TORTURE AS SHOCK AND AWE

In launching its unprovoked invasion of Iraq the Bush administrtion's signature was the phrase "shock and awe."  Repeatedly, they proclaimed that the attack would be characterized as one that would deliver "shock and awe" upon Iraq.  The thinking behind this was to intimidate Saddam Hussein's government and the Iraqi people.  The message was that we would do terrible things to demonstrate that nothing would stop us or keep us from our objective, the overthrow of  Saddam's government and establishing a Western-friendly democracy in Iraq. We succeeded in toppling the Iraqi government but have not intimidated the Iraqi people and the result of "shock and awe" has been a brutal and costly guerrilla war that Bush and company never envisioned and is getting more and more terrible long after Saddam's government was ousted and Saddam captured and imprisoned.  Instead of the war ending with those events, as the Bush administration expected, it has only intensified and become a true nightmare for both the Iraqis and the U.S. with no end in sight.

One thing you can say about the Bush administration which is unable to admit that they could possibly make any mistakes:  When something doesn't work the way they expect, they don't make changes, they just continue with the policies that have not been working.  (Think enormous tax cuts for the very rich and the burgeoning deficit.) The initial policy of "shock and awe" did not achieve the expected results, the intimidation of the Iraqi people and a joyful welcoming of the U.S. presence as "liberators."  So this administration has been able to do nothing except continue the same policy.  The torturing of prisoners was not intended to achieve useful results, but was carried out for it's symbolism which was more "shock and awe."  We're willing to do anything, no matter how costly -- the effect on our national reputation and alienation of world opinion -- or how ineffective, in order to intimidate.  We'll stop at nothing, not even torture, in order to impose our will and hegemony over Iraq and it's people.  The destruction of Fallujah in November was simply more of the same -- more "shock and awe."  "This is what we (the U.S. military) can do if you continue to resist us."  It succeeded in crushing a city, but not -- predictably, except to the Bush administration -- in crushing the rebellion against the U.S. occupation.

William Pfaff wrote this perceptive column for the International Herald Tribune.   He suggests that the Bush gang's obsession with the "shock and awe" policy, is due to their fundamental misunderstanding of the war and the enemy they are fighting.  The U.S. is fighting a military war, but Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents are fighting a political war.  (Bush and his gang continually tell us that both the terrorists and the Iraqis  -- whom they erroneously conflate -- hate us for our freedom, which is arrant nonsense. Increasingly we are driving them to hate us, but for what we are doing, not for our freedom.) The Iraqi people have no thoughts of attacking the U.S. or of defeating us militarily.  Their goal, plain and simple, is to get us to leave their country.  They fight us, not because they hate our free society, but because we invaded them, occupied ther country and are killing them by the thousands and torturing them.  For bin Laden it is a war for the minds of Muslims all over the world.  To convince Muslims that they have been attacked by infidel "crusaders" who want to destroy the Islamic religion and that these infidels are led by the U.S., Israel and by secular Muslim governments such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, who are traitors to "true" Islam.  Like the Iraqis, they have no vision of invading the U.S. or of "winning" a military victory, but want to arouse Muslim opinion to fight a "defensive jihad" which will force the West and the secular Muslim regimes to leave and allow the setting up of fundamentalist Islamic states in all countries where Muslims make up the majority of the population.  (It's scary to realize that both Bush and bin Laden are, first and foremost, religious fundamentalists.) As Michael Scheuer explains in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War On Terror, a defensive jihad is a "holy war" to defend Islam against attack, as opposed to an offensive jihad which would be aimed at gaining new converts and territory for Islam.  The Koran instructs every true Muslim to wage this defensive jihad or holy war against any attack on Islam.

The continuation of "shock and awe" policies by the U.S. are only strengthening the forces of the Iraq insurgents and of the bin Laden revolutionaries.  The Bush administration, so far, has played right into their hands.  As a result, both the Iraq insurgents and the adherents of bin Laden and al Qaeda around the world are growing stronger.  As Pfaff writes, "Destroying cities and torturing prisoners are things you do when you are losing the real war, the war your enemies are fighting."  This column was reprinted in Liberal Opinion Week , http://www.liberalopinion.com , for Dec. 27, and posted online by TruthOut, http://www.truthout.org .  --  Bryce

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Torture Reconsidered: Shock, Awe and the Human Body

Our methods will help us lose the war.

  By William Pfaff
  The International Herald Tribune

  Wednesday 22 December 2004

  PARIS - A historian in the future, or a moralist, is likely to deem the Bush administration's enthusiasm for torture the most striking aspect of its war against terrorism.

  This started early. Proposals to authorize torture were circulating even before there was anyone to torture. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration made it known that the United States was no longer bound by international treaties, or by American law and established U.S. military standards, concerning torture and the treatment of prisoners. By the end of 2001, the Justice Department had drafted memos on how to protect military and intelligence officers from eventual prosecution under existing U.S. law for their treatment of Afghan and other prisoners.

  In January 2002, the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales (who is soon to become attorney general), advised George W. Bush that it could be done by fiat. If the president simply declared "detainees" in Afghanistan outside the protection of the Geneva conventions, the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act - which carries a possible death penalty for Geneva violations - would not apply.

  Those who protested, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, were ignored, though the administration declared it would abide by the "spirit" of the conventions. Shortly afterward, the CIA asked for formal assurance that this pledge did not apply to its agents.

  In March 2003, a Defense Department legal task force concluded that the president was not bound by any international or federal law on torture. It said that as commander in chief, he had the authority "to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security." Subsequent legal memos to civilian officials in the White House and Pentagon dwelt in morbid detail on permitted torture techniques, for practical purposes concluding that anything was permitted that did not (deliberately) kill the victim.

  What is this all about? The FBI, the armed forces' own legal officers, bar associations and other civil law groups have protested, as have retired intelligence officers and civilian law enforcement officials.

  The United States has never before officially practiced torture. It was not deemed necessary in order to defeat Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Its indirect costs are enormous: in their effect on the national reputation, their alienation of international opinion, and their corruption of the morale and morality of the American military and intelligence services.

  Torture doesn't even work that well. An indignant FBI witness of what has gone on at the Guantanamo prison camp says that "simple investigative techniques" could produce much information the army is trying to obtain through torture. (Victims of torture, if they talk at all, are inclined to tell the torturers what they want to hear regardless of whether it is fact or fiction. - BB)

  It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called "shock and awe." It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.

  In that respect, it is like the attack on Fallujah last month, which - destructive as it was - was fundamentally a symbolic operation. Any insurgent who wanted to escape could do so long before the much-advertised attack actually began. Its real purpose was exemplary destruction: to deliver a message to all of Iraq that this is what the United States can do to you if you continue the resistance. It was collective punishment of the city's occupants for having tolerated terrorist operations based there.

  The administration's obsession with shock and awe is a result of its misunderstanding of the war it is fighting, which is political and not military. America's dilemma is a very old one.

  It is dealing with politically motivated revolutionaries, in the case of Al Qaeda, and nationalist and sectarian insurgents in the case of Iraq. It has a conventional army, good for crushing cities. But the enemy is not interested in occupying cities or defeating American armies. Its war is for the minds of Muslims.

  Destroying cities and torturing prisoners are things you do when you are losing the real war, the war your enemies are fighting. They are signals of moral bankruptcy. They destroy the confidence and respect of your friends, and reinforce the credibility of the enemy.

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