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Irreparable damage
Ending U.S. torture gains the moral high ground, but will not in itself make America safer.
By Thomas Hegghammer
The CIA torture memos have generated a media storm in the United States. Many have expressed surprise and indignation at the nature and extent of state-sanctioned torture in the war on terror. On the center-left of the political spectrum there is also a sense of relief and hope that the dark Bush era is over and that a torture-free America will regain the moral high ground and be safer as a result.
Switch to the jihadi Internet forums, where thousands of radical Islamists log on every day to debate religion, politics, and the latest news from the war on terror. Last week there were debates on all kinds of topics, from swine flu to the financial crisis to the alleged capture of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. But there was virtually nothing about the torture memos.
This wasn't because the jihadists don't care about how the United States treats detainees. Pictures from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have been among al Qaeda's most widely used and most potent recruitment tools in the post-9/11 era. Since early 2002, not a day has passed without Guantánamo being mentioned somewhere on the jihadi Internet. Outrage over Abu Ghraib was the single most important motivation for foreign jihadists going to Iraq in 2004 and 2005. Al Qaeda hostage takings began after the establishment of Guantánamo and skyrocketed after Abu Ghraib. More than one Western hostage met his fate in Iraq wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Nor is al Qaeda's silence on the memos a tacit admission that the end of torture is bad for its recruitment. Jihadi strategists have never shied away from publicly discussing the objective challenges they are facing. There are many reasons for al Qaeda to fear an Obama administration, but the cleanup of the CIA black sites is not one of them.
The reason for the silence on the forums is that al Qaeda couldn't care less about the current U.S. debate about torture. The questions of who signed which memos when, whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 80 or 180 times, and whether a millipede was inserted into Abu Zubaydah's confinement box are only interesting for those who did not expect the United States to behave this way. And the jihadists are not among them.
For a start, al Qaeda never cared about the black sites in the first place. It never expected its leaders to be treated gently, and it knew the dungeons of Cairo were infinitely worse anyway. Moreover, even if the CIA really did stop torture, the United States has so little credibility left in the Muslim world that virtually nobody would believe it. And those who would believe it would rightly point out that the practice of rendition will continue. Most importantly, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have already provided enough propaganda material to last a generation. For the jihadists -- indeed for most Muslims -- the CIA memos are a small drop in an ocean of examples of Western injustice toward Muslims.
The bottom line is that the damage caused by Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib is irreparable and the end of U.S. torture will not in itself make the United States safer from this generation of jihadists. Ending torture in the United States is obviously important, but it will only bring security benefits if it is part of a broader policy package that includes pressure on allied regimes to do the same.
Cleaning up America's own backyard might make liberals feel good about themselves, but they should not be fooled into thinking that this alone will make them safer.
Thomas Hegghammer is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. He is the coauthor of Al Qaeda in Its Own Words and author of the forthcoming Jihad in Saudi Arabia. He blogs about jihadi Web sites at www.jihadica.com.
Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images
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wrong reading
This is where understanding your enemy, and yourself, come in handy.
Al Qaeda has condoned and applied some of the most brutal torture in the world. Just take a look at doc-pics of Taleban prisons during their reign. Our concern with torture, should have absolutely nothing to do with them. That they don't care, is precisely what makes us civilised, and them savages. That is the basic difference - or was - until the pro-torture loonies and Evangelicals reared their heads.
Brutal torture is endemic to the Muslim world - and whether or not America is perceived to torture is absolutely irrelevant to a people who assume, and believe, that torture is as natural as the sun setting in the West. Regardless of facts, a Muslim will assume that the West tortures, just like the "rest of us". There is little in terms of propaganda, that can change this. Unless of course, the US applied pressure to get its proxies to stop practicing torture in the Muslim world!
Trouble is, we need them to - right? That's why we sent folks to Uzbekistan, Egypt, and Syria?
In America, we need to be that beacon upon a hill that make us who we aspire to be- and make certain that in our borders, torture never sees the light of day. We are not Al Qaeda, a brutal monstrosity - whose world view is stuck in the middle-ages - and the very fact that they don't give a rat's ass about torture, should be something to arm our understanding of ourselves.
The greatest loss of credibility comes with those of us, who fight for democracy ,and now have had the rug pulled under our feet. Only if we have a truth-commission, and hang the scoundrels who sullied our name - can some of us regain confidence in the democracy project.
Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are Not the Same
The fact that you speak of them repeatedly in the same sentence, actually proves your point. These jihandis aren't over there making distinctions between what happened at one -- a bunch of sadistic guards who ware punished for their actions -- and sanctioned interrogation. It's just like these fools who think they can wear Canadian flags on their backpacks and magically be safe from terrorists.
Many of these people can't even read -- and if columnists can't tell one thing from the other, how can we think terrorists will? What did we gain by prosecuting those guards in the infamous photos? As far as everyone is concerned, that was done on orders of Dick Cheney.
