Center for a New American Security

My post mourning the death of Marcel Bigeard attracted some lively commentary, so I am going to up the Algeria ante by linking to this fascinating 1970 debate between Roger Trinquier and Yacef Saadi, old adversaries in the Algerian War. My friend Judah Grunstein passed this along, noting the way Trinquier and Saadi dispassionately discuss, among other things, the use of torture. U.S. readers will recognize Saadi as having played one of the lead characters in The Battle of Algiers, a film in part based on Saadi's wartime experiences. [via Ultima Ratio]

P.S. Yes, this is in French. Sorry.

From a very good review essay in the Financial Times covering some new books on the Dreyfus Affair:

The atavistic impulse that spawned the Dreyfus affair, Begley warns, is as malignly robust as ever. Like Emile Zola, Begley deplores the current wisdom that a nation can protect itself from subversion by subverting decency, due process and the liberties on which it was founded. He frets about a future that lacks Dreyfusards. “Will there be,” he asks, “men and women ready to defend human rights, and the dignity of every human life, against abuse wrapped in claims of expediency and reasons of state?”

Yes, actually. There is, happily, more than a little Émile François Zola in Jane Mayer.

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Does Britain collude in the torture of terror suspects or not?

The head of MI5 said in a speech the other day that torturing people might be OK for Jack Bauer, but it's not OK for his officers..  Well, he basically said that without the television reference.

However, Londonstani has a good friend who went to Pakistan totally off his own bat and filmed interviews with Pakistani military people saying that British officials had asked them to obtain information through torture. The material was not broadcast or developed as UK news organisations couldn't afford to buy the footage and repay their costs.

In Londonstani's experience, nothing has been as damaging to the fight against radicalisation, extremism and terrorism as accounts and images of people being tortured by UK and US personnel, or those acting on their behalf. This isn't to say information of such occurences should be suppressed, rather that they should just plain not happen. Anyone who has spent time in the places between Casablanca, Cairo, Karachi and Jakarta and talked to people about al Qaeda/terrorism etc will have heard pre-2006 that AQ's fight was justified by the US and UK's practices. And after 2006 would have heard that AQ was no worse in its actions than Washington and London. Even that change in view came about because of AQ's bloodlust in Iraq and not actions undertaken by the international community.

Hiding information about torture is counterproductive. It gets out anyway. And if it's seeping out through the families and friends of people who have suffered it, the shadowy details will be much worse than the actual facts. This isn't to say that the UK did collude in torture, but rather that the sense of doubt is harmful. If Londonstani was a government accused of involvement in torture (the government of Londonistan, maybe), he would put it out in the open, denounce it as an abberation of normal conduct, hold people accountable and make sure it doesn't happen again

The Onion calls bulls**t on the cable news torture debate as only The Onion can.

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Rep. Peter King wonders whose side Eric Holder is on with respect to the investigation into alleged torture conducted by our intelligence agencies. That's all fine and good, and I am glad Rep. King is so tough on Islamist terrorism, but I imagine there are those in the United Kingdom who wonder whose side King was on in the 1980s when he shamelessly carried the PIRA's water.

"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost, and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.

Civilians killed during The Troubles (1968-1998): 1,857 (and an additional 705 from an army currently fighting alongside U.S. Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan)

Okay, this requires some cheek:

David Gregory, by forcing King Abdullah to make a statement here, is also forcing him to make a statement about what constitutes lawful and illegal ways to treat detainees. My question is, where do Jordan's police and mukhabarat stand in this "important battle" to which the king refers?

In other news, I had lunch this weekend with one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the law and terrorism, and his quote to me about the terror memos was priceless:

"They were thinking like lawyers -- and not human beings."

I'm sorry I have been away for the past week, facilitating a war game for your beloved corps. One of the research assistants here at CNAS informed me that I had missed a whole week of punditry and reporting on torture. I don't need to repeat the Abu Muqawama position on torture, do I? Shep Smith pretty much sums it up here:

I'm not trying to get all partisan on a Monday morning, but Dick Cheney says President Obama's changes in certain policies are making America less safe. Here is the response.



General P understands the way a military organization conducts itself operationally has direct relevance in this day and age on its ability to achieve strategic objectives. Everyone who has served in Iraq understands that Lynndie freaking England has had a bigger impact on our mission there than the average battalion S-3.

Furthermore, yesterday's excellent front-page article in the Post highlighted the lunacy of torture, which is that it causes people to say whatever it is they think you want them to say. Check out the wild goose chases on which Abu Zubaida sent intelligence officers and operators after he started saying anything and everything to make people stop torturing him.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) asked a very good and legitimate question at this weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference:

McConnell managed to draw a standing ovation with a jab at the Obama administration for its plan to remove detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "What the Obama administration needs to answer is a very simple question: Where exactly do you intend to send these guys?"

I suspect this is indeed a question that a great many lawyers at the Justice Department and Department of Defense -- including our very own Phil Carter -- are asking themselves as they try to shut down Guantanamo. What happened next, though, is ridiculous:

"San Francisco!" someone said.

McConnell said that was a good suggestion and added: "Let me tell you where they ought to be. They ought to be right there in the jail in Guantanamo!"

As the crowd cheered, he said, "You guys get it."

When I was growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, you could still find people who continued to insist segregation was a good thing and consistent with their Christian values. Today, I can find a good number of my co-religionists who think that torture can be justified from within Christian values and compatriots who believe the Guantanamo prison system can be justified from within American values. But this is no longer 12 September 2001, and these people are fewer and fewer. John McCain -- reviled by the conservatives at CPAC -- understood that. George W. Bush also understood a need to close Guantanamo. Until rank-and-file members of the Republican Party understand this, their party will continue to be out of step with the rest of the country, which breathed a sigh of relief when the current president announced a plan to close what has become a blight on American values. (And no disrespect is intended to the many servicemen and servicewomen who have served their country at Guantanamo.)

Large swaths of the electorate have stopped paying attention to Republicans, [McConnell] said.

Well, no kidding.

In other CPAC news and completely unrelated to war or counter-insurgency or such, Grover Norquist said:

"Barack Obama is the guy who signs the bills, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the ones who run the government," he said. If the government were a martini, he said, "Obama is the vermouth."

Ah, but hold on a second. I'm guessing Grover is the kind of guy who sips his martini with only a breath of vermouth. And that's okay. But the new style in martinis is to use more vermouth. Some even serve a half-and-half mixture of gin and vermouth. (Crazy, I know.) I myself find that if you use a good vermouth, such as Noilly Prat, 4-to-1 or even 3-to-1 is not such a bad mix. So maybe the balance between the executive and legislative branches is not as out-of-whack as Norquist thinks it is. It's just that Norquist is stuck in the 20th Century as far as spirits are concerned.