Preface: This is admittedly somewhat peripheral to economics and business. However, terrorist attacks cost many billions of dollars in damage, and could severely depress consumer sentiment and “animal spirits”. And, as I have previously written, unnecessary wars hurt the economy. See this and this.
American civilian and military leaders have been creating new terrorists through their:
(1) Use of torture
and
(2) Killing of innocent civilians- especially children – in Arabic countries.
Torture
A high-level American Special Ops interrogator says that information obtained from torture is unreliable, and that torture just creates more terrorists. Indeed, he says that torture of innocent Iraqis by Americans is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place.
A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists.
A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
“This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.”
Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool.
A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said,
Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.
The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found:
“The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies … strengthened the hand of our enemies.”
Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism.
Killing of Innocent Civilians
The former number 2 counter-terrorism expert at the State Department says that military attacks in Iraq increase terrorism.
Indeed, Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country.
After the U.S. military handcuffed and then killed a bunch of Afghan kids, thousands of Afghans are protesting the brutal killings, chanting ‘Death to America!’.
Nice work creating new terrorists, you morons.
Anyone who thinks this is a partisan issue should read this.
In related news, not only are the U.S. government’s actions creating more terrorists, but “reforms” made to the intelligence agencies have made it MORE DIFFICULT to stop the terrorists they’ve created.
Idiots.
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Well all these wars are basically about economics aren’t they?
At the very best they’re `fighting for peace and democracy’. Which is only so that chucky-d’s (mcdonalds), coca-cola, disney and microsoft can sell more crap to even more people without being blown up.
Or for energy, for obvious reasons.
Or more conspiratorially so that the arab world region can never climb out of the dark ages.
It’s ALL about economics. The torture and illegal incarceration are just side-shows anyway – having wars against nations are a pretty good recruiting tool too. And they’re direct outcomes from the same sort of mindset as that which drove the failed banks into the ground. e.g. justified in whatever i do, so long as it’s for my benefit.
Torture creates new terrorists? That’s the feature. Where’s the bug?
Seriously, the “war on terror” will go away when it is no longer useful to our global elites.
War is a business, the largest in the world. Look at the defense budget. It is massive, and that doesn’t count the off budget and hidden items that are most certainly illegal. Don’t take my word for it. A certified American war hero, Marine General Smedley Butler finally realized that he and his troops were providing the muscle for big business by enforcing their will in other countries to enrich business and impoverish the masses. He wrote the book, War is a Racket.
Are you saying people don’t like occupations by foreign armies? Come on, thats crazy. Remember when the British put troops on an island in Boston Harbor. We started newspapers that claimed the Red Coats were throwing people out of their homes on an uninhabited island in Boston Harbor. Then we decided we had enough of a small defense garrison tasked with defending ourselves from pirates, Spanish, and French.
Mish has an article that says the defense spending has gone up 72% since 2000.
The cold war wasn’t this profitable to the arm merchants!
This goes hand in hand with the fear-mongers that constantly tell us to “fear the next terrorist attack!” Well guess what, fear is the primary tool of terrorism and once you cave into fear, terrorism works. Once fear becomes infectious, overreaction is often the result.
We need to suck it up and find our courage once again as a nation. Will future terrorists attacks occur? Yes. Should we be vigilant against terrorists to our utmost? Yes. Should we react with fear every time a terrorist attack occurs or is attempted? Hell no!
Find your courage and stop flinching Americans.
And when we do react we should do so in a measured rational way, not fueled by fear or the need for vengeance (or any other emotion for that matter).
Well … Washington is exactly correct … The US is harassing, bombing, based in, fighting wars in at least 8 Muslim countries … Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and with Israel’s help … Palestine…
We have injured, maimed, dislocated and killed millions of Muslims … the vast majority of these, innocent men, women and children … The survivors, their friends and family are certainly not amused by “Our Freedoms” …
The itemized reasons offered by Bin Laden, Hamas and Al Qaeda for waging war on the West and endless and ever changing. They first said that 9-11 was perpetrated because the “infidels” occupied the holy land and that the West instituted sanctions against Iraq. Both of those reasons have ceased to exist, yet the Islamic teerorists continue to wage war against America. Thus, it is preposterous to say that torture and unintended civilian harm are the cause the Islamic hatred of America. They will find a reason to hate no matter what the West does. They actually hate the West because of our many freedoms that permit things like fair treatment of women.
See: Crusades, WWI and II, confiscation with little recompense of their natural resources, the puppet dictators installed by the west to enable corporate larceny etc etc etc…
Skippy…I’ve found something I like in your backyard sooo…I’m sending in the troops cuz I heard you and your wife were fighting…after pacification I will put a far away relative in charge…set up a heavily guarded compound in my new area of operation…and if your lucky I might let you clean my toliet…on poverty wages…if you so much as scowl at me or my flag its Gitmo for you and yours as enemy combatants…indefantly!!!
As a Vietnam Vet I can tell you nothing new is happening today regarding these issues. Americans killed hundred of thousands of civilians in Nam with the free fire zone. The question becomes why Americans are so blood thirsty? Iraq War had a 70% approval rating before the bombing, Afghanistan military buildup and deployment has been just as popular. I could go on and on but lets make sure we understand that the general public support these activities and will continue to do so unless middle and upper class whites are drafted and die in large numbers and taxes are raised to pay for the effort.
Bravo. The best way to avoid these disasters is universal conscription.
Remember that we had conscription during Vietnam.
The reason we had a disaster, is that the “duty” to be “willing to serve” was all tied up with “patriotism”.
You might not remember, but I do because I was there, and a draftee, but draft dodgers in ’65 (when I was drafted), ’66, were considered scum of the earth by most Americans.
IMO, it took far more courage to resist the draft and go to Canada, than to just submit.
Universal conscription does not prevent wars.
and also, BTW, conscription also allows professional soldiers to brutalize our own civilians on a regular basis, through the “boot camp” process and further combat training.
This produces a larger percentage of people, IMO, who are willing to approve of more war and combat……..
The “Hey, I went through it, and survived, what’s wrong with you that you don’t want to go through it” attitude that’s very evident in some responses to this post.
