Torture and American strategy

It's an accepted fact that America has tortured alleged members of Al Qaeda. Everyone who reads this blog should read Col. Morris Davis' oped in the New York Times: Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence. This post will briefly look at torture through the lens of American grand strategy.

Torture is frequently justified at the tactical level (i.e. each individual case of torture taken separately) by referring to the "ticking time bomb" scenario. Assuming that torture is effective (which it can be), this makes it relatively easy to justify torture because you isolate each event from its long-term consequences. Looking beyond this artificial time-horizon is how utilitarians argue against torture: "The ultimate utilitarian objection to torture, therefore, is that it corrosively delegitimizes the state." This delegitimization harms the United States more than most other countries, as I'll show.

Chet Richard's most recent post reminds us of Boyd's conception of strategy as "pump up our morale, degrade that of our opponents, attract the uncommitted to our cause, and end the conflict on favorable terms without sowing the seeds for future (unfavorable) conflict." The use of torture alienates our allies, helps our enemies in their recruitment campaigns, and in so doing helps sow the seeds for future conflict. But how does torture affect efforts to "pump up our morale", or as Boyd puts it in his "Patterns of Conflict" briefing, "amplify our spirit and strength"?

For the United States especially, promoting internal harmony and strength within society should be the paramount goal of American strategy. The destruction of inner harmony damages the United States much more than it does other countries. Unlike other political communities, the United States does not have a specific shared heritage, ethnicity, religion, or race to fall back upon to unify the country. Instead America is based on a shared political culture, based around the Constitution.

America is perhaps unique among nations for the ability to commit suicide bloodlessly (I suppose the Vatican could as well if the Pope renounced Catholicism). If, for example, Japan were to engage in widespread torture, Japanese would still remain bonded to each other through cultural and ethnic ties. If the United States was to engage in widespread torture, it would represent a break with the fundamental values the country was founded on, and the political community would have less of a reason to exist. Simply stated, Japan does not become less Japanese if its government tortures, however America does become less American if its government tortures.

Even if it's true that we "only" tortured three Al Qaeda members, as Col. Davis says:

Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not.

Whether you call it "morale" like Col. Richards, "spirit and strength" like Boyd, or "legitimacy" as Morgan does, it's the same thing. Stephen Colbert might call it "America-ness". Torture destroys it.

Waterboarding

Note: fairly disturbing video, due to interview with Alan Dershowitz - also shows simulated waterboarding.



Also, go read this essay by Malcolm Nance at the Small Wars Journal blog:

Waterboarding is Torture… Period

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.

Bunch of stuff

Here's a random assortment of stuff I never got around to posting about (had a busy week and won't be posting over the weekend).

How a Democrat Can Get My Vote: Advice from seven recent war veterans.

I don't have anything to add, but pretty interesting.

Andrew Sullivan - "Verscharfte Vernehmung."

Comparing current American interrogation policy with the interrogation policy of Nazi Germany. I am not completely sure whether it's absurd or not. The most important thing to remember when thinking about loosening regulations on interrogation policy, however, is

As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own.

True pretty much across history, due to the psychological impact torture has on the torturer.

Rising to a New Generation of Global Challenges - Mitt Romney.

Renewing American Leadership - Barack Obama.

Notable only for their blandness and mediocrity.

DNI Inadvertently Reveals Key to Classified National Intel Budget - RJ Hillhouse.

The intel budget is $60 billion (for FY 2005), not $40-45 billion as previously thought. 70% of that money goes to private contractors.

Giuliani: Worse Than Bush - Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

Yes, Rudy is smarter than Bush. But his political strength -- and he knows it -- comes from America's unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they're probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he'll keep an eye on 'em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully's disposal.

...

The Paul incident went to the very heart of who Giuliani is as a politician. To the extent that conservatism in the Bush years has morphed into a celebration of mindless patriotism and the paranoid witch-hunting of liberals and other dissenters, Rudy seems the most anxious of any Republican candidate to take up that mantle. Like Bush, Rudy has repeatedly shown that he has no problem lumping his enemies in with "the terrorists" if that's what it takes to get over. When the 9/11 Commission raised criticisms of his fire department, for instance, Giuliani put the bipartisan panel in its place for daring to question his leadership. "Our anger," he declared, "should clearly be directed at one source and one source alone -- the terrorists who killed our loved ones."

Matt Taibbi is no Democratic Party apparatchik - I remember him being quite critical of John Kerry in 2004.
I recently got John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience for my birthday. Hopefully I'll get around to it this summer (still working on The Shield of Achilles).

Possible Glimmer of Some (Modest) Hope in Iraq - Counterterrorism Blog.

The reason for optimism is that some Sunni tribes will go after Al Qaeda without American help. And in other news, other Sunni tribes are concluding cease fires with Al Qaeda (H/T John Robb).

Of course, Al Qaeda isn't really the biggest problem in Iraq - the problem is the total lack of state legitimacy. Hopefully I'll be co-authoring a paper this summer on reconciliation in Iraq as a path to state legitimacy. If we get it published I'll post a link on the blog.

Torture doesn't work

The Intelligence Science Board just released a study on interrogation. The Intelligence Science board is:

The ISB comprises experts from private industry and academia representing a broad spectrum of expertise and experiences across many intelligence disciplines. The ISB provides linkages among the intelligence, business, and scientific communities, performs special studies, and assists the Office of the DNI in addressing and recommending solutions to priority national intelligence problems.

Anyway, this advisory panel just released a 374-page long study on interrogation called "Educing Information - Interrogation: Science and Art - Foundations for the Future." It's about what works, what doesn't, the history of interrogation, and even a little bit of epistemology thrown in there too. It brought together people from all over the US intelligence community - FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, DHS, the different military intelligence branches, and three members from Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Pentagon counterintelligence outfit that has been collecting vast amounts of information on ordinary Americans in the name of protecting military bases. It was a little surprising that there was nobody from the CIA involved in this study, seeing as how the CIA are the ones that have actually had all the "practice" with interrogation recently.

The conclusions of this study are only surprising when contrasted with the actual behavior of the intelligence community - the study concludes (among many other things) torture doesn't work. Here's an excerpt:

And what are we to make of “public opinion”? Unfortunately, that is a relatively easy question. Prime-time television increasingly offers up plot lines involving the incineration of metropolitan Los Angeles by an atomic weapon or its depopulation by an aerosol nerve toxin. The characters do not have the time to reflect upon, much less to utilize, what real professionals know to be the “science and art” of “educing information.” They want results. Now. The public thinks the same way. They want, and rightly expect, precisely the kind of “protection” that only a skilled intelligence professional can provide. Unfortunately, they have no idea how such a person is supposed to act “in real life.”
Is there a theme here? Yes, a simple one. Prime time television is not just entertainment. It is “adult education.” We should not be surprised when the public (and many otherwise law-abiding lawyers) applaud when an actor threatens the “hostile du jour” with pain or mayhem unless he or she answers a few, pointed questions before the end of the episode. The writers craft the script using “extreme” measures because they assume, as our own government has, that police-state tactics studied for defensive purposes can be “reverse engineered” and morphed into cost-effective, “offensive” measures.
Though eminently understandable, such reactions are incredibly short-sighted and profoundly unethical. We don’t need just any answers, we need good answers. Our health and safety, and our posterity, depend on it.