"Torture" is likewise now defined as anything other than putting our enemies in four-star resorts, up to and including leaving the air conditioner off. It used to mean cutting off fingers.
We should also point out that the standing order requires Al-Qaeda to try and execute their captured agents, because they fear they'll have been converted by exposure to the infidels.
Chico's bad faith
Chico makes the bad faith argument (if it can really be called an argument), that the banning of waterboarding and other torture techniques is tantamount to detaining terror suspects in 4 star hotels and otherwise coddling him. He goes on to suggest that under such a program of coddling that "leaving off the air conditioner" would constitute torture, perhaps to sarcastically contrast it with the documented use of extreme temperature variations that have been used in our torture programs. He's making the argument that if you oppose torture, you are FOR the terrorists.
Whether you are conservative or liberal or moderate, democrat or republican or independent, PLEASE do not be fooled by Chico's arguments or his rhetoric. Torture is immoral. Torture is illegal. Torture is ineffective to the point of causing long term or permanent damage to our cause (which is the point of this article).
Regarding the comparison of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we DON'T know if they are really all that different, because there hasn't been a public civilian investigation of either place. To this day I find it hard to believe that Graner and Englander were able to escape supervision and thus commit their acts with impunity.
Additionally...
Oh, to add to what I wrote below: Twelve soldiers have been convicted of various charges relating to the incidents. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was demoted, her career ended. Etc. Etc.
Again, I think you'd make a more effective argument to say that anything short of applying the Geneva Conventions -- which do not apply to nationless combatants as originally written -- to those in our care, opens the doors to such abuses. To say nobody was held accountable and that this was in the line of duty, is simply not accurate.
You can also prefer a civilian court, but a civilian court simply doesn't have jurisdiction over such matters. In any case, a civilian court is less likely to mete out swift justice.
Oh...
And nowhere did I say or imply what you inferred: that if you're for stopping anything you define as torture, you're for the terrorists. I understand that that's the black-and-white, prepared answer you have for the discussion, but, it's simply not my point and does not apply. I know it's difficult to cobble up a thoughtful response to each new intellectual argument, but you should really try it. My point was that the distinction between A.G. and G.B. is arguably meaningless to the terrorists -- which is, after all, the topic of the article, which is what you're theoretically supposed to be responding to in the comments section.
Torture
Many people sit on such high moral ground that American Torture tactics is so far fetched.
America is supposed to be this Nation that is so... friendly.... and just takes it all the time.....
Torture tactics are used in every country but we stand and say this should not happen in America.... I mean we do not decapitate, cut fingers and other body parts off from people as part of our every day life. If you are a law abiding citizen you will never even have to learn what that is like.
These individuals do not care about torture in America, torture in America is a regular day for them, hey they bomb themselves for no reason at all, at least not a realistic reason anyway.
As far as all the other nations well lets be realistic only in America does the press and government air their dirty laundry. You know America is the only country that makes itself look bad.
But who cares right--- Change change change, Castro-Chavez-Obama Change-Change-Change....
America torture Three Trillion and keep on counting... Has anyone felt safer, more confident, has your debt disappeared, are your taxes not affected, are the schools any better...
Um, no...
Please likewise do not be fooled by those who will tell you what other people say. Please don't put words in my mouth, if you can call them words. I said nothing of the sort about waterboarding. I never mentioned waterboarding. You actually prove my point by the way you twisted what I said. Apparently you are one who thinks that everything called torture is waterboarding. It's not the case.
You added nothing new to the discussion, nor did you attempt to broaden it.
The "bad faith" is in summarizing what someone else says. To call everything and anything "torture" is to muddy the language, and to desensitize people to the actual instances of torture -- and we read here anyway that the terrorists don't care.
We most certainly DO know that there's a difference. What you would be wise to state, if you're being clear, is that the very reason we need to ban all "harsh interrogation" and go nowhere near "torture" is because once you open the door to treating terrorists roughly -- such as turning down the AC, which was alleged by Sen. Durbin when comparing our troops to Nazis and Soviets (based on a preliminary report since disproved) -- you open the door to ABUSES and rogue activity such as Abu Gharib.
I am sorry you think your opinion is the only valid one, and rather than persuade on their behalf, you wish to turn everyone's eyes away and squelch my points, but I stand by them. This, after all, is why there is a comments section.
Cheney is wrong to suggest
Cheney is wrong to suggest that the released documents fail to describe the reported success of the harsh treatment. The May 30, 2005 memo by Steven Bradbury includes pages of description of the benefits of harsh interrogation... Cheney present[s] a scene out of 24, the television shows. Tough guy terrorists won't talk, until they think they are drowning. Then they give up the store. The accuracy of this vision is, from what is known publicly at present, still in dispute. As Scott Shane reported Saturday in the New York Times, the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, which is deemed [a] major success in the Bradbury memo, was seen as totally unnecessary and unproductive by others in the intelligence community.
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