“…he general public support these activities and will continue to do so unless middle and upper class whites are drafted and die in large numbers and taxes are raised to pay for the effort”.
Based on the Vietnam experience, that sounds right, but I don’t see any sign of it happening in the US. Without that kind of direct experience of the meaning of war, it is too easy for Govts. with problems (and Bush had problems before 9/11 – I remember there was even a TV show making fun of him called “That’s My Bush”) to start a war as a distraction.
That kind of motivation might best be addressed by fake wars scripted and shot in Hollywood, but portrayed in the mass media as real events. I call this the Capricorn One solution, for obvious reasons. While not an ideal response to the “war as distraction” policy, at least it would prevent the mass suffering entailed by the real thing.
Universal conscription is an oxymoron like military intelligence. Remember Dan Quayle? His daddy got him into a reserve unit that would never be called up to serve in Nam. He was all for the war because he played golf the whole time while middle class men and women were killing and dying, suffering and inflicting suffering. The rich are exempt from all the law and order that they like to preach to the rest of us. Wise up before they find an excuse to bring back conscription, which may happen soon as our present day soldiers are starting to realize that they are just being used.
I am finding that the more I know, the more I don’t want to know.
I feel so helpless.
I feel so angry.
I know that this is not healthy.
I am sinking fast, I am lost, I am helpless, I am in despair, my grandchildren deserve better from me and my generation, but I was asleep to what they were doing and when I awoke, it was too late. They took my future from me and everyone else.
I am so God Damn mad I want them all to pay. I want death sentences for Gietner, Barnanke, Summers, Blenkfien, Lewis, Fuld and all the rest. Nothing short of this will suffice.
I’m going to be an optimist and invest in rope-making companies.
You are not alone, know that.
The War on terror was something that was necessary when it was started, after 9/11, as we could not just stand there and let them attack us like that without a strong response. However, the fact that 8 years later there is still no clear strategy and no victory in sight, is troubling.
As far as torture goes, that reflects the mentality of the previous administration more than anything else. One only needs to listen to Chaney’s recent barking to see how we were able to sink so low under his “leadership”.
Vinny
With all due respect to your person Vinny, it was avoidable before it was necessary. You would also understand that torture is an act of revenge with sub-human status rendered upon the recipient, no wonder many detainees will never be released eh! As you better than most *understand* the gift of pain, mental and physical bequeaths its victims, as the gift that keeps giving and giving and giving to all it touches.
Skippy,
I’m not defending torture at all. Just saying that Cheney and the gang dragged us lower than we thought we could ever go.
But in a way it is to be expected from this country, which is already the most brutal on Earth, and the popular culture (i.e., movies) depict torture and human suffering as a form of entertainment for the moron masses.
By the way, there was a recent study that the US Army conducted, and it concluded that the new recruits are so much more brutal and more trigger-happy than what recruits used to be only a decade ago, they are actually found to be too brutal even for the US Army. The Army thought one possible cause might be the exposure to violent video games and movies.
Vinny
Terrorists are reactive, not pro active groups, they are set in motion. Hence my disagreement to your statement
“The War on terror was something that was necessary when it was started, after 9/11, as we could not just stand there and let them attack us like that without a strong response.
This all could have been avoided cheaply, except for a group that has infiltrated our highest offices and their desire to control the world for their enrichment added by Richard K definition aka “quasi-racism”. (hope quoting you is ok Richard).
To make my case clear the wests involvement over a very long period of time is the cause of these events, its our bad actions, are interloping for control and profit which has brought this home to roost, we are the problem not the other way around. Until such is made public and discourse is from this central point of observation we will suffer and so will they.
Skippy…the only heat I have with you Vinny, is in trying *together* to right this nation from its pathetic state.
The “war on terror” was never necessary. It’s vacuous, meaningless jargon used for propaganda purposes. It’s undefined, there is no real enemy, no victory conditions. “Terror” is in us. The Xmas plot succeeded as “terror” even though no damage was done to the plane or passengers.
I lived on a US military base during Vietnam. There was a sign over the gate as you left that said the following — “You are now entering the most dangerous place in the world, a US highway.”
Yes, 3,000 people died on 9/11. During the average year, 40,000 people die on a US freeway. During the average year 400,000 die from cigarettes. Shortly after 9/11 approximately 135 people dies in the fire at a little rock and roll bar in Rhode Island.
America suck it up! None of us are going to get out of here alive.
“On Wednesday, an explosion tore through a group of children gathered around foreign soldiers visiting a U.S.-funded road project in Nangarhar province, east of the capital of Kabul. Afghan officials said four children were killed. NATO said two died.
Minutes after the blast, local residents were accusing American forces of throwing a grenade into the crowd — even though several international troops were among the wounded. The Afghan Interior Ministry later released a statement saying the explosion occurred when a passing police vehicle hit a mine.”
Is this this what you are citing as “After the U.S. military handcuffed and then killed a bunch of Afghan kids” ? I don’t see anything else you might be referencing. I sympathized with you once before, but I might have saved myself the trouble of typing the comment. You are as quick to jump to conclusions–sensationalist and unsupportable conclusions, even from your own sources–as the worst of the people you rail against. Are you that disrespectful of the readers of this blog to assume that we don’t even bother to read the links? Good day to you, sir.
Get your brain in gear buddy.
The US routinely levels villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They kill and/or maim the entire village – including women and children – to kill a *suspected* ‘terrorist’ – meaning a guy who resists the occupation of his country by a foreign military.
How would you respond if Chinese troops setup bases in Mexico and their drones started extra-judicial executions of American ‘terrorists’ who volunteered to man the border defenses?
Please, the pro-war nuts in this country would be tripping all over themselves to appease their new Chinese overlords if they ever got that close.
Well, if read the story third-hand on the internet, I think I would double-check the facts before jumping in my pickup and heading south with a bunch of guns. Fair enough?
STFU toolbag. You have never served a day in the military and you are parroting lefty talking points like a good little boy. I have watched us pass up many solid targets just so that we would not risk civ casualties. We can’t be perfect, but we do try to mitigate it.
