But they didn't understand him

De Gaulle.

The pieds-noirs.

A million settlers fled to France and those who stayed were much the worse.

As were, have been, and still are the natives of that sad country, Westernized - meaning Gallicized and Francophone - elites apart.

All the same,  the General was right.

Cutting Algeria loose was best for France.

As, in the 1990's, was helping the army and the elites sabotage democracy to stop the FIS.

The stupidest thing Reagan ever did was aid the mujahedeen against the Russians.

You may say at the time they were the lesser evil, but they were even then the more threatening and crazy evil, though the establishment could not see it then and still does not.

To this day they really worry more about a post-communist Russia and a faux communist China and the hereditary and pseudo-Marxist dictatorship in North Korea.

But the communists thought they could just wait for inevitable history to bury us.

A foolish belief, but not that scary.

And in the 90's history let everyone in on the joke.

Nowadays, their successors are in it for the main chance, like any normal folk.

Quite otherwise, the Islamists think they must and will conquer everyone else at any cost to us, them, or the world.

That is why they are more dangerous, though they are for now much less organized and less well armed than the communists were or the post-communists are.

It would be best if they never took over a really strong state.