the short-term battle of Algiers (similarity 0.84)
• Torture succeeding in the short term proves a double-edged long-term weapon (similarity 0.84)
• Torture’s contested truth made it a lasting canker for France (similarity 0.83)
• French soldiers who saw Belsen recognized the same moral degradation in Algeria’s torture (similarity 0.82)