You lack wisdom and gratitude for the blanket of protection under which you are free to live. Get your head out of your ass.
“The War on terror was something that was necessary when it was started, after 9/11, as we could not just stand there and let them attack us like that”
Vinny,
I’m just a regular reader here, almost never post. I always look forward to reading your comments, but I can’t understand the basis of the above-mentioned quote.
The fact that Bush-Cheney DEMANDED to be kept off-record and unsworn at the 9-11 cover-up exercise. (Notice I didn’t call that an investigation.)Says more than words could say.
So, I don’t get your “them attack us”.
My take is that it was a copy of the “1933 business plot under Roosevelt “, but this time it was carried out successfully. The variant was that this time “business” was in the US Vice-President Chair. No need to overthrow anything. Just an enabling event, like a “pearl Harbour”
To advance American oil interests in Iraq.
Afghanistan was also rolled in the mix, but left destabilized enough to saunter to blitzkrieg another arab nation to the proverbial stone age.
Also, Vinny, you must know that the Bush spawn are known associates of the Bin Laden’s. Of course, Grampa Prescott Bush was an associate of none other than the Third Reich leadership. Look up American Gangsterism.
So, I am not really sure what you mean by “them.”
M:
I already got some heat from Skippy about that comment I made. :)
I meant to say, “to catch Bin Laden and the gang”. I didn’t mean to go into Iraq and kill innocent women and children, build Gitmo, and torture people in Iraq and other places, and turn the whole world against us, as Bush did.
Would have been nice to have Bin Laden on trial — that’s all I was saying. I imagine it could have been carried out nicely by the CIA. But Bush, in his infinite “wisdom” thought Halliburton could do a better job at it.
Vinny
Of course it creates more terrorists. That is the point. They need to be able to create more demand for bombs and bullets, and the loans that are necessary to buy them.
Divide and conquer via the media reporting of our misdeeds is one tactic of our foreign enemies. They sit far away from the action but up close can witness the war of attrition of our treasuries, and by virtue of sending out an endless stream of of low level field operatives, fight on their terms. Our strategies seem to get better when we can work with locals on their own level, but question how long our leaders will keep up the slow expensive currying of co-operative engagement.
Nice collection of lefty anti-American masturbation material you’ve compiled there. Watch out that you don’t wear yourself out jerking it.
If you even knew a single person who has served, you would be hard pressed to believe that we are over there killing kids and torturing people. But you are all a bunch of coddled, self absorbed douchebags who cannot have their conventional wisdom challenged lest it make you more boring talking to your fellow circle jerkers.
I have several friends that have served and continue to serve. I don’t think they are evil, and I know they would not willingly commit murder on civilian populations. Above all they do what they are told, and they do it better than any other military in the history of the world.
That said, when are you going to realize that it doesn’t matter who’s gun the bullet came from, the bank is making money on it.
300 million dollars each for every member of the taliban still in Afghanistan. That is what we are spending to try and apprehend them.
A good free market observer might say that we would be better off spending 100 million a piece to ask them to stop. But then how does the bank sustain yield? The contractors have to keep their margins up.
If you were to suggest that all of that money were to go to the military and their families, I would also have no objection.
You are fighting with the wrong people.
SERE See: http://www.training.sfahq.com/survival_training.htm
Froggy I’m anti policy, anti crimes against humanity, not anti American, BTW when did that state of mind incur political delineation.
I would also caution you on your brazen use of “If you even knew a single person who has served, you would be hard pressed to believe that we are over there killing kids and torturing people.” as you are communicating with some one that was invited to join a TEAM whilst undergoing Master Repel school at FT. Campbell with members of 5th Group. Worked over their from the late 70s to early 90s and still have contacts in said areas.
REMF safety tip for you…limit shuffling of feet on carpet whilst sitting in your office chair under the cool dry breeze of air con…perfect conditions for static discharge…no touching bare metal with out first using your static discharge probe as used in sling loading…falure to comply with instructions could result in injury and that may necessitate medical attention and down time which could be viewed as destruction of Government Property and an Article 15 for it.
Skippy…watched a guy get blown 25ft off a water buffalo sitting on top of a flat bed with a CH-47 over head, attempting to connect the donut to the cargo ring by tossing it, at it, for the lack of a static probe…saw the bolt and IT was big! He lived by the way lol.
Nice post.
And Froggy, you need to turn off FOX and see reality dude.
Go tell Jesse Ventura he’s a lefty anti-American jerk off, you fuck head.
LARRY KING: You were a Navy SEAL.
JESSE VENTURA: That’s right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.
LARRY KING: What was it like?
JESSE VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.
There are three reasons why controlling regimes resort to torture as an act of policy (as does the US); two functional, and one disfunctional. Understood in detail, the picutre is even more odious than it would appear on the surface, but rather less irrational.
The ostensible reason for torture is to get good intelligence. This is not one of the three reasons why states _actually_ pursue torture, btw, but let’s review whether there is any validity in the ostensible reason. Torture does _not_ supply reliable intel. This has been studied repeatedly, and the answer is the same. There have been detailed investigations of the results of torture under the Nazi regime pursued by the Germans and torture in the USSR (both kept extensive records). People told the torturers whatever would be believed starting with what the torturers wanted to hear: intel value, zero (0). The results for the French in Algeria are more complex, to which I’ll return below. Regarding the value of actual intel from tortured individuals, it was still low and always problematic. Then there is the issue Yves emphasizes in this post: tortured people hate those who oppress them, and become deeply engaged with retaliation and resistance. The primary reason that the US became a target for mass acts of terrorism by jihadist revolutionaries _resident in other countries_ is that we deliberately as an act of policy did, and continue to do so more than ever, train, fund, direct, and participate directly in torture and repression inflicted by regimes and governments in those other countries directed at both those jihadists and any other civil organization not bought and sold to the policies there. We created 9/11; it was inevitable as a derivative of our policy of a generation prior; it only surprised me that it took so long. Torture directed by the US now explicitly only makes us more foes, this is fact, and has many historical examples.
