How to Break a Terrorist
“It’s a new day, and I’m trying to put Yusif behind me, but it’s difficult. I’ve promised myself that when I go back into the booth, I will remember my sense of humanity and compassion. I don’t want to end up like some of our veterans here, bloated with hate for our enemy.”
Believe it or not, I first heard about this book on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Matthew Alexander, the author, was Jon’s guest of the evening, and the title of his book intrigued me – How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq. The interview was pretty interesting, and I resolved to borrow the book and read it.
That was over 5 months ago. About 2 months ago, I finally got to check the book out of the library. Unfortunately, my hectic schedule relegated the book to our bookcase where it started gathering dust. Plus, I was still trying to finish The New Kings of Non-Fiction. I kept renewing the book until the library’s website told me, “No more! Read it or turn it back in!”…or something to that effect. I cracked it open last night, read for a few hours, and finished it this afternoon.
I don’t usually read books this quickly. This one was worth it.
Torture has never sat well with me, both morally and ethically (I think there can be a difference in the two). When the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal came to light back in 2004, I was shocked and saddened. I thought the U.S. was a pretty good country and had pretty good people, but what I heard, read, and saw was appalling. It was argued that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident; this was not common practice. Maybe it was, but then the U.S. got involved in waterboarding. Where a person stood on the issue of waterboarding unfortunately became the rubric by which his “patriotism” and “commitment” to the war on terror was measured. Personally, I think that’s pretty sad. As a Christian, I think it’s abominable.
Back to the book – I had heard accounts (word of mouth from friends/colleagues) of interrogation techniques used in World War 2 to get information from enemy prisoners. These all involved treating the prisoners with respect, building rapport with them, and just “hanging out” with the specific purpose of getting information. Of course, the enemy already thinks you’re the enemy, so why give them more reason to think that? “More secrets were spilled over games of ping-pong than through torture,” one friend claimed. I have yet to look that up, but it makes sense.
And what Matthew Alexander shares in this book makes sense. You alienate your enemy when you treat him like a piece of sh*t, and if you think they are, that will come out in your interrogation methods. One cannot forget that the enemy is human, too. He has concerns, motivations, and feelings that drive him to do what he does. Find those, and you can manipulate them to gather information. Abuse him, whether physically or verbally, and he will close himself from you.
No torture takes place in the interrogations shared in the book. However, different approaches are used by different interrogators. “Old school” interrogators use Control as their main method of breaking down a prisoner. If the prisoner feels he has no power, no hope, etc., then he will spill. The “new school” interrogators used knowledge of the culture, of motivation, and a basic sense of human decency to deal with their captives…and it worked.
It took one month for one interrogator to get nothing out of a prisoner, because all he did was insult him and try to “control” him. It took a few hours for another to get the prisoner – of his own free will – to admit to knowing (and promising to give up) one of the biggest leaders the military was hunting. The difference? The first interrogator spent his time demeaning the captive. The second one treated him with respect (he was an imam), asked him questions about his beliefs (stroke his ego), engaged him in discussion (he was a brilliant man, clearly, why not engage him as such…even if he is the enemy?), and used persuasive and argumentative skills to convince the captive that giving up his contact was in his best interests.
And it worked. No torture, no psychological trauma, etc.
I believe the difference between the two interrogation techniques is this – knowledge. One style rejects understanding the enemy and simplifying everything down to “They’re all suicide bombers who have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and sworn off all family ties, etc.” Thus, they demean them. The other style understands that things may be more complex than that – most operatives do not even fully agree with all al-Qaeda ideologies. So what motivates them? That takes work to find out, and that takes time, and it is not simple, and it is not easy.
Torture is easy; engaging the enemy and finding his motivations is not. I think there should be more of the second…it seems to work better in both the short and long-term.
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