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Yes. Remember the French fought there before we did, losing the north. Bernard Fall's two books on their war in Nam, "Street Without Joy" and "Dien Bien Phu" help bring out the similarities. Although they are more narrowly focused on the military aspects of the campaign, they do cover other elements. The French Foreign Legion and the French Paras picked up some habits in that war, which repeated and worsened in Algeria.

I would slightly change the moral, though. It is not that terror trumps all else, as though whoever resorts to it more ruthlessly wins. The conflict between guerilla terrorists and the authorities is not a symmetric one. Terrorism tends to set off a immoral "race to the bottom" on both sides, which hurts the authorities while helping the guerillas.

That is probably what you meant. But it is important to distinguish that from "terror is trump", because it is too easy to read the latter as encouraging or requiring excesses by the authorities that play into the hands of guerillas. Not to mention the mistakes of the OAS, which believed it so literally, they thought white terrorism would save French Algeria. Which was insane, politically naive, and failed miserably.

Such wars are harder for the authorities than for the guerillas, above all *morally* harder. Which also means harder politically, to keep one's side united. On the other hand, it is often overlooked how much harder they can be for the guerillas *militarily*. The FLN lost something like half a million men in their war against the French. The NVA lost a million plus. Losses to the conventional militaries of the French and the US were 25-30 times smaller.

Properly aimed (by good intel, and with moral restraint), superior conventional military power can make a big difference. The guerillas do not always win, either. The British showed in Burma that such tactics could be militarily defeated, when a viable political end-state was the goal. If the strategy is not understood, however, and events just drift, the Algerian history shows were things end up.

As an administrator, even if you are a blessed saint, you lose if you can not guarantee the physical safety of the people. Eventually the people will be forced to support the guerilla movement to preserve their own lives. The communits in Viet Nan began by killing 25,000 villagers. It worked.

"The British showed in Burma that such tactics could be militarily defeated, when a viable political end-state was the goal. If the strategy is not understood, however, and events just drift, the Algerian history shows were things end up."

All of which goes to underscore the vital importance of Moral Clarity, I believe. Caps intentional.