What produces good intel? Collaborators. Buying in resistance is far, far more effective in securing control of a population than repression, and collaborators are essential at every level for that outcome. The ostensible reasons for torture then fail. What are the actual reasons?
The first reason for inflicting torture is repression, to call it by its name. The tortured individual matters little. The real point is to intimidate the great mass of people who might not comply, protest, or otherwise resist the authority inflicting torture. Many of them knowing that, say, if they went to a protest they might be kidnapped off the stree, beaten in prison and raped, just aren’t goint to go. Pretty obvious, right? The issue is to make a docile, conforming public of the target population by generating the common knowledge that and noncompliance has steep costs. In a situation where the mass of the population is desparate, this is insufficient. But in a situation where the mass of the population is getting by and a minority is desparate, this approach is quite successful. Those getting by are intimidated to make no resistance by the ongoing operations against the desparate who are receiving exemplary punishment. In such a situation, having ongoing torture of ‘a terrorist few’ is very useful for the state involved; “Don’t mess with us,” is the message. Especially if ‘the terrorist few’ are generally unpopular with the masses, e.g. the Black Panthers, the PKK in Turkey, and in fact most jihadists in their countries of origin. Consider Thatcherite Britain for a recent example. Exemplary punishment is one rational reason why state authorities torture, accepting the blowback as a cost of keeping power.
The second reason for inflicting torture is to induce collaboration. Now, those tortured sometimes collaborate, but they aren’t on the whole reliable. But if many are faced with the prospect that they _might_ be tortured OR they could be rewarded with significant priviliges or one-tme gains for cooperation, than a significant number will freely offer cooperation. And to keep their handlers happy, such collaborators _must_ generate good intel or other useful results. Now, many powerful regimes (though by no means all weak regimes) already have numerous rewards that they can offer without having to resort to torture, and the more effectively coopted individuals are the more effective the control of the state. So why, considering that, resort to torture with the blowback that it tends to generate rather than pay off collaborators? To hold down the going rate. If one has carrot _and_ stick, the price may be half a carrot; if one is only handing out carrots, the price may be two or three, and collaborators may only come forward when it is convenient for them rather than useful for the authority in question. The second reason for resorting to torture is to induce kapos and running dogs on a least cost/most results basis.
Collabortion has been essential to all successful occupying powers and to nearly all successful suppressions of popular insurgencies. The French in Algeria produced most of their results by inducing collaborators on a carrot-or-stick basis. The Israelies have done the same for sixty years and counting. The Nazis crushed all popular resistance groups in Europe, high-falutin cinema of the present notwithstanding, by the using collaborators and quisling regimes (with the exception of the Serbs who, for reason of ethinic configurations in their area had no viable path to collaboration). Nearly all good Soviet domestic intel came via inducing collaboration as an alternative to execration.
The third reason for an authority inflicting torture as an act of policy, the dysfunctional one, is, as skippy notes, for revenge. Pure and simple. “We have the power; you don’t; we can kill/maim/torture you anytime we feel like it because we just don’t like you.” Revenge is typically compounded by racism or its near-equivalents. We tortured Native Americans for hundreds of years until they were completely out of sight and out of mind. They hated us and resisted us the more for it, but we didn’t care because if just felt so good. The record of the British in Ireland is quite similar: the hostility which followed from torture and repression was high cost, but it never threatened Britian or British control and so was seen as the prerogative of empire. For many in the US, the torture of Muslims on is exactly for that reason: racism and lynch law. But this is a prerogative of the powerful. If the otherside can hit back, there’s incentive not to resort to torture. It is exactly because the power disparity is so great that the ‘torture of contempt’ is resorted to, as an affirmation of the torturers of their status as exempt from reprisal and hence super-powerful.
Not a pretty picture is it, friends? And make no mistake: torture as an act of US policy didn’t start on 12 Sep 01. We have pursued it continuously for one hundred years as a policy act of government. There was recent mention of the US occupation of the Philippines online in the context of insurgency. Everything we do now in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Pakistan and Yemen inevitably to follow, was pioneered there. From 1947 on, we have trained torturers for the many regimes which our policy actors happened to feel on a given day were useful to us. Without pause, or change. We _made_ Iran our enemy in exactly this way. Just as we make ourselves more enemies continuously, under Democrat and Republican alike. Because to ensure our commercial hegemony we actively seek as a country to induce docility through intimidation, shake loose quislings and rats, and make those we despise grovel helplessly. Look at the facts, and the conclusion is obvious. No country is sufficiently large or well placed to make us stop, either.
Will there be _real_ payback for us from the rest of the world in time, I wonder? Or will we collapse from our own incontinence and come back a smaller version of ourselves on the world state before the former happens? I would like to think that we could/would/might reform ourselves, but the last thirty years put the lie to that hope. We had a shot at doing so in the 1980s, but that was the road not taken. Too many took the fork to the right, and now we’ve got the Devil to pay. Ol’ Nick is wrapped in the red, white and blue, and if he doesn’t look down the street too many of us can find him simply by looking in the nearest mirror. Not an edifying picture.
Making the torturer’s complicit is also important for the institutional resolve of the operation.
How can you get anyone to stand up to it within the torturing organization if they were part of this horrible display of humanship?
“It must have been necessary, I was doing it.”
And BTW, at least the british in ireland “let” the prisoners hunger strike, and then die. We would not allow that today, force feeding of the detainees is now common place. Was the second force feeding that day necessary for the survival of the prisoner, or punitive?
What is the guy thinking who is pushing the tube down his throat?
“Crap-ass sand nigger, you’re getting yours.” Seriously. Plenty of guys like that in the business. Just ask Jojo with the right mojo for that.
Richard Kline asks: “Will there be _real_ payback for us from the rest of the world in time, I wonder?”
I live in Mexico, which by sheer weight of propinquity has borne the brunt of US imperial aggression for over 150 years.
What we see now is the US imperialist class, because its rape and plunder have been thwarted by steadily growing resistance around the globe, turning its guns inward upon its own population.
