Knowing your enemy is one of the most important parts of waging any war. If you don't know anything about the person you are fighting, they can get away with nearly anything because everything they do will be a surprise. Good knowledge of their personalities as well as their tactics can lead to easily won battles and shorten the necessary combat time.

Lack of knowledge can also lead to fatal mistakes when dealing with your enemy. Two New York Times writers are asking the United States to make just such a fatal mistake. Scott Gerwher and Nina Hachigian have said that in Iraqi prisons, maybe we should "try a little tenderness." By this, they are referring to the practice, during the Viet Nam war, of "turning" prisoners by offering them better and more rations, freedoms and other rewards for information and good behavior. At that time, the system was successful in converting some prisoners and obtaining information from others. As I haven't had time to look it up, I don't know exactly how successful it was, though.

But to propose the same treatment for terrorist POWs is not only wrong, but horribly dangerous. We are simply dealing with a completely different class of people here. While some communist fighters (I use some loosely because I'm not currently aware of the exact figures) were hardcore ideologues, others were just soldiers. And still others were conscripts who had no wish to be there fighting at all. Muslim terrorists, however, are by definition, complete zealots. All of them are so committed to their cause that they are ready to blow themselves up or participate in other types of suicidal attacks in order to kill or injure a few Americans. They aren't just fighting against us because their "generals" ordered them to. They are, each and every one, radically committed to our complete annihilation. That's not to say that the entire Muslim world feels this way. Obviously they don't or we wouldn't be in Iraq to begin with.

This isn't an army that we're dealing with. At least not in any conventional sense of the word. It's a loose confederation of extremists who share the same goal. When they are captured, they continue to be as hostile as possible. Attempting to turn them will not only not work, but will put our troops in unnecessarily dangerous situations as these prisoners attempt to use their newfound kindness against our troops.

As the writers continue to explain about this tactic and the history behind it, they provide, unknowingly, one of the prime reasons that it would fail in Iraq.

So what does this have to do with Iraq? While Chieu Hoi was geared to counter a Communist threat, it was based on universal principles of counterinsurgency that could easily be applied to the current struggle. In fact, Chieu Hoi was something of an import in its own right: it was the brainchild of three men with long experience battling rebels.

We are not fighting a counterinsurgency. The men we are fighting are not rebels. Not in the traditional sense of the word. To label this as an insurgency would indicate that the terrorists we are fighting have some sort of legitimate claim on the Iraqi government or at least some claim to even be in Iraq. But that is not the case. The majority of the terrorists we are fighting are coming from other countries. Their reasons for fighting have nothing to do with insurgency or rebellion.

They designed Chieu Hoi to focus on changing the underlying attitudes of the subjects, not simply on trying to control their behavior. Empirical research in social psychology reveals that efforts to directly control behavior through coercion or bribery usually leave underlying attitudes intact, or even harden them. Thus putting a gun to a man's head and instructing him to support a particular political ideology will work only as long as the gun is present and he is being watched. The preferred method for long-term change is instilling sincere belief in the new political ideology, making the gun and monitoring unnecessary.

Once again, there are numerous problems with the statements above. First and foremost, we are not fighting a political ideology. We are fighting a religious ideology. Regardless what you would like to think, fighting with the terrorists is strictly a religious war. They believe that their religion demands our complete destruction and they are not going to stop at anything short of that.

Which brings us back around to my original point. You can't "deprogram" these people. Religious fanaticism is one of the strongest psychological forces known. Why else would hundreds of people drink poisoned kool-aid?

In addition, running our prisons under the Chieu Hoi model could help reverse the terrible propaganda defeat suffered with the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib. Nongovernmental groups like the International Red Cross and Amnesty International would praise America, bringing more international support.

I don't buy that for a second. International "aid" groups are not going to praise us no matter what we do. And the whole point in being in Iraq isn't get get a pat on the head from Amnesty International. If that's our motivation, then we need some serious self-evaluation.

The whole idea of "deprogramming" the Iraqi prisoners is, to me, laughable enough that I don't know why a major paper is even taking it seriously enough to run it. But considering the Times hasn't even bothered to run a correction for Krugman's lies of the past two weeks, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm just thankful that they aren't the ones making policy decisions.

Posted by: Drew at 08:49 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 952 words, total size 6 kb.

1 We can also thank God that the Bush administration presumably doesn't consult the NY Times for policy advice.

Posted by: Joshua at August 25, 2005 09:22 AM (XPnN/)

2 The left worships at the alter of government, but I wonder where the moonbats like these writers go for spiritual guidance, probably the AP.

Posted by: bill at August 25, 2005 09:36 AM (7evkT)

3 Drew, you make some good points. But this approach is already being taken at Gitmo. And all it has yielded is a few prisoners acting more cooperatively while they're there. As soon as they're released though, most go right back to the same old jihadi behavior and start screaming about their mistreatment. These people, Scott and Nina, are maybe under the assumption that techniques in raising children will work for jihadis? It doesn't even always work on children.

Posted by: Oyster at August 25, 2005 09:44 AM (fl6E1)

4 Heh. I can't recall one time that talking reasonably and offering rewards worked on my 14 year old.

Posted by: Drew at August 25, 2005 09:50 AM (Ml8z/)

5 Michael Yon talks about some baddies who were let out of Abu Ghraib. LTC Kurilla was shot trying to apprehend them in a training exercise. At least one of the terrorists was eunechized.

Posted by: Marcus Aurelius at August 25, 2005 06:16 PM (6IMFK)

6 Damn whinny bunch of liberals in the left-wing news media especialy the New York Pravda? what do they want for them a cell that would put the WALDORF ASTORIA to shame?

Posted by: sandpiper at August 27, 2005 05:25 PM (qMAo+)

Hide Comments | Add Comment