Yes, this is the myth, isn’t it? Breaking the fingers of the terrorist to get him to tell you the combination of the locker in the bus station where the plastic explosive is stored.

The reality, as we have learned from the prisons of Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanomo, is to torture the taxi driver who dropped off the brother-in-law of the bodyguard of Osama bin Laden’s fourth in command’s accountant at his home so that you can raid the brother-in-law’s home and detain his son so that you can ransom him for another target to interrogate in order to find out who changed the tires on Mullah Omar’s sister-in-law’s Range Rover. Because maybe someday you can track someone down to the safe home which used to be the sister-in-law’s neice’s apartment in Khandahar.

It’s all cumulative knowledge, after all, intelligence. So whether you’re using human intelligence to drink mint tea with an informant, or throwing cold water on someone in an airconditioned cell, you’re still trying to find out when Osama bin Laden takes his car to the carwash, NOT how to stop the bomb from blowing up at the last minute.

Time for a Nietzsche quote! (blame the ‘existential threat’ philosophy-with-a-hammer jokes in a previous thread):

“This man is a human psychologist: what does he really study men for? He wants to gain little advantages over them, or big ones too — he is a politician!… This other man is also a human psychologist: and you say he wants nothing for himself, that he is ‘impersonal’. Take a closer look! Perhaps he wants an even worse advantage: to feel himself superior to men, to have the right to look down on them, no longer to confuse himself with them.”

Ever been to an optometrist who didn’t wear glasses? While I’m sure such people exist, they seem uncommon. Methinks Krauthammer gravitated toward psychology for what one might call deeply personal reasons…

It’s been a recurring theme in Krauthammer’s essays for Time for as long as he’s been writing them. You might have thought that they would have been satisfied by their success during the Reagan years in popularising torture-by-proxy across Central America, but that was seemingly too remote.

Though it is tempting to speculate about the psychological causes of these obsessive thoughts, I’d rather leave that to Krauthammer; he’s better at it.

Um, no, torture isn’t ever okay. The Army’s FM on interrogations explains pretty clearly why this is the case. Torture does not produce reliable intelligence and alienates the population in an insurgency to the point where you can never prevail. Yes, torture works in a very short-term way. The French used torture to break the leadership of the FLN, as depicted in the film “The Battle of Algiers.” About two years later, the FLN reappeared, stronger than before, with all-new leadership, and the French were evicted from Algeria. Some 2,000,000 people were compelled to move across the Mediterranean back to France.

Now, had the French adopted different tactics, they might not have “won” the first Battle of Algiers. But the French people might have been able to stay in Algeria, and that country might now be in better shape for it. Losing the entire educated class in one fell swoop is never good for a country. And if you hadn’t noticed, Algeria has been on the verge of chaos and Islamist government for about ten years now.

To win an insurgency, you have to gain the trust and support of the people. COL H.R. McMaster did a decent job of this in Tall Afar during the 3d ACR’s deployment to that area in 2005-6. Basically he realized that the town was being abused by Al-Qaeda in Iraq who were terrorizing the (largely Sunni Turkmen) population of the town while using it as a transit point for people and materiel flowing over the nearby Syrian border.

The 3d ACR formed alliances with the locals and helped them to establish self-government. In turn they offered their support against the Al-Qaeda elements which had been using the town. The key bit was stability. Prior to the 3d ACR’s deployment, anyone cooperating with the national government in even the smallest way would be assassinated by the AQ guys. The 3d ACR started with the local sheikhs and tribal leaders and gradually they assumed responsibility for local governance.

This entire (very successful) strategy was fucked up when the next US unit to rotate in billeted two battalions of Iraqi national guard forces in the town: 1 Shiite Arab, the other Kurdish peshmerga. Tall Afar is back to square one. And it has everything to do with dishonoring our word and nothing to do with torture.

Yes, in a battlefield sense – I would condone beating the crap out of someone if I thought it would save the lives of my fellow soldiers but that is something that ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. Making ethical and moral decisions predicated on that kind of scenario is akin to getting dressed in the morning and planning how I might respond if the VT shooter visited my office.

Doubleplustorturegood!

Saddam Hussein (our former ally and client, remember) did indeed use torture to keep Iraqis in line–but he didn’t have to do it, regardless how screwed up and factional Iraq may be. History gives us many examples of diverse groups of people with equal factionalisms working out their differences to create a society–Switzerland comes to mind, and if you think I’m joking, do a little reading about the Hundred Years’ War and the bloodletting between Catholic and Protestant Swiss. The Swiss were so legendarily gnarly that they were much sought-after as mercenaries–that’s why the Pope is protected by the Swiss Guard.

Amazingly enough, if groups of people are left alone by empires, they usually form societies of some sort–and then often follow that up with countries (y’know, with laws and stuff) and do reasonably well.

I canna splain it. Utter lack of empathy, perhaps.

Terrorism, on the other hand, takes a big uptick, Visigoth. The soldiers wanting payback for an IED were themselves receiving payback in the form of that IED, and are just askin’ for more such payback with each reprisal. You want to talk about what WORKS: guerilla warfare against occupiers WORKS. You get new recruits and sympathizers daily, and the more the occupiers retaliate, the more opposition they breed.

Time to pull the plug on that show.

Uh, actually, you’re half right. Sooner or later, everybody talks. Only, what everybody says isn’t always reliable, or useful, or productive. So torture doesn’t really WORK all that well, other than to terrify people.

Well gee whiz, no kidding. That’s how a guerilla war WORKS: the reason insurgents are able to disperse and disappear among the civilian population after attacks is because most people in the neighborhood are in on it. Wouldn’t you, as a soldier, want to deal a little payback when members of your squad are blown up by an IED?

And the reason torture is used in a war like this is because torture WORKS. Sooner or later, everybody talks. Information, not “shock and awe,” is how a conflict like this is fought. Torture isn’t an abnormality, it’s almost essential to the ability to fight.

But…and here’s the big BUT here…Bradrocket hit a bullseye when he said that it just isn’t clear WHY we’re THERE. There are certain things that just must be done in a hellish, upside-down asymmetrical conflict, including torture, especially in a region as screwed up and factional as Iraq. Now we start to realize why Saddam was such a bastard – he HAD to be.

But WHY? That’s what I don’t get. What’s the ultimate objective toward which all these tragic actions are undertaken? I mean, no coherent strategy is bad enough, but no coherent GOAL? This is the difference between killing a man to save a baby, and killing a man for unclear, spooky Edgar Allen Poe “Cask of Amontillado” motives.

I can tolerate torture. But I can’t tolerate lies, corruption, excuses and bumbling inadequacy, which is what Cheney and the rest have given us.

mikey

I am too lazy to look it up. So I want one of you liberals to do the work for me and tell me what it is.

Then I will berate you for being elitists because you saw through my lame tactics.

Dr. Friedrich von Frankenstein: Do you mean to tell me that I put an abnormal brain into an, 8 foot tall, 300 pound, GORILLA?!!!

Someone had to post it.

mikey