But you don’t see dancing in the streets here, a celebration of the fact that many Americans are now reaping what they have sewn for so long. And I believe the reasons are twofold:
1) If the American empire were to implode, the transition from US global hegemony to a new world order could be very painful, and
2) If a global hegemon is a necessary evil to maintain world order, perhaps the US has not been the worst of empires. When one looks around at who might replace the US—China for instance—there is concern that the new hegemon could be worse, maybe much worse, than the US.
I travel to Eastern Europe often, which until relatively recently, used to be a bastion of pro-Americanism. Not so anymore. I was there recently, and people now are talking about the collapse of the US.
I think the US deludes itself into thinking weapons and armies can prevent a fall. In fact, the strength of an empire is largely psychological. Once it lost the “hearts and minds” of those it tries to dominate, the armies are useless. The US has lost psychologically.
Vinny
I disagree with the wimps and think torture can work – but it’s all in the application. Reward the subject by not torturing them further if they provide good info that proves out. If they don’t provide good info, then escalate the tortures slowly. Make other captives watch which should encourage compliance from them. It’s a simple reward/punishment loop.
The problem is that we torture like we fight wars – half assed.
We need to get rid of the pansy tortures we use and get back to the tried and proven techniques that were perfected centuries ago in the medieval ages.
Longing for the medieval ages are you now? Jojo[?] is that female and if such your strong evocation suggests a strong will. That is most unfortunate as this could be misinterpreted for *Witch* like behaver and the only path to salvation is by trial, adjudicated by a Church specialist, under which you most likely will die. Never fear my child for if vindicated your soul will ascend to your heavenly reward, its all about the soul you know and not your earthly bonds, there is a galactic war going on you know.
Any human that relishes torture of another, which seems to be your case, regardless the circumstances, is deficient to the extreme. You are disturbed, seek help before its to late.
When your WE parish from this world, then the human race…*maybe*…reach its potential.
Skippy…please in the future replace your WE with I and stop holding the those of us that wish a better world for all…back.
Skippy opines “Any human that relishes torture of another, which seems to be your case, regardless the circumstances, is deficient to the extreme. You are disturbed, seek help before its to late.”
Hmmm, your absolute statement appears to be delivered from a self-perceived mount of moral superiority. But it doesn’t sound all that different from the many religious fanatics who point their fingers at those who refuse to believe as they do and pronounce that they will “rot in hell for eternity”. :)
The hell you suffer is not one of some after life, but today.
I have over 20 years experience globally (on the ground) of which I opine, how is your optics, MSM, mates at the bar, your own self hate. There is no distinction between a sociopaths torture of civilians in society from that of a licensed government operative and yet even worse to adroitly hand over the handy work to another country to dispatch the barbarity.
Its a hell of a thing to find comrades hanging upside down, skin flayed, in an ant tree and realize their last moments were spent gaging on their own man hood after castration. Too see such things and worse yet remain human is not a test for the unstable or of weak will. Yet you easily opine to the tactical and strategic benefits in near real time of torture, for political and military goals with out even a modicum of evidence to your ability / experience in this field.
As Kevin de Bruxelles so aptly puts, this is more about generational management rather than battlefields and SQ miles occupied and after the Wests malfeasance over 100 years or so in said areas. To whit if we had kept our promises to the Mujahideen (our best mates at the time) after the Soviet with drawl we would not be there nor would non national extremists. This brew of trouble is largely of our own making, we own it, yet your mind some how says we must act even more atrociously than before too fix it?
By yours and like thinkers, my dog shat on your lawn and you complained about it or I received Intel from some one I just tortured, uttered your name under duress. I would be with in my rights to come over and expatriate you to another address and torture you to my satisfaction. And if I *feel* you are not[?] guilty detain you indefinitely as I now know via my actions that you *now* want to kill me in the future, come hell or high water, at any cost.
Go spend some time studying the Spanish Inquisition, it was the melding of church and state for political gain with impunity. This event went on from 1478 to 1833, do you and yours have the stamina for it, even when ultimaly it failed!
And just because you walk up right does not grant you the title of Human (you have to work for that distinction), many are just animals seeking to scratch their Itch’s, regardless of the long term consequences.
I highly recommend you and your ilk to participate in your opines by securing work in these troubled places rather that grandstand from you comfortable abodes. See how you go watching a man, not long ago child, piss, defaecate them selves, try to commit suicide, wail non stop for days, beg for mercy, all in the most visceral experience you have ever encountered, yet you are not even sure they are guilty or not.
Skippy…not to worry Jojo or Dan D you just might get your auto de fé see: Voltaire featured an auto-da-fé held by the people of Lisbon after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in chapter six of his satire Candide (1759). The people of Lisbon believed that this “great ceremony was an infalliable means of preventing the earth from quaking.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_de_fe
Your ground is shaking, better kill or torture some people fast!
Skippy,
You hit the nail squarely upon the head.
What have the last eight years shown us about the arm chair warriors? Talk tough, and then send somebody else, or somebody else’s kids, to fight and die.
And then they charge the cost of the war on the kids’ and grandkids’ credit cards.
What you ‘think,’ Jojo, is hardly relevant since there’s precious little evidence of actual knowledge on any of several subjects you reference in your comment, so ill-informed opinion is not even worth two cents. I reiterate my remark from the comment above. Plenty are motivated by revenge, typically from a position of assumed superiority and quasi-racism educed from the saftey of a ‘never’ll happen to ME’ position. Sounds like that fits your hatsize just about right, J-man.
Oh, but Richard…
What you think is relevant…cuz, see, your actual knowledge is so ‘bundant.
And just what is “Quasi-Racism”?!
See, cuz in one of your comments, you have an American soldier ramming a tube down a prisoner’s throat, while saying, “Here, take that Sand-Nigger” (this, according to all of your “actual knowledge” on the subject)…
and we have “Quasi-racism”?!
Damn, I love the gratuitous “quasi-neo-” prefix attached in near proximity to “the post-Orwellian industrio-military imperialist hegemony complex”.
It’s so French Cafe’ Cliche’!
Dan I’ll vouch for Richards statement on personal experience and worse actions committed by *some* of our troops.
