The Torture Fight

by Adam Teiichi Yoshida

Can someone seriously answer this question: why do we care if terrorists are tortured? The Democrats clearly intend to make it a big deal in the hearings for Alberto Gonzalez’s confirmation as Attorney General, so we need to talk about it. I’ll grant you that, by most appearances, what could be reasonably called “torture” has taken place. Basically, it appears to have taken a few forms:

1) Rendition of prisoners to nations which actually do use forcible information extraction.
2) “Soft torture” techniques like sleep deprivation and so forth.
3) Rogue incidents involving inexperienced or untrained personnel (IE Abu Ghraib).

I’ll grant all of that. And then I’ll ask you: who gives a fuck? I certainly don’t. My only questions are:

1) Why are we outsourcing our torture, thus depriving hard-working American pain technicians of much needed work?
2) Who gives a fuck about terrorists?

People are such babies nowadays. A hundred years ago people caught fighting out of uniform in the fashion that the terrorists do would have been executed virtually on the spot. The left is always prattling on about how the Earth’s resources are limited. You’d think they’d see the summary execution of captured terrorists as a good way of preserving our natural resources.

I suppose the preservation of the lives of those who try to murder Americans comes before Mother Gaia for the enviro-left. Even they have their priorities.

This is all about scoring political points by triggering in the American people the gag reflex that all Democrats are taught to overcome during initial reorientation. They want to trigger a visceral reaction. “Abuse=Bad.” Well, to that I simply respond: who the fuck cares about terrorists?

It’s this sort of petty bullshit which has kept the pathetic and murderous Iraqi “resistance” in the fight far longer than they should be. They’re running around hacking off people’s heads while shrieking “God is great” and then putting the videos on the internet. Then they go home and read about how Americans are having a national hair-pulling slap-fight over who’s responsible for some clueless terrorist cannon-fodder getting a pair of panties put on his head.

No wonder they think that they can win. No wonder they think that we’re weak. The American left (and a good chunk of the upright-right) doesn’t understand the great fundamental truth about the Middle East: it’s a place which respects strength above all other things.

One reason that the initial aftermath of the Iraq War went so well diplomatically was that America, in Moslem eyes, came to look like a “Strong Horse.” And, as Bin Laden himself reminded us, that’s the one thing that the Islamic world respects. They understand strength and they don’t think that we have it.

In 1920-21 the British faced a full-on national revolt in Iraq. A revolt which saw Shiite and Sunni united. They put it down in less than a year. They did it with deadly force (and poison gas), but they did it. And the Arabs knew that they were facing people with the will to win, so they sat down and cooperated.

The funny thing is that the Iraqi resistance is militarily defeated and has been for some time. The original Ba’athist remnant Sunni resistance was dead by the end of 2003. The abortive Shiite uprising was crushed in the Spring-Summer of 2004. The last, best hope of the foreign forces was crushed at Fallujah in November of last year. The terrorists in Iraq are incapable of any sort of meaningful operations. Militarily, they’re done.

Careful US diplomacy and military operations forestalled a possible national uprising. As the national government of Iraq takes control such a think will become even less likely. All the terrorists are capable of doing now is killing at random.

What we have running around Iraq at this point isn’t an organized resistance capable of full-on battle. It’s a rabble of people who are behaving like serial killers.

This is an important point because serial killers are hard to stop. Think back to the DC Sniper case. How long did it take to catch just two men operating in a relatively small area while surrounded by law enforcement?

If all you want to do is shoot someone or leave a bomb by the side of the road, it’s not that easy to catch you. It’s hard to stop a relative handful of determined individuals from killing.

The weakness of the Iraqi resistance is fully demonstrated by the nature of the attacks they undertake. Virtually every attack these days is an improvised explosive device, a car bomb, a mortar attack, or something like that. All things that don’t require a lot of men. All things that can be done easily, quickly, and repeatedly.

Think about this for a second: in 1994 the IRA managed to launch three mortar attacks against Heathrow Airport, right in the heart of London. They did it on nearly consecutive nights: and they got away.

I bring all of this up to emphasize the silliness of arguing about a few “abused” detainees. In all probability, stronger measures are the only way to bring the present problem to heel.

We’re not dealing with a romantic/patriotic “resistance” movement. We’re dealing with sadistic foreign killers. We should be able to treat them as such.

The Congress shouldn’t be hounding Gonzalez about a few “abused” terrorists. They should be asking him why there are so few.

The opinions expressed in this column represent those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, or philosophy of TheRealityCheck.org, Inc.