Torture-terror doctrine.

[MjM]

I had never heard of this before, the torture-terror doctrine.

Its talked about in what i read today, the article basically proposes a rationale for the US's use of torture against Islamicist irregulars and jihadis.

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Paul G. Buchanan is the Director of the Working Group on Alternative Security Perspectives at the University of Auckland. He formerly worked at the Pentagon and as a consultant to various US security agencies.
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Ill attempt to paraphrase it cos its quite long.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00197.htm

Brutalisation of terrorist suspects and sympathisers is allowed by a raft of post 9-11 legislation that also authorises their indefinite detention without charge and the practice of “extraordinary rendition” .

Military planners prefer their wars to be symmetrical. Symmetrical wars are those in which opponents are arrayed along a roughly comparable range of force, with similar weapons and tactics. Resulting in, among other things, the Hague Convention on Laws of Warfare and the Geneva Convention regarding treatment of prisoners of war. It is adherence to a general set of conventions regarding the conduct of combat operations within bounded levels of force that determines the difference between so-called “conventional” and “unconventional” or “regular” and “irregular” conflicts.

For the irregular warrior, the object of the exercise is to wear down the will of the militarily superior opponent. Symbolic acts figure very highly in the guerrilla strategist’s tactical priorities, and terrorism against so-called “soft” civilian targets is central among them because it is designed to produce paralysing fear and a desire to [highlight]acquiesce[/highlight] among the enemy’s support base.

The firebombing of Dresden and atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed to do more than kill the thousands that they did. The bombings were designed to demoralise the German and Japanese human reserve and erode civilian support for continuing the war. So it is [the objective] with suicide bombers in vehicles or on foot.

Should the irregular, unconventional actor refuse to be drawn out into conventional symmetry, the only option for a stronger conventional actor is to engage on her terms.

This is the realm of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), which in US practice has evolved new features in the form of CIA para-military squads and contract interrogators not beholden to the rules of engagement governing military intelligence and police.

The US is attempting to get down to the level of its Islamicist opponents in order to bring symmetry to the conflict. The operative belief is that if Islamicists want to play “dirty” by terrorising civilians world-wide, then the US government will demonstrate that it can bring to bear all of its power and resources on those terms.

Torture of Muslims in US detention centres may inflame passions amongst Islamicist hard -liners (defined as those who will commit bodies to the conflict given sufficient provocation). Their mobilisation is justified as an acceptable variant on the honey trap theme, whereby an attractant (or provocation) prompts passive al-Qaeda cells to attempt further terrorist attacks. At that point they can be identified and hunted down, although some will wreak damage before doing so. In the scheme of things, that is held to be an acceptable cost of victory.

More importantly, public dissemination of the torture-terror doctrine will serve to dampen the passion of other would-be jihadis, and deter many who thought to join the Islamicist cause. The point is to demonstrate to the unconventional enemy and its supporters that the superpower, as well as other states, can fight irregularly and systematically as well, if not better. After all, the most common--and effective--type of terrorism in history is state terror, not that practiced by today’s Islamicists.

If the objective of using torture on terrorist suspects is to extract valuable strategic and tactical intelligence ... as a information gathering technique torture has not been a panacea for the US intelligence community, and given media exposure has become a public relations liability for the US--at least in the West.

If the objective is to wear down the will of jihadis to persist in their global armed challenge while at the same time removing their recruitment base, the systematic use of legally-sanctioned torture-terror by the US may bear fruit. In the measure that it achieves symmetry, it raises the costs of the engagement to the jihadists. In the measure that it turns the tables and weakens the will of the Islamicist irregulars to continue to fight, it will prevail over the long term. In the measure that it prevails it re-establishes the relationship between the West and “the Rest,” especially the Muslim world. In doing so it reconfigures the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and elsewhere by extending the cultural boundaries of Western influence to the necessity of recognizing the need for symmetry in war. That, it seems, is the political [highlight]syllogism[/highlight] underpinning the torture-terror doctrine.

Still pretty long, but a really interesting read. I urge you to read the full article it fills in allot of gaps and expands on many of his themes, more than i have allowed. As a theory it makes allot of sense, at least to me. You may not agree with the morality of the tactic, maybe you think it to be hypocrisy.

It raises allot of questions. It would make an intriguing discussion, i think. Like should, as a first world nation, we so readily adopt what we would hold to be unjust in the face of "terrorism". Are we lowering the benchmark for our selves, morally and judicially.

Allot to think about. The pragmatist in me says that if this tactic bears fruit in Iraq in the next few years then it is acceptable, because of the rate that violence that is occurring particularly to people trying to make a difference, i.e. judges and police( recruits). But he said its a long term tactic, so how many years are we talking, could it be supported by more than one administration? On the other hand, I see it as complete hypocrisy, and it makes me shudder when i see American officials telling others how to behave, when they themselves are apart of something that does abhorrent things to people, often innocent.

Also, if Islamicists are those willing to commit bodies in the face of provocation, would this whole fiasco be stemmed if one took the higher ground and quit provoking? With repect to the US, provocation in a broader sense, in terms of foreign policy, not just on a micro scale, i.e torture tactics.

It also begs the question, what is beyond the current form of unconventional warfare(i.e. guerrilla warfare). If nation-states embark on guerrilla tactics to reassert some sort of symmetry, then what does the other-side, or for that matter the nation-state, do to add a new dimension to the fight and to once again make the fight asymmetrical?