Although I’m surprised at your flummox, after all the photos came out with troops smiling whilst degrading and torturing individuals detained with out/before trial. Plus the suppression of many, many more obviously damning trophy photos all in the name of saving American lives, not kicking the hornets nest…eh.
Your questioning of Richards use of quasi-racism is duplicitous at best, for you and I understand its portent all too well.
It seems you have be singed by its implications and fail to openly address your grievances, they might clarify your bias for all too see.
You are right, Richard. I’d also add that what you and everyone else thinks here, pro or con, makes absolutely no difference either. So feel free to express but expect no gain.
Governments and TPTB will do what they want to do, once way or another, as they have always done. Like the stories of the CIA, who since they can’t torture people on American soil, juts ship them somewhere else and/or have someone else do the dirty work.
I’d feel confident in guessing that torture, like greed, theft, adultery, etc. has been with us since the beginning of human history. And I’d feel equally competent that there were people who complained that it (like the death penalty) didn’t work. Yet it has continued throughout history.
we’ll waterboard you until you become a pacifist and nun.
Ho Ho
Should take about 15 seconds. LOL.
And you’ll probably never take a bath for the rest of your life.
HA. No need for torture. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I don’t like pain.
Yeah, Jojo, let’s bring back the Inquisition. That’s a good one. We can then torture anybody who might claim the Earth is not flat.
Sounds like a plan to me…LOL
Vinny
Jojo,
Yes, it is possible that in certain cases the use of torture could produce positive results on a tactical level. But by zooming into a microscopic tactical level you lose sight of the huge strategic price that you pay for these meagre results; and that is losing at the moral level of the conflict, and in a Fourth Generation conflict, the moral is the decisive level. Not to mention that even on the tactical level the opponent will adapt to the use of torture by reorganizing and compartmentalizing information within cells more effectively, thus cutting down opportunities to turn enemies into collaborators.
The strategic goal of the weaker Fourth Generation opponent is always to destroy the moral coherence of the Great Power they are fighting. For the Great Power to prevail in the long hard ugly work of counter-insurgency, they must maintain at all cost their moral coherence. That means their soldiers as well as the home front understanding and supporting the war. At the same time they are trying to isolate the insurgents from the “sea” within which they operate; the local population. The actual bombings and “battles” of a Fourth Generation war are close to irrelevant on the strategic scale (very relevant for those taking part, of course), you are not going to “kill them all” and neither are the terrorists. Also swinging a big dick around is not going to scare them all into submission. In Alexander the Great’s days this was true, but it is more so now with the advance of civilizations razing an entire town and selling the occupants into slavery is no longer even an option. Even the Soviets couldn’t scare the mujahedeen into submission. A Fourth Generation war is decided by how well the political elite of the Great Power can keep their people supporting and their soldiers fighting the war.
The way to win against an insurgency is by maintaining moral cohesion while splitting and destroying the opposition’s. Only Israel against the Palestinians have been able to accomplish this while using torture. This has as much to do with the inherent incompetence of the Palestinian movements and the blatant collaboration of many of them with Israel, as well as the intense Israeli interest in keeping the West Bank. France, in Algeria especially showed the futility of torture, even when a tactical victory is achieved like in the Battle of Algiers, the moral destruction on the strategic level caused by massive use of torture paradoxically led to the coup d’etat that ultimately installed Charles de Gaulle into power, the only man powerful enough in France to actually withdraw from Algeria.
If you want to maintain support on the home front for any small war then the first rule is to forbid torture. Success is still not assured by any means but torturing inevitably leads to a weakening of your moral level and a corresponding strengthening of the enemies. And when the enemy is as repugnant as Al Qaida then it is an even worse disservice to mankind to strengthen their moral level.
So…the use of “torture” (in quotes, because it is
conveniently undefined for the purposes of GW’s post)…
And “brutal atrocities” against women and children by US soldiers…
These came first? Before the Terrorists? And all we have to do is stop “torturing” and “killing women and children” ???
First off, if you are going to write a missive about “torture” could you at least have the intellectual honest/clarity to give us your working definition? [In case you hadn’t noticed…the debate on torture rages with no primary connotation. There are too many damn definitions being used and too much “talking past one another”.]
Then, you make a very serious allegation about US soldiers “HANDCUFFING AND KILLING AFGHAN CHILDREN”…and what’s your source? A link to FireDogLake??? [Please…Spend a few moments reading some other posts at FDL: Make sure to read the post by Knowbuddhau, as he praises another FDL author, Sister Laura. See, Sister Laura “rocked Knowbuddah’s world” by linking to an article in the Washington Post. Knowbuddah responds in kind by linking to some quotes from Naomi Klein’s website. Freaking awesome. Totally rocked my world!]
What a joke.
Dan,
Yes these atrocities did come first from the point of view of the people who suffered them. With respect to creating more terrorists that’s all that matters.
It’s a very simple thing to consider what something may look and feel like from another’s point of view. You may not get it right, but everyone is better off for the attempt.
Terrorism provides the highly guaranteed new job opportunities of the 21st century. For all those kiddies who grew up playing all their assorted war games – this is a marvellous chance to employ all those skills, and indulge their fantasies.
In a world of ever-shrinking good job prospects, this is a serious issue.
Terrorism also makes a lot of money for the big boys up top – and rushes endless amounts of big bucks through the system in order to finance all the military hardware necessary for the games. The show must go on.
Flippancy aside, once the cold war cooled down…what else was there to ramp up military spending? Just another powerful special interest to drain the vaults.
The more enemies the better – just equals more justification for higher budgets – more slop in the troughs. For the sloppers, the best part is not just the payoffs…it is that the “enemy” can never win. Terrible as they may be, they can’t compete against national funding.
What fun.
Can’t have cool wars and weapons with trrrrssts. Looks like the plan to create more of them is working.
They’re not idiots. Neither was Bush.
There was a study that the US Army conducted not too long ago, and it concluded that the new recruits are so much more brutal and more trigger-happy than what recruits used to be only a decade ago, they are actually too brutal even for the US Army. The Army thought one possible cause might be the exposure to violent video games and movies.
We’ve created a generation of monsters. And that too for the sake of big profits for the entertainment corporations.
