The Strategic Corporal
Retired Generals Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar have an op-ed over at the Miami Herald making some important arguments against using “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Krulak served as Commandant of the Marine Corps and Hoar served as CENTCOM Commander. CENTCOM is short for Central Command, the regional military command responsible for the Middle East.
Krulak and Hoar endorse the Interrogation Task Force’s recommendation that all future detainee interrogations be conducted within the guidelines in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation. In doing so, they make a point that may be difficult to see unless you have been a leader in the military: condoning torture, or any mistreatment of prisoners, erodes discipline in a military organization.
Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation’s honor.
To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the orders. As military professionals, we know that complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.
Krulak is no stranger to this topic. In a 1999 article, The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War, Krulak highlighted the difficulty of deploying to low-intensity conflicts and the challenges that enlisted Marines (and soldiers) will face. In a single conflict, a unit could be engaged in humanitarian aid on one block, quelling a riot on the next, and fighting pitched urban combat on the third. Small units led by a corporal may have to take on captain-sized problems. Krulak stressed the importance of leadership and character at the lowest level so that when an officer is not present, low-level leaders will act with the necessary initiative and decision-making skills. The cornerstone for all of this is character.
Honor, courage, and commitment become more than mere words. Those precious virtues, in fact, become the defining aspect of each Marine. This emphasis on character remains the bedrock upon which everything else is built. The active sustainment of character in every Marine is a fundamental institutional competency — and for good reason.
Torture apologists may be found aplenty inside the Beltway, but those who have worn the uniform know better.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
McCarthy Does Petraeus a Disservice
General Petraeus recently gave an interview to Fox News. Petraeus speaks approvingly of the decision to close Guantanamo, limiting interrogation to the techniques in the Army Field Manual, and how adherence to the Geneva Conventions takes propaganda fodder out of the hands of our enemies.
Andy McCarthy attacks Petraeus over at National Review Online’s The Corner:
With due respect to Gen. Petraeus, this is just vapid. To begin with, he doesn’t identify any provision of the Geneva Conventions that we have actually violated – he just repeats the standard talking-point of his current commander-in-chief that we took “steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions” during those bad old Bush days. What steps is he talking about? How about naming one?
McCarthy then uses the brief reference to the Geneva Conventions to attack strawman arguments as if Petraeus wanted to give full Prisoner of War status to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters and had just proposed ending military detention of combatants picked up on the battlefield.
I’m pretty sure that Petraeus is not squeamish about keeping detainees in custody. As CENTCOM Commander, he’s got over 600 of them in Bagram.
When you watch the video it’s pretty clear that Petraeus was referring to the treatment of detainees and the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” as violating the Geneva Conventions, a position consistent with his previous statements. Petraeus doesn’t supply a specific provision to satisfy McCarthy, but he is likely thinking about Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This provision bans, even in a conflict of a non-international nature (read: counterinsurgency and counterterrorism), cruelty, torture, and humiliating and degrading treatment.
McCarthy is also broadly dismissive of the propaganda effect that Guantanamo has had in encouraging people to take up arms against US forces. This sentiment is counter to the doctrine that I learned in the Special Forces Detachment Commander’s Qualification Course. Low-level insurgencies and terrorism are driven by propaganda.
To build an insurgency, you don’t need to win battles. You need to take a few shots at your enemy and tell stories about how successful you were, even when you weren’t. Over time you get sympathetic parties to join your struggle and gain critical mass to move into outright guerrilla warfare.
To sustain a worldwide terrorist organization, you don’t need to actually pose an existential threat. You need to prod a superpower into deploying large troop formations into the Muslim world, where they can be entangled in local disputes over local grievances. Usama bin Laden is not the commander-in-chief of any significant armed force, but he can be the inciter-in-chief who makes broad claims about opposition to America. He tries to link local insurgencies to his global caliphate narrative even where they are not supportive of his broader goals. Check out David Kilcullen’s book, The Accidental Guerrilla, for a detailed discussion. Incidentally, Kilcullen worked for Petraeus as a senior counterinsurgency advisor in Iraq.
This is the propaganda war we are fighting, and most everyone agrees that we have not been doing it very well. Every time we drop a bomb in Afghanistan, the Taliban beat us to the punch with exaggerated (and mostly false) claims of civilian casualties. US forces are now reviving body count reports to counter Taliban propaganda. While I don’t think that body counts are a good metric for success in the long run, trying to be an honest broker of good and bad information blunts enemy propaganda.
McCarthy is wrong to mischaracterize Petraeus’ words and dismiss the propaganda war where we have largely been a punching bag. Cheerleading our military leaders who produce gains on the ground but dismissing the fundamental insights that produced their success is willful blindness.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
Cheney vs. Obama: Tale of the Tape
In case you missed it, President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke separately today on terrorism and national security. Like two boxers at a pre-fight press conference, they each touted their strength over their opponent. They espoused deep differences in their views on national counterterrorism strategy.
The Thrilla in Manilla it ain’t. As Gene Healy has pointed out, they agree on a lot more than they admit to. Harvard Law professor and former Bush Office of Legal Counsel head Jack Goldsmith makes the same point at the New Republic. Glenn Greenwald made a similar observation.
However, the areas where they differ are important: torture, closing Guantanamo, criminal prosecution, and messaging. In these key areas, Obama edges out Cheney.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
Torture? No.
Charles Krauthammer’s recent column tells us that the wisdom of torture is undeniable. According to Krauthammer, there are two situations where torture is justified: the ticking time bomb scenario and when we capture high-ranking terrorists and conclude that giving them the third degree may save lives. Furthermore, it would be “imprudent” for anyone who would not use torture to be named the commander of Central Command (CENTCOM), the military organization in charge of American forces in the Middle East.
The generals who have been in charge of CENTCOM and other national security officials disagree.
Here is a video of General Petraeus, current commander of Central Command, saying that American forces cannot resort to torturing prisoners:
The open letter Petraeus mentions in the video is available here. He admonishes our troops to treat prisoners humanely. “Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemies.”
Former CENTCOM commanders Anthony Zinni and Joseph Hoar don’t endorse torture either, evidenced by their open letter (along with dozens of other former general officers) to Congress asking that the CIA abide by the Army interrogation manual.
Hoar and former Commandant of the Marine Corps Charles Krulak wrote separately to denounce torture:
As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture — only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works — the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb.
So, once we sign off on the ticking time bomb scenario, the rationalization spreads to whenever we think it may save lives. Sound familiar?
These former commanders are not alone. Colonel Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, also had some words on the subject. “We can never retake the moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to us.”
Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course (where sailors are trained in resisting interrogation techniques, including waterboarding), seems to know a thing or two about the topic. “I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.” He roundly denounces the use of waterboarding as wrong, ineffective, and counterproductive. Just for the record, water actually enters the lungs of a waterboarding victim. This is not simulated drowning, but controlled drowning. Read the whole thing.
Krauthammer’s column gives the impression that all national security experts support making torture our national policy. Wrong.
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