Vinny
“So…the use of “torture” (in quotes, because it is
conveniently undefined for the purposes of GW’s post)…”
A distinction only a criminal could appreciate.
I read this site everyday and have never commented but as:
Someone in the military.
Someone who was in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Someone who was water boarded and tortured during training I felt the need to comment.
Firstly Patrick, as someone who would have been dropping those bombs (I was also on a kicking doors in for one full year on the ground as part of another program after my aviation time was up) that: “The US routinely levels villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They kill and/or maim the entire village – including women and children – to kill a *suspected* ‘terrorist’ – meaning a guy who resists the occupation of his country by a foreign military.”
You are so off base it is incomprehensible. Totally. Jeremy Scahill and I run in the same circle of friends (believe it or not) and in speaking with him from time to time I can’t believe what he regards as fact. I imagine that the majority of people on the same side rely on such faulty “facts”. I bring him up because he appears as a god to most anti-war, anti-blackwater types. As someone who has spent time there in various cities as well as having a sibling who is a company commander you are dead wrong.
Stop being melodramatic as well as living in a fantasy world. I have no agenda; I am not a member of either party and agree with the majority of you all in saying that both sides are bad. I also agree that for the most part torture is wrong and it has been proven to not be effective. Finally I will say that there are other reasons why we are over in that part in the world.
Hooooowever this has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue long after we all have departed from the earth. In the past four thousand years of history there have only been around 260 years of peace. Regardless of you opinions it does not give anyone the right to twist the truth to prove a point, when you do as such it not only belittles your argument (which just may be the morally correct one) and makes you look like a partisan fool; no one will listen to you. Honestly I don’t care what your position is just base it on logic, reason and fact….and you are not.
Please get your facts straight before putting pen (figuratively) to paper, and attempt to get both sides of the issue, which is one of the reasons why I read this blog daily (as someone from probably the other side). If you speak to the majority of the men in the military I guarantee they will break whatever stereotype you have of them as well as what they do overseas.
I am shocked at how so many intelligent people can have their heads so far up their posterior region when it comes to the root causes of Islamic terrorism.
This is not a civil, ideological debate.
It is a WAR about democracy, Coca-Cola, Levis and pornography. It is about capitol ‘D’ democracy—and a deep seeded fear of it. It is about losing control of ancient theocratic ideals amidst a rogue wave of free-flowing ideas via modern social media. It is Cultural Darwinism. And it’s pretty clear the West is winning; thus the desperate hay-makers Al Qaeda continues to throw our way.
This has nothing to do with who the POTUS is. Or our alliance with Israel. Or how many American troops happen to be in the Middle East at any given time. If we could wave some magical wand and undo all those Infidel infractions, would all this hate and radicalism simply evaporate? Would Syria and Yemen and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia et al suddenly become better Global Citizens? Would the angry mobs of self-flagellators simply yawn and go home? Would the treatment of women suddenly improve? Did anyone really think electing Obama was going to make these homicidal bombers like us more?
Child, please.
We are not ‘making’ more terrorists. There is a problem imbedded in the ‘code’ of Islam boys and girls—and it’s cranking out homicidal maniacs just fine without us, thank you very much.
These are enemy combatants waging war against us. And when you release them, they do no remove their Nazi uniforms, fade back into the fabric of their home towns and become cheery barkeeps who tell colorful war stories. They regroup and attack again and again, ala the attempted Christmas bombing.
Go ahead. Shut Gitmo down. Let these psychopaths lawyer up. Give them more ‘art therapy’. Three square meals a day, and conjugal visits too. Then see if less American flags get torched, or more importantly, fewer airlines drop from the sky.
Read some Oriana Fallaci, people. And ask yourself, why does Islam and poverty seem to go so hand in hand? It’s high time the Middle East stopped pointing the finger at America, and took a long, hard look in the mirror first.
Man, you have ever drank the koolaid!
Is there anything Dick Cheney says that you don’t swallow hook, line and sinker?
Thoughtful, researched opinion?
Like this one:
There is a problem imbedded in the ‘code’ of Islam boys and girls—and it’s cranking out homicidal maniacs just fine without us, thank you very much.
Or this by Oriana Fallaci, who you admonished us to read:
“If you hold a gun and say, ‘Choose who is worse between the Muslims and the Mexicans,’ I have a moment of hesitation. Then I choose the Muslims, because they have broken my balls.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci
You speak of Nazis. Well take a long look in the mirror and you just might see your greatest fear.
DownSouth,
Just so you know, I voted for Obama, for completely different reasons, but thanks for the kindergarten-level response. I await your next argument with baited breath. Let me guess. Your Daddy can beat up my Daddy?
But if I’ve ‘drank the Koolaid as you’ve said (instead of laid out a thoughtful, researched opinion), then we should see a reduction of terrorism against the U.S. during the current administration.
Yes?
Just to leaven the bread with some historical perspective, Al-Zawahari, Al Qaeda’s Number 2 in command, often invokes Andalusia in his speeches, referring to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom.
In the year 1492.
The future will tell just who drank what.
Thoughtful, researched opinion?
Like this one:
There is a problem imbedded in the ‘code’ of Islam boys and girls—and it’s cranking out homicidal maniacs just fine without us, thank you very much.
Or this by Oriana Fallaci, who you admonished us to read:
If you hold a gun and say, ‘Choose who is worse between the Muslims and the Mexicans,’ I have a moment of hesitation. Then I choose the Muslims, because they have broken my balls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci
You speak of Nazis. Well take a long look in the mirror and you just might see your greatest fear.
“(instead of laid out a thoughtful, researched opinion)”
You show zero evidence of that.
Is Christianity defined by Fred Phelps? Islam is not defined by Al Qaeda.
It matters almost nothing what the zealots think until conditions are bad enough that normal people throw their lot in with them.
No, DownSouth, As a resident of New York City, I think I’ve articulated pretty clearly what my biggest fear is—and it’s certainly not a modern democracy with checks, balances and a free press becoming anything remotely resembling the Third Reich.
I made that reference as a historical parallel to other wars fought and what happened to the enemy combatants of the losing side—and how different that dynamic is in this conflict.
DId any of that track for you?
But hey, way to water down the horror of what a real Nazi is by comparing one to an award-winning female author and journalist.
Wow.
Newsflash: Your biggest fear is not the same thing as a thoughtful, researched opinion.
You and Dan Duncan. Not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant. Is ignorance to be the most cherished of virtues now?
And talking about children, and “just to leaven the bread with some historical perspective,” let’s take a little bit closer look at what happened on the Iberian peninsula in 1492:
Diplomatic negotiations to draw up the marriage contract (between Manuel of Portugal and Isabel of Spain) proved remarkably sticky, above all because of one factor: the extreme reluctance of the young lady in question. She had been married to Manuel’s cousin, Afonso, heir presumptive to the throne of Portugal at the time of his death in 1491. Now in 1497 this pious twenty-six-year-old widow was still grief-stricken and resistant to the idea of remarriage…. After the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, it is hardly surprising that it was to Portugal that many of the refugees went, and there they were made welcome. Yet the young widow Isabel, or rather those on the Castilian team negotiating on her behalf, let it be known that she would be unwilling to marry Manuel unless his kingdom came in line with her parents’ kingdom by converting or expelling all its Jews.
For good measure…Cisneros added in the course of the negotiations the further stipulation that the Muslims of Portugal should be eliminated at the same time as the Jews…
Two key aspects of the actions taken against the Jews by Manuel are relevant here: the transport arrangements and the policy on children… Since Jews and Muslims caught in Portugal after the set date would incur the penalty of enslavement, the chaos and panic at the docs can be imagined. There were not enough vessels available to transport just the Jews.
As for children of tender age, they were excluded from the expulsion orders, or to put it another way and to be more explicit, were not allowed to leave with their parents… The parents of the children that were, in accordance with the edicts, to be left behind, felt the same emotions as any parents anywhere would feel if forced to hand children over with no hope of ever seeing them. (To these universal human sentiments we must add the religious dread felt by pious Jews, horrified at the prospect of their offspring being brought up against their will in such an imperfect faith as Christianity, and so unable to perform the sacred rites.) The anguish of the Jewish families caught in this cruel trap is described by contemporary observers…
The centuries-old community of Portuguese Muslims was in this way brought to an end overnight, but at least the children of the Portuguese Muslims were spared the dreadful fate inflicted on the children of the Jews.
De Gois is utterly frank when he comes to explain why this surprising concession was made by the Portuguese authorities. It was not out of any impulse of generosity or nobility of sentiment. His text is so revealing and has such direct bearing on the way Muslims wre later to be treated elsewhere in the peninsula (particularly in the lands of the Crown of Aragon), that it must be translated here in extenso:
“In case we are censured for carelessness in not explaining why the King had the Jews’ children seized, whereas the children of the Moors were not, especially since the reason both of these groups were being obliged to leave the country was that they had refused baptism and rejected the teachings of the Church, it must be borne in mind that no harm could result to Christians if they took away the children of the Jews. Jews are scattered all over the earth, and have no country of their own, no lordships, cities or towns, and indeed in all the places where they dwell, they are transients, and payers of tribute, so they lack the power and authority to execute their will against those who do them harm and injury. The Moors, on the other hand, have, for our sins, and in order to punish us, been permitted by God to occupy the greater part of Asia, Africa, and a good part of Europe too, and in these places where the Moors have empires, kingdoms and great lordships, there live many Christians who are subject to their tribute, not to mention the many Christians held captive by them. It would have been very prejudicial to all these peoples to take away the Moors’ children, because those subjected to this harm would clearly not fail, after expulsion had been inflicted on them, to seek to execute revenge on those Christians who lived in Moorish territory, and above all to take revenge on the Portuguese, who would incur special blame. This was why the Moors were allowed to leave the kingdom with their children, whereas the Jews were not.”
This Machiavellian line of reasoning should not be forgotten when…we come to look at the ways in which the expulsion of the Moriscos was put into effect in the period 1609-12 under the different conditions of that later age. In terms of global strategy the Christian nations of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century felt vis-à-vis the Islamic world, that they were potentially vulnerable, but by the time the Edicts of Expulsion were eventually put into effect the combined kingdoms of Spain and Portugal were immeasurably wealthier and more powerful than any of the Islamic powers of the early seventeenth century. Fear of reprisals no longer held Christian policymakers back in the way that it had done 112 years earlier.
–L.P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain: 1500 to 1614
As barbaric and Machiavellian as the actions of the Spanish and Portuguese Christians were, they pale in comparison to your statement that “there is a problem imbedded in the ‘code’ of Islam boys and girl.” The 15th-century Christians were, after all, motivated by, as Harvey goes on to point out, “a desire not to deprive the innocent young of their chance of hearing the gospel of Christ and so of becoming true Christians.” But you, being the mirror image of those you hate, are thoroughly modern. As John Gray wrote in Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern:
Anyone who doubts that revolutionary terror is a modern invention has contrived to forget recent history. The Soviet Union was an attempt to embody the Enlightenment ideal of a world without power or conflict. In pursuit of this ideal it killed and enslaved tens of millions of human beings. Nazi Germany committed the worst act of genocide in history. It did so with the aim of breeding a new type of human being. No previous age harboured such projects. The gas chambers and the gulags are modern.
Let’s have a look shall we? This link is to a short 2.36 minute video of American Soldiers in Iraq. Please, please comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3oSluK2G-Y&feature=PlayList&p=7E8842D3421C1B13&index=82
What more need be said than what Vinny G said above? To reiterate:
There was a study that the US Army conducted not too long ago, and it concluded that the new recruits are so much more brutal and more trigger-happy than what recruits used to be only a decade ago, they are actually too brutal even for the US Army. The Army thought one possible cause might be the exposure to violent video games and movies.
We’ve created a generation of monsters. And that too for the sake of big profits for the entertainment corporations.
Mom and Dad are real proud, their son got high score w/most head shots on this day!
Yes Lady’s and Gents their keeping score and making bets too with dune coon merit badges on the Q/T.
Quasi-Racism, thats a keeper.